"Understanding Joe Lieberman"

[Clio the Leo]

Understanding Joe Lieberman

Jonathan Chait
December 14, 2009 | 12:03 pm

I've been saying for a while that Joe Lieberman posed the greatest threat to health care reform. Unlike the rest of the party, he has no political interest in the passage of reform or a successful Obama presidency, and he seems to view the prospect of sticking it to the liberals who supported his Democratic opponent in 2006 as a goal potentially worth sacrificing the lives of tens of thousands of Americans to fulfill. (Of course, the irony is that Lieberman is actually vindicating his 2006 critics and undermining his own defense from that time, which revolved around him being a progressive Democrat on domestic policy issues.)

Still, I feel that liberals are somewhat overreacting to Lieberman's turn against health care reform. It's true that Lieberman refused to take part in negotiations with Reid over the compromise, suggested he could support the bill presuming a positive CBO score, and then decided to stick in the knife. However, I don't think that health care reform is in peril. If Harry Reid decided to submit to Lieberman's demands, the health care bill would basically revert to what the Senate Finance Committee produced. That's still a major piece of legislation. Expectations among liberals have risen since then, so the come-down is understandable. But this isn't the end of reform.

Now, the counter-argument is that Lieberman may well come up with a reason to back away from that bill as well. Given his obvious bad-faith negotiation, that's certainly a danger. But Olympia Snowe is not negotiating in bad faith, and she, unlike Lieberman, actually seems to care about health care reform. So even if you revert to something like the Senate Finance bill and Lieberman tries to stab you in the back, you can still pick up Snowe. (A fact that itself reduces the chance that Lieberman will attempt a second act of sabotage -- why try to knife health care reform if you can't kill it?)

I also think liberals, myself included, might be driving ourselves a little nuts trying to divine Lieberman's motives. He keeps flip-flopping and explaining his shifts by making demonstrably false claims. What's his game? Why does he keep saying these wrong, uninformed things?

I think one answer here is that Lieberman isn't actually all that smart.

(more)
http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-plank/understanding-joe-lieberman

[Beetwasher]

1. I Would Just Like To Ask All The Critics, What THEY Think The Dems Should Be Doing

different or what we could have done differently giving what we're dealing with.

Our option as I see them are:

1. We could have started from a MUCH more liberal place than we did and negotiate from there, however, I don't think this would have changed a thing. Lieberman would STILL have obstructed no matter WHAT and he would have KEPT moving the goalposts just to get his sick jollies.

2. We can nuke the fillibuster. I didn't support this when Repubs wanted to do this and I don't support it now. Yes, it would make things easier and it's being horribly abused, but we may regret this if we do it.

3. Reconciliation. This has a lot of problems. But as far as I can tell, it IS still an option.

Those who want to blame Obama and Dem leadership, please tell me, how do you ride herd on the Senate when you have to deal w/ scum like Lieberman? And I don't think it would have been any different had Obama and Dems kicked him to the curb in '06. He STILL would have been re-elected and we STILL would have been in the same spot regardless. Yes, it would have made us feel better then, but it would have done nothing for now.

[napi21]

2. I think he just loves the lime light too much! I bet it drove him nuts

when Snowe was on TV everyday being interviewed and talked about all the time on every channel. Joe has some of that now and he loves the power! Wether he'll stick with his threats in the end, who knows!

[Bolo Boffin]

3. So Chait thinks we're overestimating Lieberman because we're bigots?

No.

(edited to be clear)

[Scarsdale Vibe]

4. The likelihood of picking up Snowe is less than it could have been.

When Harry Reid caved to the "public option or bust" crowd it was pretty much a given that the final legislation would be weaker than it would have been if they had worked with Snowe from the start on the final bill. Snowe was essential to passing optimally achievable health care reform because Lieberman, Lincoln, Nelson, and Landrieu would have had much of their leverage taken away from them as each of them would not have then been the deciding vote. When Reid told the WH he was going to include the public option, there was a prophetic WH aide that said the response from the WH officials in the room was basically, "We hope you know what you're doing." It's beginning to look like Reid was legislating through wishful thinking.

If health care reform fails due to Lieberman's obstinance he will be responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands over the next decade due to maintaining the shitty status quo.

[LastNaturalist]

5. Assholes aren't that complicated.

They care for themselves first. Everything and everyone else comes second.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

6. They're usually wrinkly and can only produce shit. Yeah sounds like Joe. nt

[Cha]

7. With lieberman..it's just "ATTENTIONWHORE ALERT"..

That's all anyone needs to realize.