Yesterday, Ezra Klein responded to Joe Lieberman’s cynical games-playing over health care reform by writing in his column that Lieberman “seems willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.” Here is the entire paragraph and the one above it for context:
The Huffington Post and Roll Call are both reporting that Joe Lieberman notified Harry Reid that he will filibuster health-care reform if the final bill includes an expansion of Medicare. Previously, Lieberman had been cool to the idea, saying he wanted to make sure it wouldn’t increase the deficit or harm Medicare’s solvency (and previously to that, he supported it as part of the Gore/Lieberman health-care plan). That comforted some observers, as the CBO is expected to say it will do neither. Someone must have given Lieberman a heads-up on that, as he’s decided to make his move in advance of the CBO score, the better to ensure the facts of the policy couldn’t impede his opposition to it.
To put this in context, Lieberman was invited to participate in the process that led to the Medicare buy-in. His opposition would have killed it before liberals invested in the idea. Instead, he skipped the meetings and is forcing liberals to give up yet another compromise. Each time he does that, he increases the chances of the bill’s failure that much more. And if there’s a policy rationale here, it’s not apparent to me, or to others who’ve interviewed him. At this point, Lieberman seems primarily motivated by torturing liberals. That is to say, he seems willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.
This is nothing more than the plain truth, expressed rather mildly in my view, given the heinousness of what Lieberman is doing. Notwithstanding, Chuck Lane — another columnist at the Washington Post — took great offense at Klein’s accusation, even though he agreed with it substantively:
Joe Lieberman is an odd political duck, to put it mildly. I understand that he seems to bear a grudge against the Democratic liberals who tried to unseat him in 2006 because of his vote for the war in Iraq, and that he might be engaged in a little pay back right now. Perhaps he’s shilling for his home state insurance interests, as if no other senator would ever do such a thing.
But his position on the Medicare buy-in is hardly beyond the pale. That’s more than you can say for Ezra Klein’s venomous post.
Lane appears not to understand that Lieberman’s motive is the entire point, not the fact that others may be taking the same position:
That’s pretty much the ballgame, then. There are two component parts to my argument about Lieberman. The first is that the defeat of health-care reform will cost hundreds of thousands of lives. That’s not a particularly controversial statement. It relies on data from the Institute of Medicine and the Urban Institute, both of which are credible sources who’ve been used, I’d wager, by Lieberman and The Washington Post editorial page in the past. The second is that Lieberman is being driven in part by pique, an assertion that I lay out the reasoning for here, and that Lane explicitly supports in his post.
Lane squares this circle, or attempts to, by saying that “Joe Lieberman does not oppose insuring everyone.” True enough, but he’s willing to destroy the effort if it includes a Medicare buy-in, which he supported in 2000? A policy, in fact, that he supported as recently as three months ago? And why? Because, as Lane says, he wants “a little pay back?” That, again, is exactly my point: It’s morally irresponsible to imperil this effort in return for “a little pay back,” just as it’s been irresponsible for some on the left to suggest that the bill should be killed if it lacks a public option.
And Ezra Klein is hardly the only one to be talking about Joe Lieberman in harsh terms these days. Matthew Yglesias asks, “Can’t liberals be just as stiff-necked as Lieberman?” and answers his own question:
Sure, they could. But liberal […] members do have an incentive to compromise—the tens of thousands of people who die every year for lack of health insurance. The leverage that Lieberman and other “centrists” have obtained on this issue (and on climate change) stems from a demonstrated willingness to embrace sociopathic indifference to the human cost of their actions.
Josh Marshall points out that even Republicans — as thrilled as they are by Lieberman’s actions — are perfectly well aware of what he’s doing:
They [Senate Democrats] need to confront the problem that Lieberman isn’t negotiating in good faith. No surprise that Republicans are giddy with what a problem he’s creating for Harry Reid & Co. But in my conversations with them, it’s as clear to them as it is to anyone else that he’s now basically mocking his Democratic colleagues by moving the goal posts every time a new agreement is struck.
If the Democrats support it, Lieberman opposes it — and he has gradually lost the trust of long-time colleagues eager to give him every possible benefit of the doubt:
Lieberman blessed the Gang of Ten deal privately before those talks were completed, then reversed himself as soon as it became evident that the left saw a silver lining in the consolation prize of a Medicare buy-in proposal.
[…]
To many of Lieberman’s colleagues, it’s been hard for them to accept that his motives were different than those he stated in public, but there have apparently been a number of private assurances given — and broken — by the Connecticut senator in recent weeks — and a growing recognition that, of all the wavering “moderate” Democrats — Bill Nelson, Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landreiu — Lieberman is the least likely to negotiate to a compromise.
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