Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi

Greg Sargent and Chris Bowers report that contra the Blue Dogs, progressives are damn close in the House to the 218 votes needed for a Medicare plus 5% "robust" public option. Bowers:

I have the actual numbers. As of Friday, here is where the whip count stood:

Progressive Caucus Whip Count on Robust Public Option
Democrats only, 217 needed for passage
Yes: 183
No: 22
Undecided: 20
Not Whipped: 31

All 22 of the no votes are Blue Dogs. Every single one.

Also, the House leadership is a significant portion of the Democrats who were not whipped. This means Speaker Pelosi and Representatives Hoyer, Clyburn Van Hollen, (John) Larson and Becerra. None of these members are Blue Dogs, and only Hoyer would conceivably be opposed to the robust public option.

That means there are at least 188 votes for the public option, only 29 away from passage. The chances of reaching 217 (there are currently only 433 members of the House, due to two vacancies) with the remaining members are pretty solid, too.

Trying to find out where the "31" comes from who haven’t been whipped, but if it’s leadership plus committee chairs, I’d say they’re just about there.

But regardless — remember what happened when they couldn’t get enough votes for the Supplemental on June 23? We held them off for 10 days, but in the end:

As the vote ended on the war supplemental bill, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) stood in the well of the House, staring up at the tote board with a smile on her face. The tally read 226-202 — and Pelosi, and President Barack Obama, had met their toughest test to date.
After weeks of working to round up support for the $105.9 billion package, Democrats headed into the Tuesday night vote without a clear sense of where they stood.

Leaders’ whip counts had vacillated dramatically on a measure that cut a jagged divide through the House Democratic Caucus. The package picked up broad bipartisan support on its first trip through the House, but the addition of $108 billion in loans to the International Monetary Fund helped rally GOP opposition to the negotiated version. Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) made clear Tuesday that leaders weren’t counting on any help from the minority on the second go-round.

Instead, Democrats needed to convert about a third of the 51 liberals in their ranks who opposed the supplemental the first time. The bill’s boosters were up against a grass-roots blog campaign to pressure those Democrats to oppose new war funding — an effort quietly buttressed by a few Democratic lawmakers who tried to sew up opposition in the Caucus.

To make the sale, the White House deployed its heaviest artillery: Obama joined Cabinet members — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton — in working the phones. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, until late last year a Democratic Member from Chicago and Caucus chairman, made a slew of calls, as well.

“Rahm talked to me,” said Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures. “I think IMF is important, more money for the flu vaccine is important, as well as the president indicating it was the last supplemental. He’s already committed to withdrawing troops from Iraq.”

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said she was persuaded by Obama’s speech in Egypt earlier this month.

“The president’s brave speech in Cairo convinced me he deserves my support — and at least the benefit of the doubt when it comes to extracting us from Iraq and Afghanistan,” she said.

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Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), another convert, said he also fielded a call from Emanuel. But it was Pelosi’s rousing speech to the Caucus on the day of the vote that moved him from no to yes.

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And Pelosi was working the room as well, acknowledging Rep. Doris Matsui (Calif.) after she cast a late vote for the bill and joined the ranks of 20 Democrats who flipped to support it. Rep. Brad Sherman (Calif.), who opposed the IMF funding, was a lone defector from among the 200 Democrats who supported the supplemental on its first pass.

House Democratic aides said that while administration officials provided critical help, it was their own leadership under the Dome that gave the measure the final push that it needed — and White House aides on hand during the vote showed their appreciation.

Or how about her vote whipping efforts on Waxman-Markey two weeks later?

After lawmakers had devoured the last of the Kalua Pig at last Thursday night’s White House Luau, Nancy Pelosi summoned her team back to the Capitol — to ensure the climate change bill wasn’t the next thing roasted on the spit.

Pelosi and her top lieutenants would spend the next four hours whipping, cajoling, begging and browbeating undecided Democrats — and triple-checking their whip lists to decide who was a solid “yes” and who was prevaricating on the cap-and-trade legislation.

Yet no matter how many calls they made — or how many times they checked and rechecked their list — Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) kept coming up between 12 and 20 votes short of the 216 votes needed to win.

“We didn’t have the votes — and we had to have this vote,” said a leadership aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “This was the big one for us. [Pelosi] staked her prestige on this one. … This was her flagship issue, and this was a flagship vote for us.”

The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 passed by only 219-212, after an epic day replete with Republican ambushes, petty betrayals, hastily rearranged flights and disappearing acts.

Yet for all the apparent chaos, the action was commanded by a House speaker maneuvering with the urgency of someone who knew her reputation was on the line.

Remember Lloyd Doggett’s impassioned speech, the one where he said it was against his conscience to vote for the bill only hours before the vote?

Next up was Austin, Texas, liberal Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who had seemed to be leaning toward the bill during a Thursday night visit with Obama in the Oval Office — but then infuriated the White House midday Friday by declaring the measure too weak on polluters to win his vote.

An exasperated White House staffer told POLITICO it was “stunning that he would ignore the wishes not just of his president but of his constituents and the country.”

Then Pelosi began working Doggett as the two stood in the back of the chamber near the railing, making the same perfect-is-enemy-of-the-good argument she had used against Holt. Doggett ended up voting “yes.”During the vote, Washington Rep. Jay Inslee, one of the taller members of the House, guarded the doors on the floor leading out to the Speaker’s Lobby, warning members not to leave the floor in case anyone needed to switch his or her vote. But that didn’t stop some Democrats, like Colorado Rep. John Salazar, from voting no early and sneaking out to avoid getting pressured by party leaders.

Leadership aides say Texas Rep. Ciro Rodriguez promised Pelosi he’d vote yes, but voted no and sprinted from the chamber. California Rep. Xavier Becerra tried unsuccessfully to flag him on his cell phone — and Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) bounded into the ornate Speaker’s Lobby off the floor shouting, “Rodriguez! Rodriguez!” as puzzled reporters looked on.

Pelosi forced members to postpone their trips abroad to stay in town for the vote, aides familiar with the situation said. At one point, she even promised to escort one member out to the airport in her motorcade to catch an early flight — as House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) stalled the proceedings with an hourlong reading from the 300-page manager’s amendment.

Good soldiers all in the end.

Nancy Pelosi has tremendous sway with the caucus, and the caucus overwhelmingly supports the Medicare plus five public option. Pelosi’s credibility is on the line with progressives. She’s promised that a public option would be in the final bill, only to turn around and start singing the praises of triggers. Then she joined in the White House effort to beat Richard Trumka into dropping his insistence on a public option.

If she wants the votes for this, there is absolutely no conceivable way she can’t get them. If she decides to act as a White House toady over the interests of progressives (who have now been repeatedly forced into voting for bills they don’t believe in just so Rahm can have another neoliberal "win"), it will all have been for show to keep the base quiet while Wellpoint and PhRMA prepared their taxpayer feast.