The short answer: the Democrats in the Senate. Let me tell you why.

The filibuster

In the United States Senate, one Senator can hold up legislation using the filibuster rule. In order to stop a filibuster, it takes 60 votes. Senate tradition held that the filibuster would only be used in extraordinary circumstances. Thanks to Republicans, that’s no longer the case. Any and all Democratic legislation is now subject to filibuster. Rather than needing a simple majority to pass legislation in the Senate, you now need 60 votes.

In the current Senate there are roughly 55 Democrats who are willing to vote for robust health care reform, including some kind of public insurance plan. Definitely enough to pass the Senate if it were operating under normal majority rule. However, getting to 60 votes is a big problem. You need the support of the most conservative members of the Democratic Party (like Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu and Blanche Lincoln), and Republicans like Joe Lieberman* and Olympia Snowe. In order to garner their support the bill would have to be neutered to bolster their “centrist” credentials. They couldn’t very well vote for a pure Democratic plan. So, neutered the bill was.

But it didn’t have to be this way.

End the filibuster

Democrats in the Senate could have embraced majority rule to and fulfilled their promises to pass strong health care reform that we so desperately need. The Senate filibuster rule could have simply been removed by 50 Democratic Senators and the Vice President, using what is known in Washington as the Nuclear Option. Senate rules can and have been changed in the past. It used to require 67 votes for end a filibuster. In 1975 that rule was changed to bring it down to 60. Now, since it is standing in the way of Americans and quality affordable health care (and just about every other promise Obama and the Democrats made to the American public) it should go.

So, while the five or so Senate holdouts, like Lieberman and Nelson, are responsible for gutting the health care bill, it’s the rest of the Democrats in the Senate who gave them that power by not ending the filibuster. Ultimately they are the ones at fault.

Of course, it’s not too late to change the rules. They can and should do it now, before they pass this neutered health care legislation, and before Lieberman and Nelson get their hands on the climate change bill, or the financial regulation bill.

If they don’t change the rules, we should wonder if Democrats are incompetent or if neutered legislation is the real goal.

* Lieberman isn’t technically a Republican.