Here’s your average Democratic liberal on single payer:

I’m personally for single payer.

But we don’t have the votes for it.

John Kerry said the same thing today.

“I’m personally for single payer,” Kerry told Single Payer Action.

“But we don’t have the votes.”

But if you fought for single payer, wouldn’t you have the votes?

“No,” Kerry said. “Some people are unpersuadable on the topic. They are ideologically in a different places and we don’t have the votes.”

Just admit it, Senator Kerry, single payer would put the insurance companies out of business.

“Yes it would,” Kerry admits as he gets on the elevator at the National Press Building.

And that’s the reason why you don’t have the votes.

“You make that determination,” Kerry said.

Instead of taking single payer to the American people, explaining that much of the world has what we don’t have, and fighting and defeating the insurance industry, Kerry and liberal Democrats keep repeating the mantra — we don’t have the votes.

Nor do they have the votes for a strong public option — or maybe any public option.

It’s a defeatist attitude that is bound to condemn 60 Americans to death every day from lack of health insurance.