Landrieu and Lincoln join other democrats

Landrieu and Lincoln agree to vote to go forward with debate

These were the last two Democratic holdouts. They were holding out because they were up for re-election, and they were assessing the results of this vote for their election chances. When they announced that they would vote to let the debate go forward [for cloture] The Washington Post thought that was breaking news. Since there is nothing very distinctive about either I am putting them together on a single page.

Landrieu was first at 12:58 p.m. Eastern

News Alert
12:58 PM EST Saturday, November 21, 2009

Landrieu to Support Health-Care Reform Debate

Shaping up as a cliffhanger, all but one of the 60 senators in the Democratic caucus have indicated their support for tonight's vote to move forward on reform debate. Sen. Lincoln is the lone Democrat holdout.

For more information, visit washingtonpost.com - http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/MEPMRJ/OYPDK/DK61TS/RG34K2/QLFHX/VU/t

Lincoln followed a couple of hours later

News Alert
2:32 PM EST Saturday, November 21, 2009

Democrats gain Lincoln's support on health-care debate

Arkansas senator's vote appears to ensure that $848B health-care reform bill will have the 60 votes needed to begin Senate floor debate.

For more information, visit washingtonpost.com - http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/KYNZS9/Y3O0Y/LJ7OC1/XVHEGO/RTNG2/UP/t

I have two searches going for each: Landrieu is "landrieu" and "landrieu health care". Obviously "lincoln" will not do. So I started "lincoln health care" and "(sen OR blanche) Lincoln" The idea was to compare the messages about the two senators connected with health care reform and more generally.

The search for 'landrieu' got mixed results for the senator and her husband who was running for Mayor of New Orleans. So there are two sets in a single file.

The searches were terminated on April 5, 2010.

For both senators there were substantially fewer messages specifically about health care than in general. The figures give the distributions over time.

The files are landrieu.xml, landrieu.txt, landrieu health care.xml, landrieu health care.txt, lincoln health care.xml, lincoln health care.txt, (sen or blanche) lincoln.xml, (sen or blanche) lincoln.txt. The .txt files are tab delimited and can be read with Excel.