He probably doesn’t have many remaining friends on the left, as it is, and I’m guessing he’ll not win them back (or win over new, leftish friends) with gut-check statements like these.
Regardless — for what it’s worth, Senator — at least one independent voter continues to appreciate and applaud your call-’em-like-you-see-’em approach. And I say that having voted for the presidential candidate who was not the one you supported during the campaign.
UPDATE In the comments to this post, some readers suggest I’m naive; that Lieberman is not shooting straight but playing to corporate interests in his home state. Whether he is or isn’t, questioning his motives is, frankly, a cheap shot, one of the problems with political discourse today: the constant tendency to focus on character rather than the merits of arguments. I suspect that tendency is particularly tempting in this case because the merits of Lieberman’s concerns are well-grounded: Numerous reports have suggested that more-than-a-few Senators are concerned about the daunting costs of a public plan, which in turn suggests that the whip count on this vote might very well be short of a win for public-plan supporters. Thus, regardless of his motives, I think it’s entirely fair to conclude that Lieberman is, in this case, calling things like he (and many others) see them.