On a 60-39 party line vote just now, Senate Democrats overcame an attempted Republican filibuster on health care reform.

Determining who the lone senator not voting was. A Republican obviously … more shortly.

Late Update: Sen. Voinovich did not vote and was not present in the chamber, AFP’s Olivier Knox reports.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the liberal political spectrum, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) remains adamant in a statement issued this evening that his vote for a health care reform bill isn’t guaranteed, though he stops short of saying he must have a public option in the final bill.

The takeaway from today’s debate is that the conservative Democratic senators have not budged on a public option. They’ve been persuaded not to block the bill from going to the floor for debate, but beyond that it doesn’t appear any deal has been struck to get their votes on the next and more important cloture vote.

You might attribute that in part to the Dem holdouts wanting to enjoy their moment of maximum leverage for as long as they can, right up until the next vote later this year. But it’s wishful thinking to conclude that’s the only thing going on here. Blanche Lincoln’s floor speech in particular seemed to foreclose her being able to plausibly turn around later and vote for a public option. You can’t come out as strongly against it as she did and then vote for it anyway without seriously compounding your political problems back home.

The only reasonable reading of today’s developments is that while the Dems will get 60 votes this evening they are still short of the 60 they need to get to a final vote on a bill that includes an opt out public option. Couple that with the fact that there is 100% guaranteed to be a health care reform bill in some shape or form passed by the Senate, and you’re left with somebody needing to strike a deal to get this done. Read More

Robert Reich on Harry Reid and what happened to the Public Option.

We have a handful of short-term web design/development projects we’re working on that we could use a couple more sets of hands to help with. If you’re in New York and interested in working with us on a project basis, drop us a line at the comments address on the upper right — use the subject line “Code Maven”.

To be clear, this would just be working on a few a la carte projects over the next couple months. But we do plan to hire a junior coder/developer early next year. So if it’s a good fit, it could possibly grow into that later.

VIDEO: Al Gore declares plan to “outcrazy the crazy.”

Though the crazy has gotten pretty crazy. So it’s a steep climb.

Servicing the federal debt will cost $700 billion annually, and maybe much more, by 2019. That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Red state Dem Dennis Moore announces he won’t be running in 2010.

The right-wing Minnesota congresswoman points to her support for Carter-Mondale as a college student and laments: “I don’t understand why the Democratic Party would be opposed to me.”

While the range of abortion related amendments remains a major hurdle for a health care reform bill getting to President Obama’s desk, it is clear, as it has been for some time, that the real fight hangs on the Public Option, especially in the senate. Depending on your count there are three or four senate Democrats who’ve made broad commitments that they will not vote for a bill that includes the so-called “opt-out” public option. And that probably means they won’t vote for any bill with a public option at all.

What gets less discussion is how circumscribed the public option (in current House and Senate versions) has become and how much or whether it’s even worth fighting for.

Let me explain what I mean. Read More