Correction on a previous post.
It turns out that some of my civics in this post were inaccurate. Yes, I have a college degree in political science, and yet congressional procedure still scrambles my brain.
There doesn't have to be a reconciliation vote for there to be a 51 vote majority to pass healthcare reform with the public option. A reconciliation vote would merely eliminate the filibuster. But we actually can have a filibuster and a cloture vote and still get 51 votes to pass reform with the public option.
As Senator Sanders has pointed out, there needs to be 60 votes to break a Republican filibuster, but that doesn't mean there needs to be 60 votes to pass the bill.
So say, for instance, that the HELP bill with the public option comes to a floor vote in the Senate. Conceivably, all 60 Democrats could vote in lockstep to break the filibuster, but they still only need 50 votes plus Vice President Biden to pass the bill. In other words, ten Democrats (including non-votes from Kennedy and Byrd) could vote against the public option for the sake of political cover (and special interest cover) and a bill with the public option would still pass the Senate.
According to Nate Silver and Chris Bowers, there are currently 43 senators who support the public option. There are an additional five who appear to be convincible. And there are seven who are against the public option, but who haven't said they'd vote against a reform bill with the public option included. Lumping the convincible five on top of the 43 definites, that's 48. Two more and Joe Biden gives us a majority.
The blue dogs could actually, in a back-door way, vote for the public option without literally voting for it. Ten of them could vote against the GOP filibuster and against the final bill. There just needs to be the political will from the White House and congressional leadership to thread this needle.
Yes, our system is that screwy.
Does your head hurt?
It should.