What Motivates Joe
With all due respect to Nate Silver, buying Joe Lieberman a puppy won’t work. Furthermore, I think his conclusion about what motivates Joe Lieberman leaves out a very important factor, and is therefore dangerously inaccurate:
What Joe Lieberman wants, in all probability, is attention. He wants Harry Reid to have to stand up and say things like : “I don’t have anyone that I’ve worked harder with, have more respect for, in the Senate than Joe Lieberman.” He wants face time on Meet the Press. He wants to make liberals feel some pain — especially those who tried to get Ned Lamont elected in his place. He wants everyone to know how maverick-y he is.
“Attention” is not what Joe Lieberman wants. The proper word is “revenge”. Here’s why.
Despite the fact that the Democrats allowed Joe Lieberman to keep his seniority and chairmanships, he took his rejection by Connecticut’s Democratic Party personally. A mensch, upon losing a primary, would have graciously conceded. Not Joe: he chose to play the spoiler. With some outreach from Karl Rove and the help of the GOP, which abandoned their own candidate, Lieberman won the election as an Independent.
So while Lieberman may owe a debt of gratitude to the Democrats for allowing him to keep his perks, he owes his Senate seat to the GOP. And don’t think he doesn’t know it. So that’s one motivator right there: revenge against his own constituents, who strongly favor the public option, and against the party as a whole.
Lieberman also knows that the Democratic leadership is spineless: no less a figure than Barack Obama let him keep his seat. He’s betting that when push comes to shove, the Democrats will fold, no matter what he does. He’s probably right. And that lack of political consequences facilitates his revenge.
Continuing along that theme, Silver correctly notes that Lieberman probably can’t win in 2012. The Democrats hate him, the GOP base is too insane to support even him and probably too small in Connecitcut to make a difference if a real Democrats runs. What Silver doesn’t note is the revolving door between politics and lobbying. “Why should I do anything for people that won’t vote for me,” Lieberman has no doubt asked himself, “and ruin my shot at a cushy lobbying job?” It’s not like the Liebermans are strangers to the health insurance industry: Joe has received millions from the industry since 1989, and his wife is a health care lobbyist. So there’s another motivator: revenge leads almost directly to a lucrative career in the private sector.
Frankly, I don’t think there’s ANYTHING anyone could do that would satisfy Joe Lieberman. He is sitting in the catbird seat, highly motivated to exact revenge on his constituents and his party, with no electoral or financial consequences. The Democrats squandered their chance to take him down, and now they, and the rest of us, have to live with the results.
*****
In related news, the House bill will not contain a robust public option.
the negotiated public option will cost taxpayers an extra $85 billion and is the favored choice of Blue Dogs and other conservative Democrats. Observers have noted the irony of the Blue Dogs — who champion fiscal conservatism — backing the the more costly public option. But such confusion misreads the Blue Dog Coalition, which is more properly understood as a bloc of Democrats who favor business interests. In the case of the public option, requiring it to negotiate rates means higher payments to providers — hospitals, doctors and drug makers — and less competition for insurance companies.
This was also as predictable as it is unfortunate. Once again, Americans have been rolled by their own representatives, promised a diamond ring if we’d only swallow just one more wad of semen; and after taking that big nasty gulp, given a cheap plastic trinket from a gumball machine instead.
When the Democrats lose seats in 2010, don’t say I didn’t warn you. because I did.
