This is largely a quote to pull in the 50+ in the caucus who are trying to get Lying Lieb, Ben-Ben, Blanche & Mary reeled in. The strategy is to have those 50+ think they have to take whatever minimum bill those for will vote for.

In turn, he's telling Those Four that he can only go so low (i.e. he can't blow up all of Healthcare) because he'd then be forced to go to reconciliation to get *something* on Healthcare passed, even a shell of it.

Bacisally a push to both sides from what's been drifting out in the past two days:

* towards Those Four to stop dragging their feet and come up with a clear Bottom Line of what they can support, not their ongoing, expanding wish list of things to gut on behalf of Big Health

* towards 50+ to lay the groundwork that they're still going to have to make givebacks from the Merged Bill

It's an "inside" game of power politics: a spot between the two trying to draw them together. Reid isn't especially good at that. But he's even worse at the "outside" game that we saw in the Bush Admin: taking a position, sticking to it, firing up the Noise Machine to spook and pressure everyone into voting for the exact thing they wanted. See FISA and Telecom Immunity.

On the other hand, it did seem to worry Ben-Ben yesterday that Reconciliation was on the table, and that he'd have to vote for colture on what ever ends up being his own Worst Case. And that we were now simply at the stage of getting to that final worst case.

Until there's the next worst case chance: playing games after Conference. ;)

John