So who will switch--will anyone? I've got a random guess list at the end of this post, but those are only momentary guesses. My suspicion tends to be--and perhaps this is why opponents of the bill wanted to stop it with the first cloture vote--that, with this amendment process (if the process goes forward), we're in a somewhat different ballgame. The fate of these amendments could give all sorts of senators all sorts cover for voting however they want, and, in this bill, these senators seem to want as many options for cover as they can get. So former anti-cloture folks might use the so-called "touchback" provision (if it's adopted) as a way of defending a vote in favor of cloture to end debate, or pro-cloture folks could be turned off by changes in the guest worker provisions. So I think there could be a surprising amount of movement in both directions. I guess.


Random list: This is (as usual) some very uninformed speculation, but, at the moment, if I had to pick some key swing votes for cloture, here's whom I'd maybe pick for votes opponents of this bill could gain: maybe Bingaman, Bond, Brown (if Bayh switched, so could he), Brownback, Burr, Conrad, Ensign, Levin, Pryor, and Webb. I also guess Coleman and Bennett could still switch if they felt the bill was going down...From reports I'm hearing, Nelson is still insisting that he will always vote to move the process forward on a bill (even though he did vote against cloture for an amendment just this May), so he still sounds like he'll support cloture.
Here are some votes they could lose: Bayh, Cochran, Hatch, maybe Stabenow, and maybe Tester.
But who knows? I certainly don't!