Lefties Want to Kick Lieberman to the Curb

Lefty blog Talking Points Memo has pretty much had it with Joe Lieberman:

It's starting to seem like it may just be better for Dems to try to make a deal with Olympia Snowe, kick Joe Lieberman out of the party and be done with it. The leadership in the senate thought that Lieberman was on board with the latest compromise. But in an appearance on Face the Nation and later in a sit-down with Sen. Reid, Lieberman said he'd join the Republican filibuster if the Medicare buy-in remained in the bill.

What's most telling about Lieberman isn't his positions, which are not that much different from Sen. Nelson's and perhaps Sen. Lincoln's. It's more that he seems to keep upping the ante just when the rest of the caucus thinks they've got a deal.

If it happened once, a misunderstanding might be a credible explanation. But it's happened too many times. Sen. Nelson has driven Dems to distraction on this bill. But his demands have been fairly consistent over time. Lieberman just doesn't seem to be negotiating in good faith. He keeps pulling his caucus to some new compromise, waiting a few days and then saying he can't agree to that either.

It's coming to a breaking point.

There are a couple of problems with that strategy. For one thing, Lieberman's not a Democrat, he's an independent. They can kick him out of the Dem caucus but they can't kick him out of the party.

Secondly, this strategy still doesn't get them to 60 votes. Even if they get Snowe, without Ben Nelson they're stuck at 59.

And finally, I don't think Snowe is willing to be the only Republican vote for the bill. Defying her entire caucus, not to mention the majority of voters, isn't all that likely when it comes to final passage. They'd have to craft a bill that would at least gain one additional GOP vote - probably Snowe's fellow Maine Senator Susan Collins - and that would likely hurt them with the lefty Democrats.

At this point every analysis indicates that passing this bill will be worse than doing nothing. It's time to kill the bill and start over, concentrating on a number of relatively minor changes that could be made to the health care system that would solve most of the problems Obamacare was supposed to fix. For instance, allowing policies to be sold interstate could make a huge difference in costs, and that's a pretty minor fix.

UPDATE: Here's another article on the various punishments the left would like to inflict on Joe Lieberman.