If the public option gets dropped, will more republicans vote yes?

This can be the only reason I can see.
Dropping the public option to get republicans to go along.
The ability to claim its a bi-partisan bill.
If your going to go that far you might as well
keep going until you can get near unanimous support
One free band aid for everyone could be called reform, I guess

Screwing democrat supporters to please a few republicans(and some blue dogs) seems beneath Obama.
I had hoped for a better outcome.

He can still change the subject and stick it in a drawer.

Republicans see a Democratic idea and their automatic answer is "no".

If there was a resolution in front of Congress stating that rain falls from the sky, there'd be Republicans voting against it.

They won't even vote for a measure from Democrats that capitulates COMPLETELY.

This is just a ploy to get the "no change" that we should have seen coming. I did.

and don't want to make their sugar daddies mad.

The Town Hall meetings have only been the visible part of the story. My bet is that Congress has seen huge volumes of both e- and snail mail on this issue, and the tide is running far more against than for healthcare reform in many districts.

I'd venture to guess that many Democratic Congresspersons who were first elected in the last two or three elections are freaked out. They might not have been as outwardly vocal as the doggiest of the Blue Dogs, but they are calling up their leadership, scared for their political lives.

They face two really lousy prospects, one is voting against public option and pissing off the Democratic base, the other is voting for it, and pissing off the people who voted for them only to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan. They need both groups to vote for them to stay in office, and they are reaching out to majority leadership that does not want to go back to being minority leadership.

they lost.

Nobody shows up yelling unless they were coached to show up yelling.

in the congressional flood of mail, just a hunch. You don't have to be a coached yeller to fire off an email or a letter to your congresscritter's office.

I just have a feeling that the Town Hall meetings are the tip of an iceberg. If someone can be coached to yell if they can figure out how to get to a Town Hall, they can certainly be coached to write a letter. I'm betting that a lot of Congresspersons have a lot of angry mail.

ask McCain for his birth certificate

it's a impotent bill at that point.

no matter what.

edited for typo

Th Repukes want to fire up their RW base for the 2010 mid-terms. After that Obama will be portrayed as a failure, not up to the job, and should be a one term President.

to fail. CO-OPs in Healthcare do not work. I give you Blue Cross
Blue Shield.

Go figure.

It would also get the right-wing Democrats.

and calm the masses. Right or wrong the general public is freaked out by healthcare reform. They are clueless and ignorant but they vote.

its not just a few.

They may be wrong but it's clearly a numbers game.

n/t

Of course it was given away to the insurance companies in order for them to not fight too hard against reform.

The Rethuglicans will never vote for this. They don't care what it is. And if we don't get a good public option - settling for that since single payer was a free giveaway before the fight started - we might as well give up completely because we'll have gotten nothing and the bullies will keep taking our lunch money every time something new is tried.

Our party is a farce. They have no desire to represent the people's wants and needs. Congress and the White House both.

I don't think so.

I don't think Obama gives a shit about the Republican vote. Sure, he'd like to get as many votes as possible and he'd like to say he tried to be bipartisian, but in the end I don't think he cares. He knows they want him to fail more than anything else.

When he says he's trying to work with the Republicans, I think he's first of all trying to appear bipartisian, but what he really means is he's really trying to convince the Blue Dogs because playing to conservatives is playing to Blue Dogs. What else is he going to say in public, I'm still trying to convince my own fucking party to pass health care?

Obama. They love watching this president cave to their whims. I'm sure they're all getting a good laugh at how Obama just folds when they look at him sideways.

even if they evade the law and decency it will be clear they did and people will hate them enough to tell them to close the doors.

Maybe it might pick up one or two but you don't strip something like that over a couple of votes. They are obstructionist assholes of epic proportions, I don't know off hand if any legislation of this scope has passed by pure party line, usually there are a handful that will go either way just because of having to face their own voters but now they can't get elected from moderate populations.

I wish we had enough party discipline to at least get yes, no votes. My guess is we would have 50+ but not enough for cloture and of course have guys that are only of any use on social issues, in control of the money committees. I think we could get 50 for about robust option as one could ask for but I don't think you could get 5 Republican votes in the Senate for a major Democratic bill that they actually wrote themselves.