It seems that they can’t scrape together 51 Senators who will agree to fix the Senate bill if the House passes it.  The whole “fix it later” thing is a lie.  The House is being told to “take it or leave it,” and there’s a full-court press calling out progressives in the House as traitors if they won’t.

Over at Daily Kos, this is a recommended diary:

Pass the Senate Bill and fix it through reconciliation later. I need you to call your Congressperson today and tell them that you want them to do that – that you need them to do that…We need a particular focus on the Progressive Caucus and on the Blue Dogs here – the Progressive Caucus is prepared to let the bill die because it isn’t good enough.

Alan Grayson is invoked:  his diary Whose Side Are You On, is being used to imply that progressives who won’t vote for the Senate bill are not on “our” side.

California OFA Training Director Pamela Coukos (femlaw) is whipping in the comments in support, encouraging people to do what the diarist tells them.

Another diary says:

There’s an unpleasant truth that many in DKos will be loathe to admit: right now the number one thing holding Health Care Reform from passing is the House Progressives. It’s not Stupak. It’s not Lieberman. It’s not a whole number of targets who deservedly have earned our scorn. It’s House Progressives who refuse to act and pass the Senate bill and then quickly pass reconciliation.

Krugman is (again) quoted as a validator, to prove how wonderful the Senate bill is.  Grijalva is (again) a monster: “ People are literally dying for lack of health insurance and could give a shit about how tired you are about process issues.

And former Maria Cantwell staffer Jed Lewison says “pass the bill, again invoking Krugman:

As Paul Krugman argued in his column earlier today, there are three choices on health care reform: (1) pass the Senate bill, and improve it later; (2) try to come up with some new health reform plan; or (3) do nothing.

These diaries accept Krugman’s false set of choices that imply it’s the Senate bill, as-is, or no health care reform at all –  and then uses that to castigate those who won’t act based on those assumptions.  They should all read a diary by KagroX over at the fine blog Congress Matters. As he says, there’s a fourth option:  it’s possible for the House to pass a a “self-executing rule” that allows the House to fix the Senate bill simultaneously rather than in some fictional “later” that will never come:

At the conclusion of the reconciliation process, when the House and Senate have both passed their bills and have agreed on a conference report settling any differences, the House may opt to include in the rule it adopts to govern debate on that conference report a provision deeming the Senate amendment to H.R. 3590 agreed to by the House. That way, when the House adopts the rule to allow the reconciliation bill conference report to come to the floor, it also agrees to the Senate bill it’s amending along the way, just moments before beginning debate on the fix, and without ever having a separate, stand-alone vote on the Senate bill they don’t like.

The “60 vote” threshold  that the White House apologists insisted was the “reality” we all had to adapt ourselves to? It’s bullshit.  It was always bullshit.  Now that only 51 members are needed?  Well, nobody can find them.  The Democrats in the Senate are hell-bent on delivering the bill that the White House wants, and the White House wants the Senate bill. And progressives are now “traitors” if they won’t go along.

If you don’t want progressives to buckle under pressure from the White House apologists and get railroaded into passing the Senate bill, you better act right now.  Because the administration and all the children of Cass Sunstein have way, way more ability to put pressure on them than we do, and unless everyone takes action, they’re gonna jam this shitty bill on all of us.

Call progressive members of Congress and tell them to vote against the Senate bill now.