12/15: Joe Gets His Way

Liberal bloggers are very upset over the apparent decision by the Senate Dem leadership to appease Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) by removing the Medicare buy-in provision from the health care reform bill. "I don't really know what to think right now," writes Chris Bowers. "Too angry to think straight." Kevin Drum laments: "I always figured we'd at least be able to get a public option trigger included, but if this report is right we're not even getting that." Armando Llorens declares: "It's not clear what will be in the final bill that President Obama signs before the State of the Union, but it surely will not be health care, or even health insurance, reform."

Liberal bloggers are divided over whether or not to support the Senate bill now that it won't include a public option or a Medicare buy-in. Markos Moulitsas thinks it's "time to kill this monstrosity coming out of the Senate." However, Nate Silver thinks that progressives would be foolish to oppose this bill.

Finally, we noted yesterday that liberal bloggers were accusing Lieberman of opposing the Medicare buy-in provision because of spite rather than principle. Well, The Washington Post's Greg Sargent dug up a video of Lieberman expressing support for the Medicare buy-in idea only three months ago during an interview with the Connecticut Post. Lefty bloggers are pointing to this video as proof that their hypothesis about Lieberman was correct -- that his flip-flop has nothing to do with principle.

What else is happening in the blogosphere?

• RedState editor Erick Erickson slams the NRSC for forming a joint fundraising committee with CA SEN candidate Carly Fiorina (R) even though the NRSC claims that it's not endorsing her. Erickson adds: "Fiorina, [NH SEN candidate Kelly] Ayotte, and [KY SEN candidate Trey] Grayson [have] become establishment candidates. That means they must all three be beaten."
• Conservative bloggers (Malkin, Liebau, Hanson) are criticizing Pres. Obama for referring to Wall Street executives as "fat-cat bankers."

HEALTH CARE REFORM: The Dream Is Over

Liberal bloggers are pretty upset over the apparent decision by the Senate Dem leadership to appease Lieberman by removing the Medicare buy-in provision from the bill:

• digby: "There you have it. Everyone knows that liberals must lose, so down goes the public option and the Medicare Buy-in. The question remains whether King Joseph will allow the government to help older people with long term care needs or any of the other things that anyone could possibly construe as liberal policies. I think we have a way to go before this bill is bad enough for him and his cronies to allow the Democrats to commit political suicide with it."
• Open Left's Bowers: "I don't really know what to think right now. Too angry to think straight. After a very long campaign, we had appeared to secure a deal that I thought was acceptable. We promptly get stabbed in the back by none other than Joe Lieberman (and the CBO, btw), and then just as promptly told by the White House to accept it all."
• Mother Jones' Drum: "[I]n the space of a few days we seem to have gone from more than I expected to less than I expected. I always figured we'd at least be able to get a public option trigger included, but if this report is right we're not even getting that. Sic transit etc."
• TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "Well, health care reform failed yet again. It's not clear what will be in the final bill that President Obama signs before the State of the Union, but it surely will not be health care, or even health insurance, reform."
• MyDD's desmoinesdem: "We have a 'health insurance reform' bill with no public option, no trigger, no Medicare buy-in. And it will probably continue to get worse from here. There is no point in pretending that President Obama wanted any comprehensive bill to pass. There was zero pressure on Lieberman to cave, no talk of using the budget reconciliation process -- only pressure on [Senate Maj. Leader Harry] Reid to give Lieberman everything. Organizing for America will get a rude awakening when they try to round up canvassers and phone bankers."
• Firedoglake's watertiger: "Wherever you are, Senator [Ted] Kennedy, I hope you're not watching this desecration of your life's work. It is absolutely shameful."

BooMan accuses Reid of making tactical errors: "I don't think it was inevitable that Lieberman would take this position. But Harry Reid empowered him when he decided to put the public option in the base bill (and why did Reid feel that was necessary?). Lieberman was freed to oppose anything in the bill he doesn't like without actually being responsible for killing health care reform. Had Reid just used the [Olympia] Snowe-trigger, the bill would have passed rather easily, and Lieberman wouldn't be able to fight for changes in the Conference Report because there are no amendments allowed to a Conference Report. Now you know why I argued against going for a public option in the Senate's base bill."

Many liberal bloggers believe that Reid has destroyed his re-election prospects by removing the Medicare buy-in provision:

• Daily Kos' Moulitsas: "Bye bye, Reid. You weren't a bad MINORITY leader."
• Big Tent Democrat: "I think [Reid] just signed his own political death warrant. As did [CT Sen.] Chris Dodd and others."

HEALTH CARE REFORM II: Should Liberals Kill The Bill?

Several liberal bloggers think the health care reform bill has become so flawed that it's no longer worth passing:

• Moulitsas: "Insurance companies win. Time to kill this monstrosity coming out of the Senate."
• Open Left's Darcy Burner: "The first rule of medicine is, 'Do no harm.' The post-Joe Lieberman version of the Senate healthcare bill fails that basic criterion. Unless Democratic leadership steps up to fix this misguided proposal, our only recourse will be to kill it."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "Democratic leaders are going to have to explain how forcing a mandate on people to buy private health insurance, without controlling the insurance industry, makes sense. That concept might appeal to Joe Lieberman, but it doesn't sit well with everyone else."
• desmoinesdem: "The new spin is that this bill will still save lives despite its flaws. If this were about saving lives, Congress could adopt a few simple reforms without creating this elaborate structure to transmit taxpayer dollars to profitable corporations."

Daily Kos' mcjoan thinks Dems should give up on comprehensive health care reform and instead pass only certain elements of the legislation: "At this point, the assistance to the people who need it most is the critical moral and policy decision. Would it be a band-aid? Yes, but even a band-aid can staunch bleeding, and right now that's what we desperately need. [...] Now that Medicare buy-in and the public option have been sacrificed at the altar of Joe, there's still the problem of [NE Sen. Ben] Nelson and [MI Rep. Bart] Stupak hanging out there, a proposal that could do more long-term harm to the nation's women than those market reforms could bring. Stripping this bill down to the core assistance to the uninsured might be the last saving grace it could have."

Meanwhile, FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver thinks liberals are "batshit crazy to oppose the Senate bill": "I understand that most of the liberal skepticism over the Senate bill is well intentioned. But it has become way, way off the mark. Where do you think the $800 billion goes? It goes to low-income families just like these. Where do you think it comes from? We won't know for sure until the Senate and House produce their conference bill, but it comes substantially from corporations and high-income earners, plus some efficiency gains. [...] For any 'progressive' who is concerned about the inequality of wealth, income and opportunity in America, this bill would be an absolutely monumental achievement."

LIEBERMAN: "A Flip-Flop Of Shameless Proportions"

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about the video of Lieberman expressing support for the Medicare buy-in idea only three months ago:

• TPM's Josh Marshall: "[I]t turns out that not only did Lieberman run in 2000 on the Medicare Buy-In he now says he'll filibuster. He supported it just three months ago. Shamelessness is the most devalued word in politics. But I'm not sure I've ever seen a better example of it."
• Big Tent Democrat: "On September 9, 2009, Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), supported Medicare buy in for persons aged 55-64. The Last Honest Man has been a bald faced liar forever."
• The Washington Post's Ezra Klein: "I'm still awaiting an explanation of how it's principled for Lieberman to threaten to derail a bill that will save more than a hundred thousand lives because it includes a policy he supported as recently as three months ago."
• digby: "People need to send the link to this to all the press and the villagers they can think of to show just how perfidious their favorite 'man of integrity' is being on this. [...] Something like this can really destroy a sanctimonious jackass."
• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "The Beltway press is beginning to take note that Lieberman's position isn't really principled, and this video evidence isn't likely to help the Connecticut Senator convince anyone otherwise. Given that Lieberman's power stems from his cachet with the establishment, the potential that he will lose this cachet as more realize that his positions are less about principle than politics might actually be the way to get him to back down."
• Daily Kos' Jed Lewison: "By now, everybody should realize that what Joe Lieberman says has nothing to do with principle -- it's all about exacting revenge on the Democratic Party base that voted him out of the party in 2006. Every single time he's flip-flopped on a position related to health care reform, he's done so in a fashion designed to cause maximal harm to Democratic Party leadership and the administration. The only kind of health care bill he wants to see pass is the kind of health care bill that will disappoint the Democratic Party base and depress Democratic turnout in 2010. Simply put, enabling Joe Lieberman is enabling a political opponent of the Democratic Party, and anyone who tries to make a deal with him is going to end up looking foolish in the end."

Lieberman denies that he flip-flopped, but liberal bloggers (Kurtz, Klein, Benen) don't buy his explanation.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Dispirited Dem Base

Hot Air's Allahpundit thinks it's significant that Moulitsas wants to kill the Senate health care bill:

"Remember, the overwhelming nutroots CW to this point has been that something must be passed. What, precisely, gets passed is important but ultimately secondary to the task of passing something and thereby avoiding a reprise of the left's 1994 post-HillaryCare nightmare. I never bought that CW for reasons articulated here by Karl, but it was a fact of life. Maybe no longer, though. If Kos's thinking is representative of other progressives, then the lefty base may be so dispirited by the public-option meltdown that the anticipated turnout boost next year from passing a bill never materializes. Which, if so, would be catastrophic for Dems: It was Kos's own poll, after all, that showed a giant 25-point enthusiasm gap between Republican and Democratic voters last month. If Obama signs a bad bill into law, conservatives will be even more energized and liberals will be enervated. The reckoning is coming, albeit a year too late to derail this clusterfark."

LEST WE FORGET: Ah, Technology These Days...

From Overheard in the Office:

Young female cashier to coworker: I saw this sign at Caribou Coffee that said "fire sprinkler." I really want to see one of those. I mean, what is it? Does it shoot out fire or something?