When we talk about cloture, what we really mean is that if even one senator objects to a motion in the Senate, it takes 60 votes to overcome their objection and proceed to the next order of business. It’s not different if one senator objects, or forty senators object, you still need sixty to overcome their objection. If Harry Reid makes a motion to begin debate, he’s need cloture because at least one Republican seems to object to anything he does. The same is true if Reid makes a motion to end debate and hold a vote. So, when it comes time to work on the health care reform bill, Reid is going to need cloture to start the debate and then he will need cloture to end the debate. He’ll also need one additional cloture vote, but more on that later.

Joe Lieberman has all but promised to give Reid a vote to start debate, including the votes on all the amendments. But he has also all but promised to deny Reid a vote to end debate if the bill still has a public option in it. This is the worst of both worlds. If the Senate debates the health care bill for two months and can’t get cloture at the end of the process, all we’ll get for Christmas is one big pile of epic fail. Any chance to introduce a different bill this year will be gone. I don’t even know if they’d have time to do the budget reconciliation process. We’d wind up not only without a public option, but perhaps with nothing at all.

By putting the public option in the base bill, it requires 60 votes to strip it out. I don’t think there are 20 Democrats who are willing to do that, so it looks like it’s going to be quite a challenge to figure out how to satisfy Lieberman. If Lieberman’s mind cannot be changed, then this move of Reid’s has just put the whole reform effort at risk. It would actually be better for Lieberman to join the filibuster on the front end so we don’t risk wasting the next two months debating something that cannot pass. In that case, Reid would substitute something more palatable to the asshats who represent the insurance industry and pass the damn thing. Yeah, there would be amendment introduced to put the public option back in, and it would fail while getting over 50 votes.

That would set up the argument for the public option. It passed the House, got a majority in the Senate, is supported by the White House, and is popular in the polls. In the Conference Committee, they would put back in the language for the public option, and dare Lieberman and any other members of the caucus to kill the president’s health care reform in the final cloture vote when it is inches away his signing pen.

It’s the only way this can work, and as far as I can tell, they’ve just screwed it up.

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