Ryan Grimm reports:

The Speaker, in a press briefing with progressive media in her Capitol office, said that three options were under consideration. One of them involved a vote on the Senate health care bill, followed by a vote on a reconciliation package. "Nobody wants to vote for the Senate bill," she said. She wouldn't rule out that option, she said, because there is no official bill language yet, which she said she needs first before she makes a decision on process.

A second option would entail a vote on a rule followed by a vote on the reconciliation package. The Senate parliamentarian, Pelosi said, has told Democrats that such a strategy would not be acceptable, because the Senate bill must pass the House before the reconciliation amendments can.

So the third option is to write the rule so that the passage of the reconciliation package deems the Senate bill to also have passed, a parliamentary maneuver she said the Senate parliamentarian had said was acceptable.

It's a technical distinction and Democrats hope that it's deep enough in the weeds that average voters will focus instead on the substance of the legislation instead of the confusing process. Asked if she had firmly decided to pursue the third option, she answered, "I like the third one better."

Pelosi said she expects the Congressional Budget Office to return with a cost analysis of the final amendments shortly, at which point she'll call for a vote.

"Get the bill," she said, punching her fist into her hand. "Go for it."

If you woke someone from a 15-month slumber and explained to them that despite starting with a very popular leader and a reservoir of political goodwill, the President and the Democrats are now in the position of defending back room deals and inventing arcane parliamentary loop holes to jam through on a party line vote a 2,700-page piece of legislation that's opposed by the American public, they'd have thought you were crazy.

Yet that's exactly where we are. Democrats have apparently convinced themselves that "average voters" 1) have been terribly misled by Republican lies about the bill and 2) won't care about the manner in which this bill is passed.  Both of those assumption spring from an exceedingly arrogant mindset, and both are quite possibly wrong. Perhaps more to the point, the "average voter" isn't the kind who turns out for an off year election.

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