Can Speaker Pelosi bring health care reform back from the dead?  Did it ever really die?

Doctors say that Nordberg has a 50/50 chance of living, though there’s only a 10 percent chance of that.

– George Kennedy as Ed Hocken in The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad

In addition to my last health care post, Nate Silver summarizes well the forces pushing in both directions.  John Podhoretz also has a good strategic overview.  I’ll add a few assorted observations to begin the work week.

Vote counting & strategy

• Focus all your attention on Speaker Pelosi’s attempts to get 216 votes.  If she can lock them down I think there’s a four in five chance there will be a law (or two).
• The Stupak/abortion issue appears to be the biggest substantive hurdle.  Chatter about a possible three bill strategy (!?) to address this is stunning.  Two bills isn’t hard enough?
• The sequencing/trust problem still appears hard.  How does the Speaker get her members to vote for Bill #1 based only on a promise that Bill #2 will make it to the finish line?
• Occasionally a Congressional leader calls a vote without having the votes locked up, in the hope that the pressure of a floor vote will help close those last few remaining holdouts.  This is incredibly risky.  Sometimes there is no better option.

Probabilities

• Public signs of optimism from the President, his team, and Democratic Congressional leaders tell us little.  We don’t know if they actually think they will have the votes, or if they are asserting that to try to make it true.  Imagine the impact if Speaker Pelosi were to tell the press “We might not succeed.”  Doing so would further embolden those marginal Members she is trying to convince to vote aye.  They are telling us they think they will succeed, but they have to say this whether or not it’s true.
• The President’s chance of legislative success is way above the 10% I projected shortly after the Brown election when I declared a comprehensive bill dead.  Was I wrong, or have things changed dramatically?  A little of both, I think.

Read the full post here