Tag: joe lieberman

California/Health/Politics & Causes/seniors/USA/Women
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Taking on MoveOn

by Fran Johns

I am a certified MoveOn supporter. Though I had to opt out of the e-feeds because my Inbox overfloweth, I have sent money, forwarded news, heeded their messages.

But enough is enough. They are pushing for measures we should have, but won’t get today. I am coming down on the side of those who say just get us a bill. In the words of Washington Post editorial writer E. J. Dionne — in a column today aptly titled Don’t scream: organize:

Instead of trying to derail the process – exactly what conservative opponents want to do – those on the left dissatisfied with the Senate bill should focus their efforts over the next few weeks on getting as many fixes into it as they can.

What we have in the Senate bill is a mishmash of stuff we didn’t want, along with the absence of stuff we did. Ridiculous obstacles to a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion — write two checks every month just so Ben Nelson can get benefits in perpetuity for Nebraska and maybe we’ll satisfy the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in the bargain? — piled on top of other obstacles for the poor and benefits for the rich (read: Big Pharma.) But come on, folks, it’s a bill. If we get a bill, it can be improved. If we fail, it’ll be another generation of a punitive, non-working “system” of health care before we get this far again. By then there will be other Joe Liebermans eager to grab the spotlight and claim the power to derail every other beneficial detail. I’ll be dead, but I plan to haunt you.

Dionne points out that the House bill is superior, the two bills will now have to be reconciled, and there will be future opportunities to build on this beginning.

Enactment of a single bill will not mark the end of the struggle. It will open a series of new opportunities. It’s a lot easier to improve a system premised on the idea that everyone should have health coverage than to create such a system in the first place. Better to take a victory and build on it than to label victory as defeat.

Successful political movements prosper on the confidence that they can sustain themselves over time so they can finish tomorrow what they start today. At this moment, rage is understandable, but hope is what’s necessary.

Progressives – don’t scream: organize.

Health/Politics & Causes
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Figuring out Joe Lieberman

by Fran Johns

New York Times columnist Gail Collins offers a few choice answers to today’s most pressing question: ‘What is it with Joe Lieberman?’

Lieberman’s apparently successful attempt to hijack health care reform and hold it hostage until it had been amended into something that liberals couldn’t stomach has mesmerized the nation’s political class. This was, after all, a guy who has been a liberal on domestic issues since he was a college student campaigning for John F. Kennedy. A guy who was in favor of the public option, of expanding Medicare eligibility, until — last week.

The theories about Why Joe Is Doing It abound. We cannot get enough of them! I have decided to start a rumor that it all goes back to the 2004 presidential race, when Lieberman not only failed to win any primaries, but was also bitten by either a rabid muskrat or a vampire disguised as a moose.

Other than that, my favorite explanation comes from Jonathan Chait of The New Republic, who theorized that Lieberman was able to go from Guy Who Wants to Expand Medicare to Guy Who Would Rather Kill Health Care Than Expand Medicare because he ‘isn’t actually all that smart.’

It’s certainly easier to leap from one position to its total opposite if you never understood your original stance in the first place, and I am thinking Chait’s theory could get some traction. ‘When I sat next to him in the State Senate, he always surprised me by how little he’d learned about the bill at the time of the vote,’ said Bill Curry, a former Connecticut comptroller and Democratic gubernatorial nominee.

Collins favors the not-that-bright theory (‘in part because it’s as good an explanation as any, and in part because it will definitely drive Lieberman nuts’), but she provides greater insight by drawing the comparison between the records of failed national candidates Al Gore and John Kerry, who moved on to useful pursuits, and those of John McCain and Joe Lieberman who are ‘work(ing) out barely suppressed rage by attacking things (they) used to be for.’

Maybe the difference comes from self-image. Lieberman and McCain both thought of themselves as ‘character’ candidates whose success was due to the love and trust of the public, and whose ultimate failure was the work of evil forces beyond their control. Kerry and Gore never believed their success was due to their innate likability. When they lost the presidency, a part of them probably shrugged and remembered that they weren’t all that popular in prep school, either.

Politicians switch direction all the time, but the Lieberman experience has been weird because he doesn’t seem to feel as though he’s changed. He bounds around happily, doing the talk shows, confident that he’s the same independent-minded independent who believes in independence as always. Observers who have known him for a long time feel as though they’re living out a scene in a science-fiction movie when the guy who’s just been bitten by the vampire-moose comes home and sits down to dinner, unaware that he’s sprouting antlers.

I used to cover Lieberman when he was the majority leader of the State Senate in Connecticut. We got along very well, except for one interview, during which he talked about working for J.F.K., and how he kept a Mass card from Robert Kennedy’s funeral to remind him of the principles to which he had dedicated his career. Showing me the card, he remarked casually that he hadn’t looked at it for some time.

I wrote an article using the neglected Kennedy card as a metaphor for Lieberman’s fall from his old ideals into the pragmatic politics of a party leader. He was outraged and wounded, and I believe I apologized.

Collins is now taking back that apology. I think it is Joe Lieberman who needs to apologize to the American people. We voted for health reform, we’ve watched the key parts get tossed for the likes of those insurance folks who so strongly support him, and now we’re feeling a little helpless as he enjoys his position of fame and glory and power.

Lieberman may not be that smart, and he’s certainly not wise. Unfortunately, he is shrewd.

Op-Ed Columnist – Sorry, Senator Kerry – NYTimes.com.