List of 51 Senate Democrats Who Support a Public Option: What's Stopping Them Now?

Some day, just for kicks, I'm going to collect quotes from every scold who called upon their volumes of wisdom about Senate procedure to decree that Joe Lieberman must be the ultimate decider on any health care bill, because after all it took 60 votes to pass anything. Because now, as we've known all along, that's a self-imposed limitation that the Senate can surmount if they want to.

But let's remember that back in August, when Chuck Schumer was pushing to pass health care through reconciliation, here was the guy who was running the health care show on behalf of the White House:

[Rahm Emanuel] acknowledged the political realities that have made the Finance Committee's still-unfinished cooperative plan a center of attention.

"We have heard from both chambers that the House sees a public plan as essential for the final product, and the Senate believes it cannot pass it as constructed and a co-op is what they can do," Mr. Emanuel said. "We are cognizant of that fact."

And then he handed the keys over to Joe Lieberman and Blanche Lincoln to write a wildly unpopular bill that is threatening to take down the party.

When he voted against a public option on the Senate Finance Committe, Max Baucus -- who has supported a public option in the past -- said he did so because it couldn't get 60 votes in the Senate. And now they can't even get 50 votes to agree to change the bill in any way.

So, should we conclude that the 51 Democrats in the Senate who said they support a public option when 60 votes were needed were all full of shit, now that the bar is down to 50 and they're still not moving?

Here is a list of the 51 Democrats who said they support a public option: