Campaign Diaries

After holding out until the final hours, Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu stood by their party; Joe Lieberman managed to refrain himself from backstabbing Democrats and stayed true to his promise to let the debate start; Max Baucus made it back from Montana in time; and Robert Byrd made it to Capitol Hill, something we can never be sure he’ll be capable of. Put together, this gave Harry Reid the 60 votes he needed to advance the health-care bill to the floor of the U.S. Senate.

(Only 39 senators opposed the motion because Ohio Republican George Voinovich was absent. Note that this does not matter: In cloture votes, an absent senator is equivalent to a “no” voting senator and a cloture motion needs to gather 3/5th of all senators, not just of those who are voting. In other words, 60 “aye” votes are needed no matter how many “no” votes there are.)

Given how much coverage last night’s proceedings received, you would think it was a momentous occasion. Instead, it was simply a procedural vote to close debate on whether debate should start. That Democrats managed to clear it is obviously a momentous victory - but it is hardly the final chapter. Blanche Lincoln, Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson have explicitly said they are prepared to filibuster if the bill is not watered down, Roland Burris if it is not moved closer to the House bill; Mary Landrieu and Evan Bayh can bolt at any moment; and floor fights over the public option and over abortion funding should be explosive.

In fact, every day will be a struggle for Democrats to get through and Reid will need to have all of his 60 senators ready at all times for the next month. Republicans have promised to force cloture votes on every single amendment, which every single Democrat need to be in the chamber nearly every day for the next month, ready to cast decisive vote after decisive vote. For Byrd to feel too tired to show up for a few days, for instance, would allow Mitch McConnell to force debate to continue on whatever minor amendment is being considered; that might not be enough to sink health care reform, but it would certainly delay proceedings.

Opt-out cannot easily be replaced with a trigger, but leadership’s willing to try

The major issue threatening to split the Democratic caucus remains the public option. Yesterday, Blanche Lincoln ripped into the opt-out compromise that most centrists were not so long ago willing to embrace, and she became the second Democrat (after Joe Lieberman) to threaten a filibuster if she does not get her way on this issue.

(It’s hardly surprising that centrists are changing their tune: A month ago, the two options facing Reid were the HELP bill, which had a public option, and the Finance bill, which had none. The opt-out was a compromise then - but one they’ll now try to push rightward. Had Reid put in Schumer’s ‘even field’ public option in the bill, would Lincoln and Landrieu not have allowed debate to start, even if it meant warning they’d oppose it latter? In such a scenario, the opt-out would still have looked like a compromise whereas now it’s being portrayed as the liberal-most option.)

This came among mounting reports that the Democratic leadership is willing to water down the public option beyond the opt-out. First, Reid made it clear that he would not pass the bill using the reconciliation procedure. Second, we learned that the White House was still courting Olympia Snowe - a clear sign that neither Obama nor the Maine Senator had given up on their hope to have a trigger put in place. Third, Schumer is working with Lincoln, Landrieu and Carper on finding drafting some sort of watered-down compromise that reportedly mixes together co-ops and triggers. Fourth, Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat, backed those efforts today.

Yet, the situation is now rather complex: The opt-out mechanism cannot easily be replaced with a trigger. Now that the bill is on the floor, Reid cannot replace one provision with another - any change needs to go through the amendment process, which means it can potentially be filibustered: Any switch would need at least 50 votes, probably 60. Since it’s not like any Republican but Snowe (and perhaps Collins) favors the trigger, most Democrats would need to agree to it: this cannot be a repeat of the Stupak Amendment, which passed the House because the entirety of the Republican caucus voted for it, joined by 1/4th of Democrats.

This leads to many obvious questions: For one, can Reid convince all Democrats (he might be able to spare one) not to filibuster a trigger amendment? For instance, if Bernie Sanders and Roland Burris decide they cannot stand for this and join 39 Republicans (40 minus Snowe) against the amendment’s cloture vote, the debate will be stuck.

If a trigger amendment were to survive the cloture test, can Reid ensure that no more than 11 Democrats join those 39 Republicans in voting against its adoption? That Schumer and Durbin are working with Landrieu and Lincoln is a sign he might, but I have trouble seeing Sanders, Burris, Brown, Rockefeller, Merkey, Lautenberg, Whitehouse, Harkin and perhaps a few others actually taking a vote to strip the public option out of the bill. Given their efforts to endear themselves to liberals, Gillibrand and Specter would be hard-pressed to do so as well. Imagine the backlash any Democratic senator who agreed to kill the public option would face.

(It’s my understanding that the only way for Reid to avoid such a vote being taken would be pulling the bill from the floor and restarting the process, which would be a considerable delay.)

If the Senate were to adopt a bill with a trigger, it would only set up a showdown with the House. While I wouldn’t expect more than 10- 20 of the 60 House Democrats who pledged to oppose any bill that didn’t contain a robust public option to actually do so if they were confronted with a trigger, that much could be enough to sink the bill in the lower chamber: Some of the conservative Democrats who voted “no” two weeks ago might change their vote on a watered-down conference report, but at least two dozen are sure to oppose it no matter what. That doesn’t give Pelosi that much room on her left.

And this is only a review of the roadblocks awaiting Democrats around the public option question. At the center of the debate lie the usual questions: Will the leadership really takes reconciliation off the table? How far will 5 Democratic Senators take their threat to join Republican filibusters? Will Reid and Pelosi convince their caucus to take those threats seriously? Brown, for instance, suggested this morning that he thought Lincoln, Nelson, Landrieu and Lieberman were bluffing.