Lines are beginning to be more sharply drawn in the Senate on healthcare reform, as the progressive Senators are breaking through with their message, and the Senate moves more and more toward the inevitable conclusion: real reform is going to require reconciliation. Chuck Schumer has been very effectively making that argument, as he does in an interview with The American Prospect

Ah, so, so the bottom line is that even with 60 or even if Olympia Snowe comes to some kind of agreement, it’s going to be hard, and I’ve always favored using reconciliation for good parts of the bill. I think that will get you the best bill, the strongest bill and the bill that will have the greatest positive effect on the American people. Ultimately, we’ll be judged not by whether we pass the bill, but ultimately we’ll be judged by whether it works. Leaving the bill as something that doesn’t work, even if we pass it, leads to hurting both the country and the party.... We've looked at it and you can't use reconciliation for everything, [but] you can use it for a good number of things," he said. "There's nothing wrong with using it for the places where you can use it and then trying to get the 60 votes on the places where when you can't. You'd be surprised -- the number of places where you can use it is larger than we first thought.

Yesterday Howard Dean reinforced that point, that reconciliation was viable prospect for getting some of the better parts of the bill passed, and emphasizing that the majority of Democratic Senators does indeed support a stronger bill--enough of them to pass a public option through reconciliation. And one of those Democratic Senators, Jay Rockefeller, reinforces why it has to be a robust public option and not fake version like a co-op. Watch:

DR. DEAN: Well, I don't think so. I mean, by my vote count, we got 51 votes in the Senate to pass healthcare reform with the public option. So, you know, we'll... MR. GREGORY: Yeah. That'd be ramming it through. That would be a reconciliation strategy... DR. DEAN: Look... MR. GREGORY: ...and... DR. DEAN: I--you--in this audience, I think we can talk about ramming stuff through. Newt's been the speaker. Republicans and Democrats both rammed things through. The--at, at the end of the day, the American people want a bill. And it's--they're not going to care if it's reconciliation or if, if it's ramming it through. What they want is a decent bill that makes sense to them. ****** STEPHANOPOULOS: ...Now, Senator Rockefeller, I know you have said that this is a critical component of the health care plan. You heard the president on Wednesday night. He says he supports it, but you can't sacrifice the entire bill for the sake of this public option. Can you vote for a bill without a robust public health option? ROCKEFELLER: If there were a good alternative, I would certainly have to look at it. STEPHANOPOULOS: What's a good alternative? ROCKEFELLER: I haven't found one. See, that's the whole point. People talk about a cooperative plan, health co-ops. And I called the head of the national association really early, and he said it's great on water, it's great on farm, it's great on electricity, et cetera, but it really doesn't work for health care. There's fewer than 20 in the country, and there are only two that really work, and one of them is in Washington, the other is in Minneapolis, in Minnesota. And both these senators from Washington are voting for a public option.

So it doesn't -- it hasn't had a future. It goes back to the '30s and '40s. And I just don't think you can take the chance. You have to start a national thing, all of the way up, or would you do it state-by-state, which would be harder.

Finally, it's conveniently forgotten by most of the beltway establishment, but there's another Senate committee besides the Baucus debacle that has a say in healthcare reform. Sen. Kennedy's HELP Committee now has a new chair, Tom Harkin, and Tom Harkin sounds pretty determined.

"I'm ready to get a health reform bill passed and to President Obama before Christmas comes this December. And you might as well stay standing because that strong health reform bill — mark my word, I'm the chairman — is going to have a strong public option in that bill.

Sounds like the House Progressive Block might be getting some allies in the Senate.