Blue dogs stand up to the go-it-alone claim: It’s numerically impossible.

Cooper said that just as a matter of procedure, there is no way that Democrats would be able to accomplish such a thing. “It’s really not an ideological question; it’s a question of how you pass a bill,” he explained. “We don’t have 60 Democratic votes in the Senate.” Cooper pointed to the prolonged absences of Sens. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), arguing that Senate Democrats were two votes short of forcing through any legislation past a filibuster, and would need to draw in at least two Republicans to support the final outcome.