Mike Lux | Tue Sep 29, 2009 at 17:39
As Chris noted, today we lost two amendment votes in the Senate Finance Committee on the public option, one offered by Sen. Rockefeller (8 ayes, 15 nays), and one by Sen. Schumer (10 ayes, 13 nays). Traditional media outlets everywhere are reporting this is a massive defeat for the public option, but I don't see it that way- in fact quite the opposite.
I have said before (most recently here) that the Senate Finance Committee was conservative, in fact the most conservative committee makeup in the Senate, and that we would be likely to lose these votes:
With numbers like this, and with the entire Democratic base mobilized intensely around the issue, you would have to be politically tone deaf as a Democrat to oppose this, but this is the Senate Finance Committee, so public option advocates are likely to lose these votes. The question, though, will be the margin. On a committee this conservative, far more conservative than the Senate as a whole, if we only get seven votes for the public option amendments, that would have to be considered a major political victory, and a sign that the public option can definitely get a majority vote on the floor.
