new09_rory-reid-large.thumbnail.gifBrian Beutler and K-Tum read the tea leaves on Olympia Snowe’s potential withdrawal of her "trigger" amendment. BB:

The exact reason for that is unclear, but Time’s Karen Tumulty notes that, in the wake of yesterday’s losing public option votes, things may be a bit too hot in Finance right now for triggers to survive. And that makes sense intuitively: Republicans not named Olympia Snowe almost certainly won’t support the amendment, and public option enthusiasts like Sens. Jay Rockefeller and Chuck Schumer may not want to back a trigger at this point, for fear of foreclosing on a straightforward public option down the line.

Nobody wants to own triggers, especially not now.  It would spoil all the fun to be had on the floor giving passionate arguments in favor of the public plan, only to do the "statesmanlike thing" and accept triggers as a "compromise."  That’s a second act reversal, not part of the opening montage.  They have to nurse the narrative toward "inevitability" before they’ll feel good about doing what they’ve always intended to do.

K-Tum:

[T]he Obama White House has made no secret of its belief that the trigger could be the compromise on the public option that the President has been looking for. And should the public plan be defeated on the Senate floor–as now appears likely–some of its supporters may be willing to give the trigger idea another look, especially if President Obama decides to explicitly support it. (In his health care speech before Congress, he cited it as one of several "constructive ideas worth exploring.")

Nobody has said it would be defeated on the Senate floor.  Conrad and Schumer have said the public option doesn’t have 60 votes — which means that it won’t ever get to the Senate floor.

If in fact it’s "likely," that means there are Democrats who will join with Republicans and filibuster a Democratic bill, one that the President "says" he wants (though that claim is growing increasingly dubious).  Harry Reid has gone to that well one too many times.  If he uses it as an excuse for procedural moves that will keep the public option off the floor, he and his kid will own it in 2010.   The veal pen may be out of the way, but I can think of 3 or 4 outfits off the top of my head that would move quickly to hammer Nevada with advertising.  And they’d have no trouble raising money for commercials asking if the state really needs another Reid if the one they’ve got is covering for shady deals to shovel hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars (not to mention the ever-popular mandates) into the pockets of insurance industry barons.

Reid may think he’s safe because the biggest union in Nevada, the Culinary Workers (part of John Wilhelm’s Unite-HERE), is finally turning out for him.  They had been withholding support until Reid brought EFCA to the floor, but they recently rejoined the AFL-CIO and are now working on Reid’s behalf.  Sure hope "screwing us on procedure by keeping it off the floor" doesn’t qualify as "support" for the public option in Trumka’s eyes, because I doubt many others will agree.

Tell Harry it’s too risky for the Reid name in Nevada to take that particular hit on the eve of an election when he’s down in the polls to "generic GOP challenger."  Let him know it’s not acceptable for him to protect Democrats who are willing to join with the GOP to keep Democratic legislation from getting an up or down vote.

If he wants to go down that road, he needs to name those Democrats.