Good advice from Pennsylvania Govenor Ed Rendell to Senate Dems on getting healthcare done: use your 50 votes.
"My message to those Democrats is don’t be afraid," Rendell told ABC News. "Listen, you got elected because you wanted to do something to change the quality of people’s lives -- here we have a chance to do something historic and if it means some of us are going to lose because of that so be it. At least you will have lost your office fighting for something and accomplishing something."
He tells his fellow Democrats in Washington, DC, to "get that best bill as strong and as tight as you can then send it back to the Senate and let’s see if they (Republicans) are going to filibuster."
"Make them filibuster," he told ABC News in an interview for Good Morning America this morning. "Make them go before America people. Make the American people look at a modern day spectacle of what a filibuster would entail. I think it’s time to call their bluff. I think it is too easy to throw up your hands and say, ‘We don’t have 60 votes.’ Remember its 51 votes for passage, they have to filibuster. Make them filibuster."
Get "that best bill as strong" as possible, and pass the bill. It's a smart way forward for Congress, in terms of the politics and the policy. And Rendell is absolutely right--use the need to pass it through reconciliation to show just how obstructionist the Republicans are. Turn it on them and start the work of making the filibuster political poison for the Republicans.