MarcusAurelius:

trapdoor:

Looks to me like you guys missed the point. You can't call a person's bluff if you yourself aren't sitting on a good hand. Reid isn't certain he has the hand -- he's not certain he has the vote. He calls their bluff and loses, he loses big.

That's overstating the case. Even if he has to cave to the senators who were bought by the insurance industry and remove the public option from the Senate Bill, it can be put back in during reconciliation and there's nothing the GOP can do about it (except throw more tantrum protests).

Of course there's something they can do about it. A reconciled bill still faces a vote, and hence faces a filibuster. Whether or not they'll do that is an open question, but that it is an option is not.