Advice for Senate Democrats

I know this may sound hyperbolic, but Joe Lieberman is America’s most duplicitous elected national-level politician and one of the most immoral, despite his tendency to wear his supposed piety on his sleeve.  The guy walks to temple on Saturday, then walks three miles to the Hill, and then proceeds to knife anyone who has ever been or could ever be mistreated by the big corporate insurance industry.  The same man who took to the Senate floor to attack President Clinton for his marital infidelity stridently pretends no one could attack him for his own infidelity to the voters of Connecticut and the American people he was elected to serve.  If only his mistress were Monica instead of money.

Lieberman’s constituents not only favor expanding Medicare, but they favor a public option.  He opposes both, not because he has any facts the rest of us don’t but because he has taken huge sums from the insurance industry.

It’s not just that he opposes any health care reform that would actually cut into insurance industry profits.  He will not allow a vote on the bill even though a majority of his constituents and most members of his own caucus (as well as his own leadership) support the bill.  It doesn’t seem to matter that he chairs a subcommittee, that Democratic colleagues stood by him during his last primary challenge or that President Obama successfully convinced members of the Democratic caucus to welcome him back into the fold after he campaigned for John McCain and argued that those who opposed the Iraq War were soft on terror.

What this means is that we have senators in the majority who are not dealing in good faith to pass essential legislation they were elected to pass and the president was elected to sign.  Minority Republicans are also acting in bad faith, but it’s hard to imagine that anyone actually voted for them while hoping they’d pass real health reform.

It was once presumed that the filibuster would be used in good faith in the collegial Senate.  Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has admitted that Republican amendments are not designed to improve the bill, but to kill it.  Lieberman and those in his camp have eliminated any presumption of good faith and therefore the majority must eliminate the filibuster and pass the bills they were elected to pass.

…And then kick Senator Mealymouth from Aetna out of the caucus, run the strongest candidate against him possible, run ads against him for the next 3 years straight, expose him for what he is, and never ever let him be the swing vote on anything again.  Don’t negotiate with him, don’t even talk to him.  He is not and never was a swing vote, but he plays that card to get favors, maintain political clout and water-down legislation at the behest of corporate sponsors.

Lieberman could then be the Republican he’s actually been for the last nine years.  He’d still pretend to be a person of conscience, but he wouldn’t be pretending to be a Democrat anymore.  Even his pretend conscience could take heart since he’d only be the second most duplicitous American politician…behind Mitt Romney.