Nancy Makes Her Move

Brian Beutler details Speaker Nancy Pelosi's plan in the House to get a public option bill through.

At last count, she's still eight votes shy of the crucial 218 she needs to pass a robust public option plan, though key players seem to think she has momentum on her side. If she can't whip up those last eight votes she'll likely have to revert and move ahead with a more modest public option--one that negotiates rather than dictates reimbursement rates. That would disappoint reformers and progressives in her caucus. But she (and they) will be able to say she pulled out all the stops.

All of this is at the heart of what she's trying to accomplish more broadly. She's staking out the boldest, most progressive ground she can to give key provisions, like the public option, strong odds when it comes time to negotiate away the differences between the House bill and what will almost surely be a weaker Senate version.

And she's laying down a mark she hopes the Senate will follow, saying implicitly that the chamber that represents all voters equally supports a bold public option, and daring skeptics to do the bidding of the unpopular minority. That could put public option skeptics on the Democratic side of the Senate in an awkward position. (Just yesterday, one of the Senate's most conservative Democrats seemed to indicate that a public option might not be so bad, so long as states have the option of pulling out of the plan if they so choose.)

All of this comes with some risk, however small, that the strategy blows up in her face--either that she can't scrape together the minimum votes needed to pass a robust public option now, or that she can, but in a way that unites skeptics, who may feel strong-armed and refuse to play nice in negotiations. By and large, it seems she'll have the vast majority of the Democratic base, including its well armed pressure groups, on her side. And she, more than perhaps anybody in Washington, knows how to pass the bills she wants passed. Stay tuned.

Getting a weak bill through would have been much easier of course. But she's definitely pushing for a real reform measure here, and Democrats in the Senate will be hard-pressed not to go along.

It's a gamble, but a necessary one...and a very smart one at that.