Does the math work...?

The question remains: do the democrats have enough votes to pass health care?


According to most reports, the health care vote is set to take pace sometime on Friday (or Saturday). As it stands today, it appears the democrats do not have enough votes to carry-the-day; otherwise, as logic goes, they would have already voted. Rumors are percolating that another "deal" may have been struck between the Obama Administration (more accurately, the Department of the Interior) and two California Congressman (Cardoza and Costa, who both voted 'yes' previously) at the behest of Boxer and Feinstein. (http://nrcc.org/blog/blogitem.aspx?id=261)

ABC News took a stab at estimating where the vote stood yesterday (http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2010/03/do-pelosi-and-the-democrats-have-the-health-care-votes-heres-the-math-.html) and came up with the following conclusion:

“If every sitting House Democrat who voted for the health care bill in November, voted for it again this weekend, Nancy Pelosi would have the 216 votes she needs to pass it.

However, because of resistance to the Senate bill overall and (for several anti-abortion rights Democrats) specifically its abortion language, Democrats know they will not be able to get all their previous YES votes to vote YES again.

So, the game becomes how many previous YES votes can Democratic leaders afford to lose? The answer to that question is another question, of course.

How many previous NO votes can Democratic leaders definitively flip to YES?

You will see below that there is no margin for error. And this remains somewhat fluid as Pelosi searches for her final handful of votes.”

There are a handful of "targets" (ie, those representatives who will decide the outcome). See below.

Assuming the democrats that voted 'yes' previously vote 'yes' this time around, the democrats will come up five votes shy of the requisite 218 votes.

Obviously, this is very fluid and the numbers are certain to change but this helps to explain why Pelosi hasn't held the vote, Obama delayed his trip to Australia, and 'deals' are being made.