So what happens next

The earlier post on the health bill vote did not speculate on what happens next. As I see it there are three possibilities.

#1 - A bill close to the President's vision gets adopted. The president invested a lot of his political capital yesterday in the bill and got it passed but with two significant caveats. First, 39 members of his party deserted him - that is not a small number. Second to the the bill the majority got some back by adding the abortion amendments in (which will be dropped if there is a conference committee). But the possibility that the House bill will become the final one are very close to zero. What is unclear is whether the Reid Opt Out option is a viable alternative. I think it is not. But we have not seen the final Senate bill yet to understand whether the majority in the senate can surmount the blockage up to 60 votes. If this scenario were to be real - I suspect it will take some time to get to an agreement. So don't expect a bill until after the start of 2010.

#2 - The initiative by the President is stopped in the Senate. At this point there are five or six democrats who are unlikely to vote for a bill with a high price tag and a public option. I am reasonably convinced that the opt out option is not enough to bring them back. So far the leadership of the Senate, including Senator Baucus have been unwilling to seek legitimate GOP support. Even the vote of Senator Snowe is unlikely to stay if a public option is present. If the president's numbers continue to deteriorate and the direction of the country polling continues to go against the administration the number of nervous democrats could increase. In spite of the brave denunciations by the President's mouthpiece, Tuesday's elections did include a vote on the president and he lost big time - he invested a lot in NJ and VA and lost both races.

#3 - The Sausage Alternative - I suspect the President may get a bit more pragmatic if the Senate process begins to bog down. He may compromise for any bill which appears to move things forward. If the democrats are smart (and so far they have not shown a lot of creativity on this issue) they will try to bring in some GOP members (more than the one member from Louisiana who voted for the bill yesterday). Originally the Administration has concentrated on strategy and not policy. They want the whole loaf. And if things begin to bog down they will have to make a choice - do they think ideological purity will yield more to them in 2010 and beyond? If they move more to figuring out what will be perceived as forward movement, they could coax some GOP members to think with them.

I am not sure which of the three alternatives is the most likely, we will have to watch developments over the next couple of weeks to see what develops. So far the House leadership and the Administration have assumed that hardball is the best strategy (and possibly the best policy). That opinion could change very quickly.