THE PLANK NOVEMBER 3, 2009
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Ezra Klein plays my favorite parlor game: What Does Joe Want?
After breaking with the Democratic Party over national security, killing the public option would cement Lieberman's status as a conservative hero. The Republican Party is angry and scared right now, and Lieberman is in the peculiar position of being able to grab them emotionally even as he's not fully aligned with them substantively. In a field that includes loose cannons like Sarah Palin and such dull middleweights like Mitt Romney, Lieberman might be the only Republican with both conservative and independent appeal, at least in theory. Maybe -- just maybe -- he wants to switch parties and see where 2012 takes him? Probably not, of course, but isn't it worth keeping the option open, particularly if it means sticking it to the Democrats at the same time? [Emphasis added.]
I suppose it's possible that deep down in places he doesn't talk about at parties Lieberman dreams of rolling the Joementum Mobile out of the garage and taking it for another spin. But I really think Ezra is giving Lieberman almost too much credit here. I seriously doubt he's positioning himself to become a conservative hero, much less a potential 2012 GOP presidential candidate.
Pretty much everything Lieberman has done since his unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2004--including, now, his threats to kill the public option--has been designed to infuriate Democrats. It's almost as if, having been hurt so badly by their rejection at the polls, he needs them to stay angry at him (rather than just forget about him). Remember, plenty of Democratic Senators continued to support the war in Iraq after it went south; Lieberman was the only one who regularly voiced that support on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal in articles that lavished praise on President Bush and chided Democrats for not being sufficiently appreciative of his leadership skills.
When I wrote this piece about Lieberman during his tough 2006 reelection campaign against Ned Lamont, one of Lieberman's friends said something that's stuck in my head:
"It's almost like he goes out of his way sometimes to make a difficult situation more difficult."
Both for the Democrats and for himself.
7 comments
Lieberman is just doing what he always does--providing Dems with a bridge to reality. If incremental reform is preferable to non-productive confrontation and brinksmanship, which I for one think it is, we need to avoid the attempt by ideologues to create a giant new entitlement which most voters view as unlikely to be any less vulnerable to fiscal malfeasance than Medicare/Medicaid which, let's remember, are on the brink of insolvency already.
- Robert Powell
November 3, 2009 at 10:21am
I really couldn't care less if Lieberman makes things more difficult for Democrats -- and I'm positively giddy if he's making things more difficult for himself -- but I truly resent his desire to make things more difficult for people without health care. RP- But how is the public option any sort of entitlement?
- ratnerstar
November 3, 2009 at 10:25am
Jason - you really think Ezra is wrong? I think he's right on the mark. It is common knowledge that CT has been on the countdown to throw Joe out for awhile now. What more proof does anyone need that he feels so entitled to prestige he'll do anything to keep his position of power? He's a classic picture of a cornered animal.
- WandreyCer
November 3, 2009 at 10:43am
WandreyCer -- and the animal in question is a weasel. (On an unrelated matter, see my note in the Rush Limbaugh article Talkack.)
- JackR
November 3, 2009 at 12:52pm
Liberals love to drool over idealogical "purification" efforts among the Republican ranks, but see nothing unusual about purges in their own tent. I am sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Lieberman's overall voting record quite liberal? Is there anything that really distinguishes his viewpoint from, say, that of Scoop Jackson a generation back? Is there anything that really distinguishes him from scores of "Blue Dogs" in the House? I know, the liberals can barely tolerate them as well: but it isn't an outright hatred thing with them. If politics continues to evolve into a death struggle between hard liberals and hard conservatives, I don't see how that can be good for America. And I sure don't see how that can be a good thing for liberalism either.
- lsernoff
November 3, 2009 at 1:22pm
Ditto Isernoff. ratnerstar--in my view this is all about expanding Medicare/Medicaid at this point. They are entitlements, moreover entitlements on the verge of bankruptcy because they are, among other things, demonstrably not efficient competition for the private sector. More like blundering enablers. Actual voters are concerned about the prospect of putting a medical version of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in charge of a sixth of the economy.
- Robert Powell
November 3, 2009 at 4:56pm
Brother Powell: Kudos to you. The last sentence of your comment seems to me to capture perfectly what's going on in public opinion on health care reform. A little side note. Prior to retirement, I spent nearly forty years practicing law in D.C., first as a government lawyer in a regulatory agency, later in a law firm practicing before that and other agencies. Almost never practiced before Congress, though I knew, and respected, many who did, both "liberals" and "conservatives". We stay in touch. The one thing we "oldies" all agree on: standards aren't what they used to be. Facts used to be coin of the realm; whatever position you advocated, the person whom you were trying to persuade was entitled to expect that the "facts" you asserted were accurate. If they weren't, your reputation suffered, soon enough with cost to your pocketbook. The old guard thinks that is no longer clearly the case, or the consequence. Sad. It's awfully hard to move the ball, one way or the other, if the person you are trying to persuade can't trust you.
- lsernoff
November 4, 2009 at 7:37pm