With every unpopular bill, the dems plan a very narrow victory. The discriminator is that those at risk in an upcoming election can have cover- I did NOT vote for X, it’s in my record.
Likewise the need for ONE Pubbie vote to make it “bipartisan”.
If they allowed all the dems to vote and ignored the pubbies, two or three would lose their next elections, the real unthinkable to them.
So expect “razor thin margins” as a political strategy.
Bing, bing, bing. We have a winner. This is precisely their strategy and they already know which senators will be allowed to “defect” and which will have to eat a bullet.
I don’t think that is their strategy. They think this is a winning issue, not a losing issue. They think they lost in 1994 because they didn’t pass health care in 1993. They are often clueless.