Moving to a Vote

All of today's major news on health care reform was, I think, good news for those in favor of reform.  As I've been saying, as nice as the vote counts are, the real way to tell whether Nancy Pelosi thinks she has the votes is whether or not she moves the bill to the House floor...the more specific she is about a date, the more likely it is that she has the votes.  And so it matters quite a bit that she's now saying that voting will apparently begin on Thursday or Friday. As I've said, it would be highly unusual to take this step -- really, any of the steps in the last several weeks -- unless Pelosi was confident the bill was going to pass.  Of course, she could be wrong.  She might think that she has the votes, but find out otherwise, either in the next few days or even during the actual vote.  But that doesn't fit with what we've seen of this Speaker over the last few years.

In other health care news today, I recommend this Kevin Drum post about what happens after the bill passes, assuming it does pass.  I think he's absolutely right, except that I think he underestimates the chances of a public option being added fairly soon.  Depending, of course, on whether there are Democratic majorities in future Congresses, but once there are, they are going to be lousy with supporters of adding a public option.