60 Votes.
Retiring Vermont Senator Judd Gregg was quoted in The Hill arguing in a sour fashion that the Democrats would pass some version of healthcare by moaning about 60 votes in the Senate and then constructing them afterall. The bill then will go to Conference, where all the progressive cooking by Mrs. Pelosi will be ladled into the Senate's cautious cake mix, and then Hary Reid will find another 60 votes to pass the public option lite. Gregg offered no evidence for his measure, just craggy and disconsolate fatalism. I half-believed the Gregg scenario until I spied a (above) peculiar performance by Senate Democratic whip Dick Durbin. "It has to pass in the Senate this year.... I, I, want it to..." There are only six weeks left in the year. Loose lips like this sinks ships.
Something will pass - even if it's just a blank sheet of paper, labeled 'HEALTH CARE' across the top. Even with a best scenario in play, if past precedent holds, it is unlikely that those voting for or against the bill will have read it - the same way as a receiver on a football team will not take the time to count the stitches on the ball before carrying it across the goal line. It could be a bomb as far as anybody knows. Nobody expects it to be one, but in this day and age you can never tell. Who would have thought in their wildest dreams that airliners could ever be used as weapons of war?