It was actually William Congreve, not William Shakespeare, who wrote, “Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.” But perhaps more appropriate to Joe Lieberman is the old proverb “la vengeance se mange très-bien froide.” In a move that Mario Puzo might have concocted, Holy Joe has gone all mavericky.
In a move that senior leadership aides say has left them stunned, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) has told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) that he will filibuster a tentative public option compromise unless it’s stripped of its key component: a measure that would allow people aged 55-64 to buy insurance through Medicare.
The development casts substantial doubt on whether or not a health care reform bill can pass in the Senate, and even more doubt on whether a bill that does pass the Senate will be reconcilable with substantially more progressive House legislation in such a way that a final reform package can once again pass in both chambers of Congress.
Lieberman told Reid this afternoon, after a contentious appearance on Face the Nation, that he’s a “no” vote on the new compromise unless the Medicare buy-in is stripped, and he’s not even waiting for the CBO to weigh in–a move one leadership aide described as “extremely unfair.”
This also calls to mind the scene in The Big Lebowski where the Nihilists realize that they aren’t going to get the ransom money.
Walter Sobchak: No, without a hostage, there is no ransom. That’s what ransom is. Those are the fucking rules.
Nihilist #2: His girlfriend gave up her toe!
Nihilist #3: She thought we’d be getting million dollars!
Nihilist #2: Iss not fair!
Walter Sobchak: Fair! WHO’S THE FUCKING NIHILIST HERE! WHAT ARE YOU, A BUNCH OF FUCKING CRYBABIES?
Because, let’s face it, when the Democrats decided that Joe Lieberman was welcome back in the Caucus and that he could keep his Homeland Security and Defense Subcommittee chairs, they signaled that they believe in nothing. And if they promised Lieberman that they’d come back next week to cut off his johnson (should he cross them on procedural matters), it’s now apparent that Joe didn’t get the message. If the Democrats are holding Lieberman’s chairs hostage, he isn’t convinced they actually have the balls to pull the trigger. He’s effectively telling Harry Reid, “Toe? I can you get you a fucking toe, Dude. There are ways. You don’t want to know.” In other words, he’s calling the Democrats’ bluff.
In the category of serving revenge cold, Lieberman could hardly do better than to spike the health care reform effort at the last moment after keeping mum on the subject all summer and most of the fall. I particularly enjoyed this irony.
What makes the new turn even more outlandish in the eyes of leadership and others is that Lieberman ran for Vice President on a platform that included a Medicare buy-in for people not-yet eligible for the program.
Going back to October 27th, we can see that Reid never saw this coming.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid addressed a development, first reported by TPMDC, that Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) will filibuster a health care bill if it includes a public option.
“Joe Lieberman is the least of Harry Reid’s problems,” Reid told reporters at his weekly press conference.
Maybe Lieberman doesn’t like hearing people refer to themselves in the third-person. But it’s more likely that he didn’t like seeing his threats casually dismissed. The more Lieberman saw the bloggers who went after him in 2006 insist on a public option, the more determined he became to ruin their day. Running progressive-group ads against him was obviously counterproductive, as I said last week.
I don’t think it was inevitable that Lieberman would take this position. But Harry Reid empowered him when he decided to put the public option in the base bill (and why did Reid feel that was necessary?). Lieberman was freed to oppose anything in the bill he doesn’t like without actually being responsible for killing health care reform. Had Reid just used the Snowe-trigger, the bill would have passed rather easily, and Lieberman wouldn’t be able to fight for changes in the Conference Report because there are no amendments allowed to a Conference Report. Now you know why I argued against going for a public option in the Senate’s base bill.
I bet Obama and Reid are really happy now that they stuck it to the dreaded liberal base and backed Lieberman over Lamont.
Obama endorsed Lamont in the general election. He supported Lieberman in the primary.
As I said below .. who was one of Obama’s mentors when he first came to the Senate?
Every freshman has a mentor. So what? Why does that mean anything? At most, it means that they were on good and friendly terms. He still endorsed Lamont once he won the primary.
It was a shallow endorsement in a media drenched “change election.” No one thought that Obama or any other Sernators wanted to see a sitting multi-term Senator taken down by a promary opponent who had been funded from outside the system.
They could’ve kicked Joe to the curb. He had already started sticking the knifr in their backs. And after the election Obama was out in front leading the charge to let Joe keep his chairmanships. Now Obama and Reid look like suckers for getting beat by this sactimonious and weaselly little man.
It’s their bed. They need to lay in it or get out of it.
What they unfortunately will almost certainly not remember is that the grassroots of this party foresaw and wanted to prevent this problem.
I bet Joe laughed so hard he wet himself when he heard that one.
I think Obama is in some kind of denial mode.
I can’t figure out why they all are so AFRAID of Lieberman.
The simple answer is that they need 60 votes to do anything, and they think Joe will give them his vote on at least some things if they accommodate him, but he’ll give them nothing if they kick him to the curb.
Well, if they had dumped him when he went out whoring for McCain the Democrats wouldn’t be in this position now. Their whole Senate strategy would have been tailored to a situation where they lacked 60 votes. You see, they could now have cajoled and flattered the self-preening senator from Connecticut by giving him back some toys in return for a vote on HCR. They knew from the get-go there was no way to deal with this man and he can only be controlled by playing to his vanity. Or is some kind of monstrous conspiracy afoot with Lieberman doing Obama and Emmanuel’s dirty work. Now I’m beginning to enter a sewer. Anyway, Lieberman should have been literally whipped long ago.
Now you know why I argued against going for a public option in the Senate’s base bill.
I call bullshit. We all know that HoJo was never going to support anything half-way decent. He’s been on a mission to destroy the Democratic Party ever since he was defeated by Lamont. And as far as Obama endorsing Lamont in the general. I call BS on that one too. Did he ever go campaign for Lamont? No. he didn’t! In fact, who did? No one wanted any part of that race. And I am sure you remember President Clinton’s words on Larry King the night of the primary. That didn’t help either. What you want to conveniently forget is that, for whatever reasons, the Democrats in the Senate, Obama included. wanted HoJo back( .. and who was one of Obama’s “mentors” in the Senate?). Now they are paying the price for that in the form of a mean vindictive old man. Oh yeah, don’t forget that Turdblossom gave the signal during the 2006 election that it was okay to donate to HoJo. You don’t think Rove wasn’t getting anything for that?
I’d like to see the decision process whereby he got the VP nomination. Who thought the goofy little mofo was going to capture the hearts and minds of America? He’s like an uglier, creepier Michael J. Pollard without benefit of being stoned.
Now I’d like to see him lose his chairmanship. Make him pay. And make his consituencies (insurance companies) pay. Go directly to the Lieberman’s owners and tell them they either cut a deal or their dog sleeps in the the backyard.
It won’t happen, which tells us more about the balance of power than what we read, but I’d like to see it.
I think they should just get Snowe to sign off (although I can’t be sure that she is actually engaged in good faith negotiations, or playing Lieberman’s game of moving goalposts), that would be the best way to get back at Lieberman… ignoring him.
81% of the dems want him punished
43% of the independents
Looks like Harry is gonna have to quit being so spineless or else he may face a revolution within his own party.
All this is making the democrats look foolish-as foolish or more so than the rethugs.
I’d say Mr. Leader of the Party needs to get this party’s shit together real fast.
Excuse me for saying so, but that is just lame make-believe.
What did I say back on October 24th?
Tell me. Did that happen?
If you want to make the argument that this all would have happened anyway, well, how does that refute my point? My point was that my plan and the plan originally envisioned had a better chance of success. If no plan had any chance of success, how is that Obama or Reid’s fault? You can’t do what is impossible. The premise is that there is/was a solution. Maybe there wasn’t, but I could tell that this plan wasn’t it.
What makes you think Lieberman would behave any more like a grownup later on in the process? The House-Senate reconciliation, for example? He seems to be beyond shame or ethical consideration, so what would have stopped him?
it’s not just harry reid that didn’t see it coming. no one in the senate did. NO ONE. Well, none of the democrats anyway.
meanwhile out here in the place we call “Reality” anyone with half a brain could see it coming. Anyone who paid even the least little bit of attention from –oh, let’s pick a random date, how about the day Joe won re-election as an “independent democrat”– could see this coming. too far back? ok, how about anyone who paid attention to the 2008 election could see that coming.
as for whether it was wise or not to include the public option in the base bill, I still don’t know. I know i don’t have any faith in my legislators (see: retroactive immunity for telecoms, no-strings-attached bailout), and so am not willing to assume that changes WOULD be made in Conference.
the democratic leadership never should have let Lieberman keep his chairmanships or allowed him to caucus with the democrats, especially AFTER the broken promises of 2008. What the FUCK were they thinking?
Anyone who paid even the least little bit of attention from –oh, let’s pick a random date, how about the day Joe won re-election as an “independent democrat”– could see this coming. too far back? ok, how about anyone who paid attention to the 2008 election could see that coming.
Actually, it started in 2004 when HoJo wasn’t handed the Democratic nomination for President. Just goes to show how much he thought/thinks like a Republican.
What practical difference would it have made if they’d kicked him out of the caucus? It would have been satisfying for sure, but when the HCR bill failed by one cloture vote, I can hear the lefties screaming about how stupid the leadership was to dump Lieberman and lose his crucial vote. There is no secret recipe for turning Lieberman into a decent human being. The problem with Lieberman is that he exists.
Letting him keep the committees meant there was no way for the party to discipline Lieberman for bad behavior, but could they have been a carrot for him to earn back for good behavior?
.
(Las Vegas Sun) Oct. 28, 2009 – If Reid fails to deliver, not only will the majority leader be criticized for botching an issue that will help define his legacy, “it’ll be disastrous for the Democratic Party,” said Richard Kirsch, campaign manager of Health Care for America Now, an umbrella organization of dozens of groups advocating for reform.
“There’s no show in this,” Kirsch said. “He’s put himself totally on the line here. He’s put his leadership on the line, his authority on the line.”
The Republican campaign committee in the Senate seized on the liberal love-fest to argue that Reid is out of touch with his home state.
Brian Walsh, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said Reid “consistently pays more attention to the liberal special interests in Washington than to the interests of his constituents in Nevada.”
…
Reid brushed off Lieberman’s opposition, saying he and Lieberman have a long history of working together. What went unsaid was that Lieberman owes his committee chairmanship to Reid after the majority leader declined to punish him — as some Democrats wanted — for his support of Republican Sen. John McCain in last year’s presidential election.
“Joe Lieberman,” Reid quipped, “is the least of Harry Reid’s problems.”
Bob Fulkerson, state director of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, said if Reid is unable to seal the deal and the Senate resorts to the trigger mechanism in the public option offered by Snowe, “that would be a profound letdown.”
“Expectations have been raised now,” Fulkerson said. “Nevadans really want this and Senator Reid knows he has to deliver for Nevada.”
How Harry Reid reached the public option compromise
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Lieberman would oppose even a triggered public option. He opposed the Baucus bill that came out of finance. I think whatever compromises you think would have placated Joe would not have worked. He’s just like Grassley or any other Republican. As Josh Marshall has said today, Lieberman would just keep moving the goalposts and nothing would be passed.
I’m also not convinced that Joe could be pressured into breaking the filibuster on the final vote if he can’t be pressured at this early stage.
It’s time for either threats to remove seniority (from Nelson, Lieberman, etc.) or go right to reconciliation.
I’d rather be at the end than getting carjacked in the middle of the senate bill.
So you are for a shitty bill getting passed? And what if that shitty bill leads to Democrats losing control of one or both Houses of Congress? What then?
This is the part I’ve never gotten. We’d have still seen the “compromises” designed to win Lieberman over, and judging by his current behavior, would have seen it all go for naught in the final cloture vote.
The real kick-in-the-face failure of the Dem leadership was not changing the Senate rules as its first order of majority business. After that, there are no good fixes for garbage-golem like Lieberman except the joy of maximum punishment.
Because, let’s face it, when the Democrats decided that Joe Lieberman was welcome back in the Caucus and that he could keep his Homeland Security and Defense Subcommittee chairs, they signaled that they believe in nothing.
Why do you call it “the Democrats”? Be honest. We were winning the battle to punish Lieberman after the election but then OBAMA STEPPED IN and the matter swiftly died on the table. I don’t know if taking his committee chairs would have effected anything, but that he has them at all is due to Obama.
Trying to keep Lieberman in the fold on the big bills seems like a reasonable bet at the time. Kicking him out of the caucus would have assured that 60 votes would not be available. It’s looking like the gamble isn’t paying off (and like Lieberman welched on some promises), but does that mean it wasn’t worth trying? I don’t think so. How do you think we’d be ahead if L had been dumped from the caucus early on? I don’t see it. I’m sure you can imagine the howls from the lefties if he had been purged and killed HCR and other major initiatives out of “revenge”.
Democrats begin the long road to becoming a parliamentary party like the Republicans.
About FUCKING time.
So then we would have 59 potential yes votes for cloture and have to depend on Snowe. I just don’t see how it makes a difference other than us getting our pound of flesh. Look at Lieberman’s behavior over the last 5 years.
I don’t think he was ever willing to vote yes on anything, regardless.
There would have been no reason for Reid to trust him, and he would have fooled no one by going along and the optics would be better in that we wouldn’t have 60 and still be able to do nothing. And we’d at least have punished Lieberman.