The latest of the latest (at least I think it's the latest) is coming from Chris Bowers at Open Left:
Yesterday, anonymous Blue Dog aides told Politico that Progressives had found only 145 votes for the robust public option during this whip count. This morning, Greg Sargent reports that Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Raul Grijalva's office is claiming a much higher number, around 180:
"I am confident that we have the support of over 70% of the Democratic Caucus," Grivalva said in a statement emailed my way. That means according to him, around 180 of the 256 Dems in the House are prepared to back the robust public option right now.
Sargent is correct, not the anonymous Blue Dog aides. I know this, because I have the actual numbers. As of Friday, here is where the whip count stood:
Progressive Caucus Whip Count on Robust Public Option
Democrats only, 217 needed for passage
Yes: 183
No: 22
Undecided: 20
Not Whipped: 31
All 22 of the no votes are Blue Dogs. Every single one.
Chris also notes that the whip count wouldn't have included members in leadership positions. Not the Speaker, the Majority Leader, Caucus Chair, etc., and likely not the committee chairs, either. I think that's a pretty astute guess, as is the guess that of these folks, only Steny Hoyer (D-MD-05) is a likely candidate for opposing a robust public option, and frankly that's not even a particularly good bet. Hoyer stands up for the Blue Dogs with fair regularity, but he's a Democratic leader first. Lots of people have good reason to be wary of him, but at bottom, he's just nothing like the dead enders and frequent deviant voters like, say, Walt Minnick (D-ID-01) or Bobby Bright (D-AL-02), both of whom have run up sub-50% party unity scores thus far.
It's definitely worth noting, as Chris did, that all of the no votes so far are Blue Dogs. No, not all Blue Dogs are voting no. That's quite clear. In fact, though all 22 of the no votes are Blue Dogs, there are 52 members of that coalition. Could all 30 of them be among the 51 not whipped or undecided? We know that's not the case. While there's plenty of wiggle room there, the odds are that firm Blue Dog opposition in terms of this whip count has probably just about topped out. The numbers may change somewhat on the floor, if passage looks secure, as members in marginal districts look for free passes, but these whip count numbers really start to make the idea that House Dems need to bend for the most intransigent of the Blue Dogs fairly ridiculous.
It's imperative that public option supporters in the House remain firm, and remain clear in their demand that a serious public option remain a component of both the House bill and the conference report. The play on the other side -- that is, by conservative Democrats in the Senate -- is and always was likely to be the same one you've seen before, most infamously on the FISA bill in August of 2007. "We don't have the votes in the Senate, so you might as well just pass what we say we can pass, or you'll get nothing."
This kind of bargaining can work both ways, but only if you're holding a credible threat. The weakness of progressives among House Democrats, and of the House versus the Senate, has always been that their threats are not viewed as credible. Only by changing that calculus, as progressives have done over the past few months by insisting that no bill without a serious public option can get their vote, have we made it this far. And only by sending a bill with a serious public option into the expected conference with the Senate that will produce the final version of the bill can there be any hope of it emerging from that conference, and with that, of finally putting the onus on conservative Senate Democrats to prove where they stand when push comes to shove.