Remember how the Health Care Reform legislation was stalling in the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the White House blamed the Republicans?  Then the Blue Dog Democrats came out and said, “no, it’s us.  We’re stalling it”.  President Obama then met with seven of the Blue Dogs on Energy and Commerce and got four, including Indiana’s own Baron Hill to side with the legislation to pass it out of committee.

Then, the White House blamed Republicans for them bailing on the Public Option.  Again, the Blue Dogs had to remind them one more time that they wouldn’t vote for a Public Option so stop blaming the Republicans.

Then this morning the White House hints that they may forge ahead and are revising their strategy to focus only on Democrat votes because Republicans won’t play ball. Once again, the Blue Dogs remind the President that it’s them the White House has to worry about. Not Republicans.

Via The Hill:

Democrats will not be able to “go it alone” on healthcare legislation and force through a bill with a public option on a party-lines vote, Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) said Wednesday.

“It’s numerically not possible,” Cooper, a centrist Blue Dog Democrat who has long focused on healthcare issues, said in an interview on MSNBC. “We don’t have enough votes.”

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Democratic leaders in Congress, along with the White House, had less faith in continuing to work with Republicans to craft a bipartisan health bill containing a public (or “government-run”) option.

Cooper said that just as a matter of procedure, there is no way that Democrats would be able to accomplish such a thing.

“It’s really not an ideological question; it’s a question of how you pass a bill,” he explained. “We don’t have 60 Democratic votes in the Senate.”

…

“It’s just a matter of arithmetic,” he explained. “It’s not ideology.”

So, Congressman Cooper admits it’s a numbers game. Democrats have a 77 seat majority in the House and 20 seat majority in the Senate. The Democrats can pass this on their own, but it happens to be their own they have to worry about.