The urgency of last night’s meeting between Senate progressives and Majority Leader Harry Reid surrounded the fact that, though the overwhelming majority of Democrats want a public option, and several think they’ve already compromised enough on that score, the votes still aren’t there. So, with key votes just around the corner, how can those moderate hold-outs be swayed, and what happens if they can’t be? One possibility is simply leaving the ball in the moderates’ court.
“There’s potentially a dynamic that works in all of this that as you get closer and closer to the vote, you say–you really do say–we’re going to make or we’re not going to make history, and it takes on another dimension, psychologically,” Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) told reporters. “I mean I’ve been through that myself. I’ve gone downstairs thinking maybe I’m not going to vote for that, and then suddenly I see its dimension, think of it in large terms, and then vote for it.”
Rockefeller downplayed the possibility that, at the end of the process, there won’t be 60 votes to end a filibuster.
“We’re not taking that tack, what if we can’t–we’re talking about how we can,” Rockefeller told TPMDC. He said using the budget reconciliation process as a procedural tool to circumvent a filibuster would be ugly, and, for that reason, the focus has to be on making sure Democrats (and perhaps Olympia Snowe) stick together to against a filibuster.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was also on hand for the meeting. I asked him if last night’s meeting was driven in any way by a sense that leadership might be wavering on the public option. He said no: “I think the Senate bill that Senator Reid will present will have the public option that he said it will have in it. My job and the job of others is to make sure that a very strong public option stays in…just wanted to reiterate that.
