So, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), a member of the Democratic caucus and a former member of the Democratic Party, is going around saying that he will vote with Republicans in the Senate to filibuster—that is, to prevent a final vote by extending debate indefinitely—the health care reform bill that’s going to come to the floor within a month. Senate procedural rules being what they are, 41 Senators are needed to vote for a filibuster in order for it to be effective. The Republicans currently have 40 Senators, all of whom will vote for the filibuster absent an act of God to convince them not to.
Continued after the jump....
Thus, one member of the Democratic caucus would have to cross party lines and vote with the Republicans for a filibuster to be effective and for the health care reform bill to be held up until such time as (a) a Republican Senator caves to political pressure from his constituents to vote against the filibuster at some point during it, or (b) the Senate leadership decides to pull the bill off the floor entirely, effectively killing it and the entire idea of health care reform. Lieberman, of course, knows that the Republicans are one vote away from a filibuster and that his crossing the aisle would give it to them. He presumably did this because he truly feels that health care reform as it will be brought to the Senate is a worse idea than no reform at all. The idea must be his alone, because the people of Connecticut (which already has its own “public option” for health insurance that successfully covers tens of thousands of Nutmeggers) sure as hell don’t think that. That brings me to my next point.
Joe Lieberman is a coward.
To understand this point, one needs to know Lieberman’s past. He had been a member of the Democratic Party as a Senator in 2000 when he ran for Vice President alongside Al Gore and came within a Justice Anthony Kennedy coin flip of winning that election. Over the next six years, Droopy Joe, who had never really been a rabid liberal, began tilting even more to the right when he loudly supported George W. Bush’s war in Iraq in 2003 and voted in favor of Bush’s judicial nominees both procedurally and substantively in 2005 and 2006. In his Senate re-election campaign in 2006, he lost the Democratic primary but continued on as an independent candidate against Democrat Ned Lamont and won another term in the Senate. As a self-described Independent Democrat, he has been part of the Democratic caucus, voting sometimes (far from always) along Democratic Party lines and holding committee leadership positions as though he were a Democrat. Concurrently, he has criticized the Democrats on various fronts and causes, doing a good job of bringing down the party. And now, when one of the most important and vital social reform issues of our time is before us, Lieberman has turned and bailed out to the Republic side of the debate.
If Joe Lieberman were a man and stood up for his beliefs, he would have left the Democratic Party and caucus years ago, when it became clear that he could not support the party lines on issues. That would be his right, and there would be nothing wrong with doing that. He probably wouldn’t have joined the Republican Party, but he could have been a true independent and voted his conscience. Instead, he remains a member of one party’s caucus while he won’t even do the minimum expected of him in that role, which is to vote against the filibuster of an extremely important bill. If he doesn’t like the bill, he can always vote against its final passage later, but his membership in the Democratic caucus demands that he at least allow bills to come to the floor for that final vote.
But no. He’s not a man. Instead, he’s a boy, going against the Democrats by cravenly kowtowing to the sizable corporate and insurance interests in his state that give him so much money while at the same time claiming to be a Democrat in spirit and chairing one committee and sitting on two others in their name. He’s trying to have the best of both worlds, to reap benefits he has not earned from the party he used to be a part of, without choosing between the two, sort of like a child demanding his allowance from his mommy without doing his chores. Well, Joe Lieberman needs to decide whether he’s a child or a grown-up, a boy or a man. He needs to decide whether to support the caucus that gives him power or the opposing interests that give him money. He cannot have both at once.
(Note 1: Before the flames come in, I'm using "Man" in opposition to "Boy," not to "Woman." I am in no way implying that women are less ethical or brave than men, only that Joe Lieberman is a spineless coward.
Note 2: I know that Droopy Joe's committee spots come from Harry Reid, and that Reid could take them away. That's a whole other diary that I don't feel like writing right now.
Note 3: First diary!)