we are not going to knock anybody out of office who is not in synch with his or her constituents. there is nothing i can do and nothing a labor union can do to make a popular politician go away if they are in synch with the voters. we find that a lot of politicians who are voting no think they are doing so because they are answering to their corporate donors, special interest who pull the strings and not because they want them to vote that way. those are the people who have to worry when primary time rolls around in two years. quickly before you go, rahm emanuel said early in the year that the only thing that married was getting a bill. there is nothing that rahm emanuel and the white house won t throw over the side to get to the point of getting a yes vote. is where we are now in effect proving rahm right? that he was taking the liberal side for grant and they will thereby no matter what we
how much of that do you have to do before you can start working on changing nos to yeses? well, i think that today was a big statement when dennis kucinich and congressman from michigan both came out in favor of the bill when both of them were against it to start with. everybody in between. this was bringing us a great step forward. actually the progressives or the liberals in the country who were poled just after dennis made his announcement, it looks like there is about 3% of the liberals that aren t for passing it. all the rest are saying we have to do something. we have to do it now. minority leader boehner announced that house republicans will try to force a vote requiring an up or down vote on the senate health care bill.
in august, 60 house democrats signed a letter to health and human services secretary kathleeny is bielia said they would vote no without a public option. dennis kucinich was a cosigner to that letter. we have the codirector of the campaign for america s future. thank you both for joining us. both of you have worked for very hard for over a year to try to push health care reform forward. we know you think dennis kucinich did the right thing in his decision today. roger, what do you think of where dennis kucinich went from i will not vote for this bill because it s not good enough just a week ago to today changing his mind and deciding to vote yes. was that right? dennis did what the country needed him to do. he gave momentum to passage of this legislation this week.
president. what he is going through. we have to be compassionate towards those who are called upon to make decisions for this nation. it s not an easy burden he has taken up. with no room for error, nancy pelosi and the leadership are working with the slimmest of margins. cnn reports republicans can kill the entire thing with just 11 more no votes. the hill points out that following is you sin itch s flip, momentum is building among sense-sitting dems. arizona democrats. they are signalling they will or are likely to support the bill. in hopes of getting more legislative converts, an appeal from a higher power. the ap reporting a group of
you put yourself in what you call the reluctant yes category. what is the reluctant piece? i would like it to be a whole bunch better. i started out working for a single payer and i was the big effort behind the robust public option. we got a public option in the house bill that saved billions of dollars. we are not even going to have it in the senate bill unless they man up and woman up and have an amendment that will add the public option. we can add a public option to a health care bill if we pass it, but we can add a public option to nothing? of all the names who are leaning yes, already voted yes for the house bill in november, but you seem to be spending a lot of energy and the speeblger is whipping votes that were already yeses, but moved into the undecided column.