The weird optimism you here coming from House leadership about the prospective vote for health-care legislation, isn't because they know something you don't know, but rather because its a usual tactic for putting pressure on Democrat House members who aren't onboard with the legislation. The illusion of inevitability is supposed to make individual House members feel that they will be on the outside looking in when healthcare passes and they voted 'the wrong way'.

Enter CNN, which seems to be engaged in some sort of counter-jiu jutsu, posting an article telling the public how many votes opponents of the legislation still need to prevail.

Five more House Democrats said Tuesday that they will vote against Senate health care legislation, which puts opponents of reform just 11 votes shy of the 216 needed to prevent President Obama from scoring a major victory on his top domestic priority.

Meanwhile, the vote counting continues...

UPDATE: Perennial Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich is expected to announce today that he will be supporting the health-care legislation. No real surprise there, and that explains the dynamic--Kucinich simply made sure that he got all the money on the table before delivering his vote.

WIth only ten or eleven votes (depending on whose counting) still out there, the pressure on these people is enormous and I don't expect that they can wait much longer before declaring one way or another. The only reasonable excuse for holding off is the so-called 'CBO score' which estimates how much the bill will cost.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE II: Intrade, an on-line wagering service that deals with the probability of specific events such as elections, has an open contract for Obamacare. Overnight, the closing price when from 70 to 35.