At least nine of the 39 Democrats who voted "nay" when the House passed sweeping overhaul legislation 220-215 in November are now undecided or withholding judgment until they see Obama's final product.
While it may seem improbable that any lawmaker would want to switch his or her vote on the measure, courting the “flip-flopper” label after a year of controversy over legislation that's slid ever downward in polls, it now appears that Democrats are willing to push forward the contentious health care reform bill, even at the risk of losing control in Congress.
Much will depend on the package of changes that Obama will unveil on Wednesday. The changes—designed to make the Senate bill more palatable to House Democrats by rolling back a tax on high-value insurance plans, among other things—would get through the Senate under controversial rules allowing for a simple majority vote. That's the only option for Democrats as they no longer control a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate, and Republicans are unanimously opposed.
Steny Hoyer, the House Majority Leader said Democrats are willing to risk their seats for health care reform.
“We believe they (Americans) support the individual elements in the bill,” the Maryland Democrat told CBS' "The Early Show" Tuesday.
Hoyer said voters overwhelmingly backed key parts of the bill, even as Republicans attack it as lacking public support.
"If we pass this bill, we're prepared to go to the American public because we believe they support the individual elements in the bill," said Hoyer.
Democrats appear to be gambling that a perceived lull in Tea Party activism, combined with an eight-month window to the November midterm election, is going to buy them enough time to muster the simple majorities they need in the Senate and House to give President Obama at least partial victory in his push to remake the nation's health care system.
The all-fronts push for health care reform by top Democrats in Washington is a sharp turnaround from late January, when Obama declared in his State of the Union address that “jobs must be our number-one focus in 2010” while burying the section on health care. Some Washington political observers argue that Obama was “intentionally"”playing down the issue to make the debate less toxic.
But conservative activists, particularly the Tea Party groups, are gearing up for a toxic fight to the last vote, even if political judgment day may seem far off.
Obama's announcement on Wednesday is expected to be a freshened blueprint of the changes he wants made to the Senate's health care bill, updated with ideas that at least have the fingerprints of Republicans, possibly in the areas of medical malpractice reform and rooting out waste and fraud from the medical system.
With four vacancies in the House, Pelosi will need 216 votes. She would command exactly that many if all the remaining Democrats who voted "yes" in November did so again. But some lawmakers still predict defections, especially of members who oppose federal funding for abortion and feel the Senate language is too permissive on that issue.
