As things now stand, the health care legislation being debated in the Senate has four Democrats preventing a real reform package, and we could call them the “N and Three L’s”–Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, and Blanche Lincoln of Nebraska.
Without these four votes for the “public option”, the only way conceivable that the Democrats can overcome a filibuster is to utilize “reconciliation”, which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would prefer to avoid, but can use if necessary, just as it was under the GOP control of the Senate during the Bush Administration.
This means 51 votes, or even 50 plus the Vice President, would be enough to accomplish health care reform. This has been broached before by myself and others, and certainly is not preferable, but we have reached a point where we cannot allow a few rebellious Democrats to block necessary reform that has never reached this stage legislatively.
To allow health care reform to fail at this point would be a tragedy on the level of the Afghan War escalation about to begin! 🙁