Campaign Diaries

A lot of attention has been devoted to the Senate in recent months, but as we approach make-or-break time in the health-care debate it has become clear that the suspense lies in the House.

The approach Democrats are now openly pursuing (get the House to pass the Senate bill, get both chambers to pass legislation containing fixes using the reconciliation the process) does not require them to ever put together more than 50 Senate votes. While even that could grow complicated, it’s tough to see Harry Reid losing 10 of his senators given that even centrists like Mary Landrieu sound open to voting for reconciliation. Besides Landrieu, all eyes are on Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, Evan Bayh, Jim Webb, Mark Pryor, Michael Begich, Kent Conrad, Russ Feingold - how likely is it all of these join the GOP in killing a small fix bill?

Meanwhile, the House has gotten far trickier. For one, many Democrats dislike the Senate bill and have insisted they would not vote for it without the upper-chamber passing the fix bill first. Second is the abortion issue: The Senate bill does not contain language as tough as the Stupak amendment and the sidecar is not expected to add it. This should not only lead Stupak to bolt but could also give conservatives Democrats who supported the original bill cover to change their vote. After all, the Senate bill is to the right of the House bill on most other issues, making abortion a rare issue centrists can point to in order to justify a switch.

Third, Democrats have gotten more scared about their electoral prospects than they were in the fall. Why this should push them to kill the bill is hard to discern. Adopting it would generate weeks of positive coverage about the party’s epic achievement, whereas letting it die would generate more stories about Democrats’ failure to govern. As importantly, anyone who voted for health-care reform in the fall will be attacked however they vote this second time. What will their response be: “I voted for it before I voted against it”? Yet, there’s no question that electoral terror has gripped Democrats.

Once you add up all of these factors, the math becomes tough. The House voted to pass the original health-care bill 220 to 215 this fall. Since then:

• 4 representatives have left the House - 3 Democrats who had voted “yes” and 1 Republican who had voted “no”. (Jack Murtha passed away; Robert Wexler, Neil Abercrombie and Nathan Deal resigned.) This alone shrinks the margin to 217-214.
• Rep. Anh Cao, the one Republican who voted for the original bill, has made it clear he will oppose any new legislation. That makes it 216-215.
• Rep. Bart Stupak has left little doubt he’d vote against the bill if his anti-abortion language is not included. Given that the Senate bill already contains tough anti-abortion provisions, it appears Stupak is not open to compromise and his threat sounds all the more credible given Politico’s revelation that the Michigan Democrat was working with Senator Mitch McConnell to derail the Senate bill back in December. With Stupak gone, that leaves the math at 216-215 against the bill.

In short: Pelosi has to convince at least one of the 39 Democrats who voted “no” to the original bill to switch to a “yes” - a tough proposition that should be all the more tougher considering that it’s more likely than not that other Democrats follow Cao and Stupak’s lead and switch from “yes” to “no.”

Before going through the list of the 39 Democrats who opposed the bill to see who Pelosi might hope to convince,  let’s first consider who might go the other way. One factor to consider: Many Democrats voted “yes” knowing perfectly well they would face very tough races in 2010 (think Baron Hill and Tom Perriello), so why would they now suddenly change their mind? Relatedly, as long as centrists who voted “yes” to the House bill are not motivated by abortion, how would they justify voting against the more conservative Senate bill? Accounting for those questions, I think 5 Democrats are especially likely to switch their vote because their circumstances have changed:

But the list of Democrats the leadership should worry about goes much further than these 5. Here is a much longer list of representatives who have been mentioned as possible switchers:

This is not to say that most of these Democrats will switch - as I said, how will they justify doing so given their fall votes - but the party leadership will have to key an eye on all of them. So where might Pelosi pick-up votes? Of the 39 Democrats who voted “no” in the fall, one is now a Republican (Parker Griffith).  Of the remaining 38, 15 seem to be lost causes:

Dan Boren, Bobby Bright, Travis Childers, Artur Davis, Lincoln Davis, Chet Edwards, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, Dennis Kucinich, Jim Marshall, Charlie Melancon, Walt Minnick, Mike Ross, Heath Shuler, Gene Taylor, Harry Teague

Never say never, but these congresspeople look as certain as can be to vote “no.” They are either at the far-right of the caucus (Boren, Bright, Childers, Marshall, Ross, Taylor), in over their head in tough re-election battles (Minnick), seeking higher office in red states (Davis, Melancon) or committed to voting for nothing but single-payer (Kucinich). I thought Herseth Sandlin might be open to supporting a more centrist bill, but recent comments make it unlikely. That leaves 23 Democrats, 5 of which seem more open than others to switching:

That leaves us with 18 Democrats whose support for a final bill is plausible, albeit still tough to envision. It will at the least require some very heavy pushing for Pelosi to convince any of these:

I’ve surely forgotten some Democrats whose votes might also be up in the air and I’ve surely missed comments by many that would suggest they’re clearly committed to one camp or the other. But keep in mind that as long as it’s not even clear whether they’ll even ever be a vote, Democrats on this list have no reason to make their intentions.

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Update: The AP just published a story identifying 10 Democrats open to switching from a “no” to a “yes:” Baird, Gordon, Tanner, Boucher, Kosmas, Kratovil, McMahon, Minnick, Murphy and Nye. The only one that is a surprise to me is Minnick, and I’ve update my charts accordingly. The others are certainly not shockers, though I am surprised Boccieri was not included in the story since he has publicly been open to changing.

Update 2: The AP updated its story ruling out Minnick as a switch option, just as I had expected when I placed him in the “lost causes” column. Also, this Slate article contains a few details I had not thought about and which I am adding to my charts. In particular, Rep. Bart Gordon voted for the bill in committee before opposing it on the floor. While he is already in my top-tier of potential switchers, this certainly makes it seem even more possible.

On a 60 to 39 vote, the Senate passed the health-care reform bill this morning, advancing the legislation towards a now all but ineluctable adoption in early 2010.

That the past few days were unsuspenseful is enough to make us forget that back in August it was no foregone conclusion that Democrats would present a unified front; even as it became clear in November that something would pass, the outlines of a bill that might get the support of 60 senators wasn’t easy to discern. Yet, by last week-end the only question marks concerned the timing of the vote and Robert Byrd’s health, which Tom Coburn had essentially urged conservatives to pray would deteriorate (which led to this depressing, albeit perhaps fake, video of someone who took him seriously). Over and over this week, 60 Democrats stood united in pushing the bill forward.

That said, I am surprised by the final roll call: Final passage only requires 50 votes, and I had always assumed that at least some conservative Democrats would choose to vote against it since their vote is no longer needed. What convinced Ben Nelson, Roland Burris and most significantly Blanche Lincoln to vote ‘yes’ this morning? This seems to me to be a somewhat worrisome development: Not only did a routine develop over the past half-decade that absolutely every legislation, amendment and nomination needs to secure a 60-vote supermajority, but senators are increasingly internalizing the idea that voting for cloture and for final passage is the same thing.

When filibustering and oppose a bill are considered different, a senator can ask for different concessions depending on if he is being asked to support the former or the latter (which often led to some supporting cloture and then voting ‘no’); this fall, however, Lieberman took the lead in making it clear he’d filibuster if he had any issue with the bill - and that essentially came to mean securing 60 votes for cloture is equivalent to securing 60 votes for passage. That makes for a far higher hurdle for future bills - and perhaps also for future judicial nominations - to clear.

Of course, another novelty in the process was Republicans’ determination to present a unified front whatever Democrats propose. This might be the usual way Parliament works in European countries, but party-line votes on high-profile bills are certainly not the norm in Congress: Olympia Snowe’s ‘no’ vote is telling, considering this legislation is substantially similar to the one she supported in committee. Sure, individual mandates were added, but the Finance Committee prevailed over the HELP Committee on issues like the level of Medicaid expansion or the public option. Snowe was left justifying her vote by claiming the process was too hurried, even though she was part of Max Baucus’s Gang of Six that spent endless months negotiating.

Harry Reid can finally take a few hours of rest now that he managed to sell the legislation to every member of the Democratic caucus - something that at many points this year looked like an impossible proposition. Whatever else happens over the next six weeks, the bottom line is that a version of health-care reform that resembles the Senate’s should land on the president’s desk over the next 6 weeks, granting Democrats as major a legislative victory as they have gotten in the past three decades. Millions who do not currently have insurance will be covered (many of them thanks to government subsidies) and Medicaid will be expanded to millions who currently do not qualify.

But considering where we were in early October (the Finance Committee produced legislation that is similar to what the Senate adopted today, and it did look like liberals would manage to push the bill leftward because of the need to merge it with the HELP committee’s bill) and considering that the private sector got many of its wishes (the Pharma Deal held while insurers will not have to worry about competition from a public option), the past few months have understandably been painful for progressives.

The process often came down to granting Lieberman everything he wanted without extracting concessions; the leadership’s decision to essentially take reconciliation off the table weeks before the final vote emboldened conservative Democrats to take the legislation hostage; the White House consistently sided with centrists in urging the bill drafters - Pelosi first, Reid second - to water down the legislation; Obama’s recent comments that he did not campaign on the public option, which echoed Lieberman’s transparent early December lies, confirmed his disinterest in even pretending that he fought alongside liberals; and the debate’s final two weeks devolved into open warfare within the left, between those led by Howard Dean, MoveOn and Jane Hamsher who advocated killing the bill as a giveaway to the private sector and those who pushed back on that contention.

In the end, the former group did not convince its few Senate allies - Sanders, Brown - to sink the Senate deal and force the leadership to go down the reconciliation route. Conservative senators were appeased, liberals senators touted the provisions they championed that had been left intact, and the 60-vote coalition held.

Now comes conference. (Despite some speculation that the White House might try to convince House leaders to adopt the Senate bill as is, or by introducing only a few minor additions, it looks like Democrats have abandoned the possibility of ping-ponging their way to a final bill.) On paper, this should be a difficult procedure: For months, dozens of House Democrats have pledged they would vote against any bill that lacked a public option, so common sense (not to mention the fact that the House hasn’t been designed to roll over for the Senate) would dictate that they receive some concessions in exchange for supporting the legislation.

Yet, the Progressive Caucus leaders who took the lead in taking that pledge (starting with Rep. Grijalva) have signaled they’re willing to accept the Senate bill; yesterday, Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter suggested that passing the Senate bill would be worst than passing none, but she quickly signaled that even such a strong statement should not be taken as a sign she was preparing to vote ‘no’. Given Grijalva’s comments, given that Nelson and Lieberman have made it clear that they would have no hesitation voting against the conference report and given that the leadership can no longer credibly threaten to go to reconciliation, it’s hard to see how the conference report substantially differ from what passed today.

Yet, there are still a few issues on which liberals are hoping to prevail - and if Nancy Pelosi plays her card rights, these are winnable battle. The highest-profile at this point is how the insurance exchanges will be designed: at the state level, as the Senate would have it, or as a single national marketplace, as the House bill proposes? Leaving the implementation of the exchanges, the price bargaining and the regulatory power to the federal government rather than to the states would greatly expand the system’s strength.

Other issues which House negotiators will try to push include increasing the level of subsidies, improving the treatment reversed to immigrants (Reid has reportedly already promised Bob Menendez to remove legal immigrants’ waiting period) and advancing the date at which most of the reform will come to be implemented from 2014 to 2013. And then there is abortion, the main issue on which the House bill is to the Senate’s right: How will Pelosi deal with Rep. Stupak’s threats to sink the legislation if his amendment is not included in the conference report?

How these questions are answered could be very important from an electoral perspective. Paradoxically, both parties believe the bill’s passage can help them on the campaign trail. Democrats hope that it will be proof they can govern and deliver on their promises and that it will help them turn out the base, while Republicans are confident it will lead to a backlash. I don’t think the two propositions are contradictory. As any ruling party, Democrats stand to lose short-term by passing controversial legislation, but failing to adopt a health-care bill after spending 7 months talking about wouldn’t appease conservatives while it would infuriate liberals and turn off independents.

The question, then, now is whether the bill is too watered down for Democrats to gain much in terms of motivating their base; in particular, the public option had become a recognizable issue across the country, even among voters who do not follow political news daily. Can the House force the inclusion of some of its provisions to make the base more excited come February than it is today and to give progressives the credibility they’ll need to have a voice in the policy debates that are coming up in 2010?

After decades spent dreaming about health-care reform, Democrats finally managed to pass a bill through a chamber of Congress last night.

While all the focus has been on the Senate lately, the House leadership was facing just as tough a task. With a group of about two dozen Blue Dogs sure to oppose the measure however watered down they managed to make it and with liberals better organized than usual to prevent the bill’s dilution, it wasn’t always obvious how Nancy Pelosi could gather 218 votes - especially when you consider that all all vulnerable Democrats up for re-election in 2010 (rather than just a third on the Senate side).

At the end of the night, however, the House adopted the bill 220 votes to 215, which means Pelosi had just two votes to spare. 39 Democrats opposed it, while Rep. Anh Cao was the lone Republican to vote yes. (The roll call is here.)

Too much should not be read into just how narrow the margin was, by which I mean that it is highly unlikely the GOP was just 3 votes away from triumph: It is no coincidence that both this vote and the one on the cap-and-trade bill (which passed with 219 votes back in June) won with bare majorities. Democratic leaders will allow some of their vulnerable members to break party lines if it can help them; that doesn’t mean they had more than a handful of reserve votes, but had 3 more Democrats voted ‘no,’ Pelosi and Clyburn probably had a handful of lawmakers willing to change their vote to “yes.”

Stupak amendment passes, with 64 Democratic ‘yea’s

On the other hand, the Democratic leadership does look to have been more pressed for votes than it might have been expecting: A group of lawmakers led by Rep. Bart Stupak warned they would oppose the bill if anti-abortion provisions were not toughened - and, as is always the case, such threats are more credible coming from the right than from the left. Nancy Pelosi relented, allowing a vote on an amendment Stupak drafted in collaboration with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in the hope of winning the support of pro-life Democrats on the bill’s passage. (Update: Politico has a must-read story that contains details about just how involved the Church was.)

The amendment was adopted by a large majority composed of 176 Republicans and 64 Democrats (the roll call is here), handing liberals a highly consequential defeat in what would otherwise been a historic night.

Indeed, last night’s vote is arguably the pro-life movement’s biggest congressional victory since the Hyde Amendment was first adopted in 1976. The measure prohibits insurance companies from offering plans that cover abortion procedures and that are eligible to be bought by people with subsidies. As such, a woman on the individual and small business exchange could not buy insurance that covers abortion unless she bought separate insurance intended to specifically cover that procedure - an unviable proposition for low-income women, and probably for most people. (More about the amendment from Ezra Klein and John Cohn.)

Given that there are a fair number of pro-choice Republicans in the House, it was somewhat of a surprise that all supported the Stupak amendment: Reps. Mary Bono Mack, Mike Castle, Mark Kirk, Judy Biggert, Lynn Jenkins, Rodney Frelinghuysen, Charlie Dent and Shelley Moore Capito all received financial support from Republican Majority for Choice in 2008. The only GOPer who did not support the measure was conservative Rep. John Shadegg; he argued pro-life Democrats would oppose the entire bill if the Stupak amendment failed, so he wanted Republicans to defeat the latter to sink the former.

As for the 64 Democrats who voted “yea”, the list is mostly comprised of conservative Democrats whose alliance with Republicans is expected no matter the subject at hand (Bright, McIntyre, Matheson, Melancon, Griffith, Taylor, Hill, Chandler, Salazar, Peterson and many others); that said, there are a few who represent heavily blue districts and who are considered liberal on issues other than abortion (Marcy Kaptur, Richard Neal). Also noteworthy is Rep. Bob Etheridge’s “yes” vote: If he decides to jump for Senate, that could play a significant role in his primary against Elaine Marshall.

40 defections on the bill’s final vote: 39 Democrats, 1 Republican

The vote on the Stupak amendment was followed by a vote on an amendment proposed by the GOP that would have scrapped the entire bill to replace it with the Republicans’ reform plan. While the measure went down 187-247, 13 Democrats - the who’s who of conservative House Democrats - did support it: Boren, Bright, Cardoza, Childers, Costa, Cuellar, Ellsworth, Bart Gordon, Griffith, Matheson, Minnick, Scott Murphy and Pomeroy.

11 of these 13 lawmakers are in the Blue Dog Coalition - all but Cardoza and Murphy. Yes, that’s the Scott Murphy who recently won the special election in NY-20, a district Barack Obama won in 2008. Cardoza, Costa and Cuellar represent districts that gave Obama double-digit victories.

Somewhat puzzlingly, Cardoza, Costa and Cuellar voted in favor of the bill itself (talk about trying to have it both ways, especially given their indecision leading up to the vote). The other 10 - including Murphy - opposed it. They were joined by 29 other Democrats, bringing the total number of defection on that side of the aisle to 39. The full list is:

Adler, Altmire, Baird, Barrow, Boccieri, Boren, Boucher, Boyd, Bright, Chandler, Childers, Artur Davis, Lincoln Davis, Edwards, Gordon, Griffith, Herseth Sandlin, Holden, Kissell, Kosmas, Kucinich, Kratovil, Markey, Marshall, Massa, Matheson, McIntyre, McMahon, Melancon, Minnick, Murphy, Nye, Peterson, Ross, Shuler, Skelton, Tanner, Taylor, Teague

24 of these Democrats are Blue Dogs - which means that 46% of that group opposed the bill. 14 of them are freshmen, which means 37% of all Democrats who’ve been sworn in this year voted ‘no.’ 31 represent districts won by John McCain last year - including 19 in which the Arizona Senator prevailed by double-digits.

That means that 8 are from districts won by Obama: Adler, Baird, Barrow, Davis, Kissell, Kucinich, Murphy and Nye. In particular, Obama won victories superior to 5% in the districts of 4 of these 8 Democrats: He received 74% in AL-07 (Artur Davis is running for Governor in Alabama, which explains his vote), prevailed by 18% in OH-10 (Kucinich opposed the bill from the left, one of two Democrats to do so), prevailed by 11% in GA-12 (Barrow) and 8% in WA-03 (Baird); both GA-12 and WA-03 voted for George W. Bush in 2004.

All of this is to say that the group of lawmakers bucking their party is the typical cross-section of conservative Democrats and vulnerable incumbents.

I for one find it more likely that vulnerable Democrats lose their re-election if their party fails to pass health care reform than if the legislation is adopted. That might not apply to lawmakers like Bright and Minnick who represent very heavily Republican districts, but it certainly does to those like Kissell, Nye, Barrow and Kosmas who are sitting on top of swing districts: The narrative of an overreaching Democrats would drive away independents, the bill’s failure would make it unpopular and the party’s inability to reach its goal would depress base turnout.

Since Republicans are sure to make the most of any Democratic “yes” vote, vulnerable incumbents might have been best off if the bill passed while they opposed it. For that to work, some vulnerable incumbents have to be willing to vote “yes,” however, otherwise the bill would go down. And indeed, a significant number of vulnerable lawmakers did support it.

Here is a partial list of Democrats whose “yes” votes I believe is newsworthy, either because they’re facing a competitive race in 2010 (statewide run or re-election) or because they are generally considered moderate-to-conservative:

Arcuri, Bishop, Dahlkemper, Donnelly, Driehaus, Ellsworth, Etheridge, Hill, Hodes, Kagen, Kanjorski, Kilroy, Dennis Moore, Bill Owens, Perriello, Peters, Pomeroy, Salazar, Schauer, Shea-Porter, Space, Stupak, Titus

Perhaps the most important name on this list is that of Perriello, who is near the top of the GOP’s target list. The freshman spent most of the summer saying he was leaning towards opposing the bill but that he was looking to get to a yes, and he ultimately did get there - just as he had during the cap-and-trade vote. Space is another Democrat representing a McCain district who’ll go into 2010 having supported both the cap-and-trade and health care bills.

Might either have voted “no” if safe Democrats like Chandler or Peterson had agreed to support the bill? That’s all the more important a question given that Peterson is a committee chairman, and as such a member of the Democratic leadership. It’s also worth highlighting that this is a rare instance in which Indiana’s 3 Blue Dogs (Donnelly, Ellsworth and Hill) all backed the leadership on a contested vote; when’s the last time that happened?

As for Bill Owens, rarely do we get this clear an instance of an election having consequences: He won by a few percentage points just a few days ago. Had Doug Hoffman been elected, Democrats would have been down to 219 votes - not 2 but 1 vote from defeat given that Anh Cao only deserted his party once he saw that Pelosi had reached 218 votes.

Indeed, we are now left with the sole Republican who deserted his party. While his vote comes as a surprise because of the party unanimity Republicans had been able to impose on important votes like that on the stimulus bill, it’s far from shocking: The New Orleans congressman is the most endangered incumbent in the 2010 cycle, since he represents a heavily Democratic district. If he wants to have a small shot at surviving next year, Cao will have to be able to point out to a few instances in which he did cross party lines - and this is one high-profile instance to which he’ll be able to point.

What’s next?

There is no need for a long analysis of what awaits the health care bill. Most of the attention was already devoted to the Senate process, which (fairly or unfairly) has been portrayed as a bigger risk for Democrats, so we’ll now go back to monitoring the 5 senators who have left the door open to supporting a GOP filibuster: Joe Lieberman (who reiterated that he’d oppose cloture this morning), Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh.

[Updated, see bottom]

Momentum has been building quickly for the public option since the Finance Committee passed the only version of the health care bill devoid of a government-run plan. Over on the House, reports suggested Nancy Pelosi was willing to send to the floor the most liberal version of the public option - a “robust” plan tied to Medicare rates plus 5%. Over on the Senate, 52 Democrats were on record as supporting a national public option (albeit a “weak” one), with the last bastions of centrist resistance fading away.

Max Baucus, who for weeks insisted that a public option should not be included because it would prevent a bill from getting 60 votes, declared that a “less pure” kind of public option could pass the chamber. And he declared that he was more open to an opt-out mechanism than to a co-op plan or a trigger, perceived to be more centrist options.

Then, it was Kent Conrad’s turn to acknowledge that the bill to be sent to the floor might have some form of public option after all in terms that included no threat that he was looking to filibuster such a reform. Mark Pryor made it clear he was highly unlikely to oppose cloture. The most surprising statement - at least in my view - came from Ben Nelson, who joined Baucus in touting the viability of an opt-out mechanism: Coming from someone who has been opposed to a public option, that pronouncement was quite a victory for progressives.

Add to that what looked like deliberate leaks by the Senate leadership that the public option had the votes to pass the Senate, and it looked increasingly likely that Harry Reid would include a government-run plan in the bill he sent to the floor - at the very least a plan with an opt-out mechanism. (I explain here why Reid’s decision is very important, since it will be virtually impossible to add or remove anything from the bill once he sends it to the floor.)

What was the Senate Majority Leader waiting for? TPM reported that Reid was unwilling to take the decision if he did not receive the White House’s blessing - which is to be understood not only as political cover (Reid does not want to blear the blunt of centrist anger) but also as a guarantee that Obama is willing to work the phones helping Reid pass the bill he’s sent to the floor. But TPM added that the White House was refusing to signal it would back Reid’s decision - a position that isn’t surprising given Valerie Jarrett’s week-end statement that Obama was “not demanding” a public option.

The plot thickened last night, once information started trickling out about what had transpired in a meeting between Obama and Senate leaders. All reports agree that Reid is leaning towards including a national public option with an opt-out provision - something ABC also reported before the meeting. But different press outlets received contradictory leaks about Obama’s attitude: two versions are now being reported.

1. Politico’s version, backed by CNN: Reid said he believed he had the votes to get a bill with a public option past cloture but Obama explicitly said he preferred a bill with a trigger mechanism - a version that is a line in the only for Olympia Snowe.
2. The New York Times’s version: While Reid confirmed he was looking to including a public option, but Obama “did not express a preference.”

It is perfectly plausible that the former version has been leaked by staffers of centrist Senators who are trying to slow down the public option’s momentum by making it seem like it is opposed by the White House. At the very least, however, Politico’s report is consistent with our knowledge that Rahm Emanuel has been more explicitly pushing for a trigger for months.

But the latter version of events isn’t that much more reassuring for progressives who are hoping to get a public option. For a week now, we’ve been hearing that Reid is perfectly willing to include sort of public option and that many centrists are resigned to that prospect. As such, Obama is now the primary obstacle left to the inclusion of a public option - whether he stated his preference for a trigger or whether he simply refused to say he would be fine with Reid taking that route.

On the one hand, this has been a long time coming: Obama’s speech to Congress in early September contained explicit warnings to the left not to insist on the public option, and in recent weeks the president has repeatedly instructed liberals not to be unhappy with Baucus’s bill.

On the other hand, it is quite stunning. Obama has said for months that his preference is for a bill to contain a public option; yet, he is now either refusing to express a preference or outright opposing a public option’s inclusion. Also, it is one thing for him not to actively help liberals promote the public option - it is another thing for him to signal discomfort when the Senate Majority Leader is signaling he’s leaning towards including it.

This debate is far from over, and the ball is still in Harry Reid’s hands: Unless they want to take the risk of endangering the entire reform project, the White House would have little choice but to work the phones for whatever bill he sends to the floor. And what Nancy Pelosi decides to do over on her side is just as important: If the House comes to the conference committee with a “Medicare plus five” public option in its bill, it will be harder for Senate negotiators to insist the public option be fully dropped.

Update: TPM, which can hardly be accused of looking to create artificial division within the Democratic Party, independently sources that the White House “is pushing against” the idea of a non-triggered plan and that Obama has emerged “as an opponent of all but the most watered down form of public option.” Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports that Harry Reid looks increasingly determined to defy the White House & Snowe and is trying to round up 60 votes!

In a debate with unusually clear ideological faultlines, the Senate Finance Committee spent hours yesterday debating whether to include a public option in its version of health care reform. As had been expected, proponents of a public plan failed to rally a majority of the committee in two high-profile votes. This guarantees that the Finance Committee’s bill will not contain a public option, in contrast to the legislation’s all four other versions that passed other congressional committees over the summer.

Yet, in no way does this mean that the public option’s overall prospects are dead. The Finance Committee’s mark-up was never supposed to be the stage at which the public option might win the day; more propitious opportunities await.

It will certainly not be easy for the public option to work its way in the final bill, especially given reports that Barack Obama and Harry Reid are likely to side with those looking not to include it during behind-the-scenes negotiations. But numerous factors (the growing number of Senate Democrats who are on the record supporting a bill with a public option, House progressives’ continued insistence they’ll oppose a public option-less bill) mean that the floor debate or the conference committee will be far more decisive battles than today’s two votes.

Conrad, Lincoln, Baucus: 3 Democrats kill public option in committee

Yesterday, the first vote came on an amendment proposed by Jay Rockefeller; it would have implemented a robust public option based on Medicare rates. 5 Democrats joined the committee’s 10 Republicans in opposing the amendment - Max Baucus, Kent Conrad, Blanche Lincoln, Tom Carper and Bill Nelson - while 8 voted in favor of it, including Ron Wyden and Jeff Bingaman. Next came Chuck Schumer’s amendment implementing a weak “level playing field” public option. This time, Nelson and Carper voted yes; but Conrad, Lincoln and Baucus’s opposition led to the public option’s 10-13 defeat.

Had two of these three senators voted for it yesterday, the issue would have been resolved for good: All committees would have passed legislation with a public option and that would have all but guaranteed that the final bill debated on the floor would include it as well. As I review below, there is no clear evidence that a bill with a public option lacks the votes for passage; so if health care reform ends up lacking a public plan, no Senators - not even Lieberman or Ben Nelson - will be as responsible as Lincoln, Conrad and Baucus.

Two twists: (1) Lincoln did not bother showing up or explaining her vote, which means that Conrad was the loudest Democratic opponent of a public option in today’s proceedings, mounting a full assault on Rockefeller’s proposal to tie the public option to Medicare rates. (2) Max Baucus used bizarre logic to explain his opposition. He explained that he was in full support of a public option but that he opposed it because it lacked the votes to pass. “My first job is to get this job across the finish line,” Baucus said. “I fear if this provision is in this bill as it goes out of this committee, it will jeopardize real meaningful health reform.”

We now know that the public option would get a majority in the Senate

Public option proponents did get one piece of excellent news during today’s proceedings: In voting “yes” to Chuck Schumer’s amendment, Carper and Bill Nelson went on the record for the very first time as supporting some version of a public option. Until now, both had been noncommittal. This does not mean that they would not prefer some other reform to be implemented (Carper is now trying to push potential compromises like co-ops or state-based public plans) but it certainly suggests neither would vote against whatever reform Democrats end up bringing to the Senate floor.

This certainly helps clarify the situation as to where the public option, and with it the odds of a relatively progressive bill, stand in the full Senate. Based on the Washington Independent’s excellent overview of every senator’s stance on the issue, we can now say that the public option-inclusive bill would clear a majority in the U.S. Senate. (The count lists 47 supporters, but Carper, Bill Nelson and Claire McCaskill are all on record supporting a public option in their respective committee, which brings the total to 50; with Joe Biden’s tie-breaking vote, that means 51.)

What this means: Health care reform that includes a public option would be sure of getting the votes it needs to pass if Democrats chose to push it through reconciliation. Now, there are certainly other reasons not to take that route, but this is important to keep in mind as I am still reading that the public option would not even be sure of getting 51 votes.

What about 60 votes? Only 6 Dems could conceivably oppose cloture

50 senators are on record supporting a bill with a public option, which means 10 either oppose it or are on the fence - and none of them has promised to at least vote for cloture. They are: Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, Landrieu, Conrad, Lincoln, Evan Bayh, Mark Begich, Jon Tester and Mark Pryor.

Based on recent comments by Tester and Pryor (see the Washington Independent’s overview) they have left themselves little cover to oppose a constrained public option like that proposed by the Schumer amendment. It’s also difficult to see Baucus voting to filibuster health care reform due to his role in drafting the legislation and to his insistence that he only voted against the public option today because he does not think it could eventually get 60 votes. I also find it improbable that Begich would take the risk of becoming a pariah within his own party just 10 months after being sworn in for his first Senate term.

That leaves us with only 5 Democrats who could plausibly choose to join a GOP filibuster of a bill containing even a weak public option: Conrad, Lincoln, Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Lieberman and Bayh.

When you hear that the Senate does not have the votes to pass the public option, we are not talking about the prospect of the bill failing to be adopted: While all 6 of these senators could very well vote against final passage, we already know that their votes will not be decisive. So what we are talking about is one or more of these 6 senators going as far as to vote against cloture and for a GOP filibuster.

We can debate how much credence to give to that possibility - to my knowledge, only Nelson has explicitly raised the possibility of opposing cloture - and I personally still find it hard to imagine these typically cautious senators taking the gigantic political risk of joining such a small, exposed group to prevent their own party’s health care reform from moving on to an up-and-down vote.

Deciding floor bill, floor debate, conference: What is next for PO

That a bill containing public option still has a path to 60 cloture votes does not mean that the Democratic leadership will choose to go down that route. Yet, whether or not congressmen vote on legislation that includes a public option will soon entirely depend on Barack Obama and Harry Reid. Once the Finance Committee passes its bill, its chairman Max Baucus will meet with HELP Chairman Tom Harkin and Harry Reid to shape the bill that will be introduced on the floor of the Senate; the White House will have a seat at the table.

Most reports suggest that Reid and Obama will side with Baucus over Harkin, which would mean that the bill that would advance to the Senate floor would not have a public option. (It will then be interesting to see whether Harkin gets any concessions from centrists in return.)

The next step will be the floor fight over a public option. I am somewhat unclear as to how many votes would be needed here. If the bill already contains a weak public option, it does not look that Republicans would have the votes to strip it since 50 Democrats (plus Biden) are on record supporting it. If it does not, however, I believe it would take 60 votes for an amendment introducing it to pass (it’s next to impossible for a public option standing on its own to get that much) but I have also read that 50 would suffice.

If the bill finally adopted by the Senate does not contain a public option, a final opportunity to include it will occur at conference since the House legislation is likely to have a public option. A same scenario would occur here, with Senate negotiators and House negotiators clashing with the White House in a position to arbitrate. This time, however, the left would have a stronger hand because about 60 House Democrats are still threatening to vote against a public option-less bill.

For the leadership, this certainly raises the stakes of once again dumping the public option, and much will depend on the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s credibility. Will the White House take them seriously enough to think that removing the public option would cause a bigger headache that including it?