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[bluestateguy]

1. Easily, huh?

And how, looking back on it all now, would you have proposed getting Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln and Joe Lieberman to support single payer? They would not even vote for cloture if the bill even had a public option. Single payer may well have bled even more votes away from the ACA. At best a public option had 54 votes in the Senate, not even close to what is needed for cloture. And a single payer vote would have less than 54.

Pelosi did a whip count in the House in late 2009 for a public option and stalled out at 205-206, twelve votes short. That was just for a public option; single payer would be a far bigger commitment to ask from them, and some votes would have likely fallen off the wagon.

The notion that Obama could have just made a few swooning speeches and a few phone calls to congressmen is kind of a quaint revisionist history that neglects the reality of the times. This isn't LBJ and the 1960's anymore.