Can somebody run some polls on how voters will react to one Senator stopping health care reform?

I think we'll find that Medicare Plan E (for Everybody) is just like normal Medicare - the third rail of electoral politics.

So Senator Lieberman grab on to it all you want. You'll be doing the rest of us a favor.

No one -- not Rush, not Cheney -- fills me with more loathing than Holy Joe.

Instead, he went further, explicitly vowing to stop the Senate from even voting on the bill if some consumers in some states have a choice between public and private insurance plans.

You have to admire -- well, no, you don't, really -- the conservative message machine for moving the Overton window so much that Lieberman's stance isn't pereceived as outrageously radical.

Thanks a lot, "liberal media."

God damn Joe Lieberman's shit-filled soul to hell.

Whoever runs against Holy Joe in 2012 can run ads with him piously saying how he supported universal health care during his last campaign. Of course, I think he may not be planning to run again. He can go into business with his wife--isn't she a medical industry lobbyist?

If he is planning to run again, then this is all just a look-at-me, I'm-Holy-Joe thing. I think it's unlikely he'd try to run as a Rethug--they don't trust him either.

Now you see the reason for the WH's assiduously courting Snowe -- not to piss off progressives, neck-punch hippies, play footsie with the insurance companies, or to make bi-partisan nice -- she was Lieberman insurance, plain and simple.

I just sent an email to Lieberman telling him if he votes for filibuster over health care I will do everything I can to make sure the dude does not get re elected in 2012. I encourage everyone to do the same.

Anyone remember Lucy, Charlie Brown and the annual football kicking episode?
Apparently not.

Lieberman knows this is his final term as Senator. Connecticut Dems won't nominate him, and the Connecticut electorate won't re-elect him. Come 2012 it's off to the wingnut gravy train for a very comfortable retirement. Meantime he'll stick it to the Dems as hard and as long as he can.

WRT HCR, it's reconciliation or nothing. That's where it was always headed, BTW.

Reconcilliation.

It's hard to believe that his position is that a bill just isn't quite bad enough to vote for and that it must be blocked at all cost until it is made worse. If he's not on somebody's payroll, he's an idiot.

Here's a little thought experiment: remember JFK's (OK, Ted Sorensen's) "Profiles in Courage?" In each chapter, the book profiled a US Senator who took lonely, principled stands that, while wildly unpopular among his colleagues and constituents, were at least bravely taken, thoughtfully considered, and often in retrospect absolutely right.

Anyway, when someone like Joe Lieberman strikes a pose like this and stamps his foot, I ask myself "Would he deserve a chapter?"

Nahhhhhhhhhh!!!

Did Harry Reid really refer to himself in the third person? doubtful can't fucking stand it when people do that.

Come 2012 it's off to the wingnut gravy train for a very comfortable retirement.

Why wait, time to start a referendum to change Connecticut law and then recall him. At least start polling the possibility. Leaving the voters of Connecticut stuck with him till 2012 would be a big mistake.

The biggest mistake that Al Gore ever made--creating a national stage for this a--hole.

Man, if there isn't a special way for Lieberman to be a total and complete douchebag he creates one. He may very well be my least favorite senator.

Imagine if Gore had become president in 2000, and then served 2 terms, would we have President Lieberman right now?

No, we wouldn't have without completely splitting the party, but what a thought...

Pretty predictable. Joe wants attention and over the course of the next couple weeks he'll get some agreement from the White House to stay out of the 2012 CT Senate election in return for his cloture votes, however it is they come to those sort of agreements. There are plenty of other things that can derail this, but Joe, on his own, will not be one of them.

Can someone tell me again why we don't cut Lieberman loose, and let him walk over to the other side of the aisle? Can't we get him a seat near John McCain?

And then, when he screws the country and the dems once again, it won't be on the dems dime. I mean, this is one of the most important issues of the decade, and he's still gonna vote republican. i guess by caucusing with the dems, Lieberman meant you make me a committee chair, and i will only vote republican on the really important issues.

i wonder how ned lamont would have voted on health care reform....

what a putz.

Why would Lieberman cave, given the history of the Democratic leadership caving *to him?*

Running as the independent who single handedly prevented public-private competition would probably be a big selling point.

Would it, though?

It's true Republican politicians hate the idea of health care reform, but it doesn't seem like Republican voters really do.

If the Democrats in the Senate can't throw Joe Lieberman out of the caucus, then I will leave the Democratic party myself. Why bother? They don't want to govern, just hold office.

Bring on Reconciliation as the Nuclear Option and render the little bastard irrelevant.

I despise that odious little toad.

I think given current polling that Lieberman would probably lose even if he had solid Republican support.

The election is a very long way off, but it seems to me that he would lose a 2 man race against Lamont. If there is a Republican candidate who draws any votes at all away from Lieberman, I don't see how he has any chance.

I'd say his only hope is running as a Republican or hoping the Conn. Republican party nominates no one (like the Democrats in Vermont to clear the way for Sanders).

Even if this happens, I don't see how he wins as the Senator who killed health care reform, or even as the Senator who killed the public option.

In any case he sure won't win as the Senator who forced the Democrats to use reconciliation for the public option, excise tax, medicaid expansion, Medicare budget cuts mandates and subsidies.

I also doubt that the insurance companies will thank him if he leads to one 60 vote bill of regulatory reform possibly followed by a 50 vote bill to save them from regulatory reform.

I don't see any percentage in it for him. So either he is demanding attention and some symbolic concessions or he has gone crazy. I'm afraid the second possibility fits the explicit rejection of any sort of public option better.

Elections have consequences. Reid needs to use reconciliation on those portions of the bill that allow and get the rest later.

Shove the damn thing down the obstructionists gullets- especially the Senator from Aetna. Take him down, dump his ass from the committee chair and tell him not to caucus with the Democrats.

No more compromise. No quarter. If progressives don't start to get on the streets, literally and figurately, call their respective Senators and send emails then when they lose big in 2010 they will only have themselves to blame. They've already lost Virginia.

Today - tomorrow - the day after and the day after - flood Reid's office with emails and phone calls.

If you don't want the right wing know-nothings back - do it.

As ever, Liebershit is all and only about himelf. The Dim Dems must make it clear, in whatever way, that he will be consigned to the outer darkness if he persists and votes against healthcare reform. He belongs in hell anyway, and the Dems should construct a personal one for him. Fat chance.

Speculation about 2012 is way premature. Chances are he won't run as the Senator from Jerusalem has a lucrative Israeli sinecure waiting for him whenever he decides to leave the Senate. They owe him, and he will get his reward - not the one he deserves, but a reward nonetheless.

What a bum.