Maybe There's Real Hope After All

Yesterday I mentioned that eight Senators had signed on to a letter calling for Harry Reid to put the public option in the health care bill through Senate reconciliation.  At the time I thought it was a nice gesture, but ultimately it was meaningless.  I agreed with Greg Sargent on that assessment because nobody in the Senate Dem leadership had signed on to the letter.

Another eight Senators signed on today.  Again, it was encouraging, but it ultimately wasn't going to help.

Then the 17th Senator signed on: Chuck Schumer.  And now things get interesting.  Greg Sargent again:

That brings the total number of Senators calling for this vote to 17. But Schumer’s signature is arguably far more important than many of the others.

That’s because Schumer has now become the first member of the Dem Senate leadership to join this effort. As the former head of the DSCC he played a major role in engineering the Dem takeover of the Senate.

Schumer’s voice is highly respected inside the Dem caucus on policy matters. He played a major role in driving support for the public option throughout this process. And, crucially, Dems have trust in his political instincts. So his support implicitly suggests he thinks a reconciliation vote on the public option could also represent good politics.

Indeed, Schumer’s support could give other Senate Dems who might be reluctant to back this effort for political reasons the cover they need to get on board. As unlikely as it is that this vote will happen in the end, it perhaps just got a tad less unlikely. This is a very interesting development indeed.

We just may have a real ballgame on the public option here, folks.   It's time to make some phone calls.