Tracking what is in and out of the health care bill at this point is a pretty hard task, with closed-door negotiations and compromises everywhere. But one thing is clearly evident: Joe Lieberman is a terrible, terrible human being.
I’ve never liked him, from way back when he was trying to be the voice of public morality during the whole Monica Lewinsky ridiculousness. Joe thinks Joe is an upstanding citizen, and anything else is not important. He really didn’t matter much in the decade following (aside from his sanctimonious, yet still against-the-law call to “count all military ballots” during the 2000 recount). Now that the Democrats control the federal government, however, his actions matter a great deal.
It’s a mistake to call him a Democrat: he lost the Democratic primary in 2006 to Ned Lamont and ran as a candidate of the Joe party, once again putting his own agenda above everything else. And he has never, ever forgotten this loss. Even though he had universal support from fellow institutional Democrats in that race, he still harbors a burning desire to get revenge on all dirty hippies and liberals (such as myself) who supported Lamont in that campaign. Despite this anger at the base, and despite the fact that he supported John McCain over Barack Obama in the presidential election (!), he is considered to be a part of the Democratic Caucus in the senate, because, in those famous last words, “He’s with us on everything except the war.”
Right. Joe’s list of the issues he is “with us” on is rapidly dwindling, and on health care, the break has become completely unacceptable. Democrats are a big tent party. Democrats disagree on taxes, on trade, on the environment, even on abortion (there are far, far more anti-abortion Democrats than there are pro-choice Republicans). But if there is to be a Democratic litmus test, I think it would have to be on health care: just about every Democrat, from the lowest local officeholder to the president, thinks that we need a system of universal health care coverage. Again, the details differ greatly, but the goal is sacrosanct.
Except for Joe. In the interests of revenge and screwing over his own party, Joe is not in favor of anything. No public option. No triggers. No Medicare buy-in, despite the fact that he has been in favor of that for much of his political career. More importantly, he’s not opposing these ideas but putting forward his own plan for universal coverage. No, he’s opposed to plans because he wants to be king, because he wants to stick it to liberals, because he wants to be the center of attention when he refuses to negotiate in good faith and blows things up.
Like any spoiled brat, much of the blame can be placed on the authority figure in charge, and in this case, it is Harry Reid. One would think that given the fact that Joe has done more than any Republican to derail the signature issue of the Democrats, Reid would be clamping down hard on the discipline, taking away Joe’s committee gavel. One would be wrong. He has not been punished at all. So why wouldn’t Joe keep doing what he’s doing, reveling in the attention?
It’s hard to imagine Lyndon Johnson, one of the most powerful majority leaders in history, putting up with Joe’s attacks on his own party. Harry Reid is certainly no Lyndon Johnson, true, but unless he wants to be remembered as one of the most useless majority leaders in the modern era, he needs to do something about Joe and do it now. Even if that means turning him into, for all intents and purpose, a Republican. If that did happen, it would just be putting the right label on what he’s doing now.