This Whole Health Care Thing is in Big Trouble

We all know about the 50+ “Blue Dog” Democrats who would be committing political suicide by supporting this overt socialist attack on the best health care system in the world. In fact, without a bribery of biblical proportions, the Dems can count at least 35-40 of these folks bailing. But that’s enough to kill it.

This, according to the Huffington Post, is enough to kill it.

Progressive Democrats are taking a hard stand on health care reform, with a majority committing to oppose any health care reform package that doesn’t include a robust public option. On Wednesday, they got an inadvertent assist by an anonymous leak of their “whip list.”

A whip list, which is generally tightly guarded, is used by congressional leaders to keep track of the private pledges made by members before a vote. The list is kept private to encourage frank answers from members so that leadership can gather accurate intelligence.

The whip list was obtained by Joan McCarter, a DailyKos contributing editor. It names fifty members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) who have firmly pledged to oppose any bill that doesn’t meet the group’s standards.

Without those fifty votes, Democrats would be unable to pass the reform effort without Republican support. (Once Judy Chu is sworn in, there will be 256 Democrats, and one “closet Democrat”; 218 are needed for passage, leaving Democrats 12 votes short.)

The closet Democrat that these idiots speak of is the RINO who replaced good old “Cold Cash” Jefferson in New Orleans, Joseph Cao. Cao has zero chance of being re-elected if he remains a Republican and less than a 10% chance if he flips to the Dems so this is little more than Cao grasping at straws. After all he won the seat over an indicted, corrupt felon by a count of 33,132 to 31,318. Jefferson’s support was of course 100% race based. Unless Vietnam invades New Orleans, he is a one and out Congressman.

But I digress.

The Blue Dogs don’t like this because they think it will appear like a Socialist grab and the Progressives are pissed that it isn’t Socialist enough.

This is a big problem (if true) for Barry, Rahm and the boys. There is no way in hell to satisfy both of these caucuses through this legislation. So one group will ultimately be appeased and the other will have to be bought.

This POS may actually die before the Socialists can ram it through.

Category: Politics