Mary Landrieu will vote to let the health care bill proceed tonight, but she is blackmailing us by insisting that the public option have a trigger. Chuck Schumer is supposedly responsible for working out some kind of compromise. As I said before, it would have been better to put the trigger in the Senate bill and try to take it out in Conference. While that might not have worked either, it would have been an all or nothing vote. Now we are getting jacked up prior to the Conference, and that means there is basically no chance of a triggerless public option getting put back in.
Update [2009-11-21 14:44:26 by BooMan]: Landrieu and Lincoln have pledged to vote for cloture tonight, so we have 60 votes to proceed. That’s good. But Landrieu opposes any public option that doesn’t have triggers and Blanche Lincoln opposes any public option whatsoever, and strongly pledged not to support the bill as written. So, we can proceed, but proceed to what?
