Blame Lieberman?

Since he's not likely to run as a Democrat, if he runs in 2012 for re-election, I'm totally fine with us pointing at Joe Lieberman and blaming him for a part in this year's defeat. Ezra Klein just does that, albeit I'm going to have to caveat my support for his statement after the jump.

Late in the negotiations over the public option, a group of five conservative Democrats and five more-liberal Democrats seemed near to an unexpectedly smart compromise: Allow adults over 55 to buy into Medicare. This idea had a couple of different virtues: For one, it opened an effective and cheap program up to a group of Americans who often have the most trouble finding affordable insurance. For another, the Congressional Budget Office has said this policy would improve Medicare's finances by bringing healthier, younger applicants into the risk pool. Oh, and it's wildly popular with liberals, who want to see Medicare offered as an option to more people, and since Medicare is already up and running, it could've been implemented rapidly.

But Lieberman killed it. It was never really clear why. He'd been invited to the meetings where the compromise was developed, but he'd skipped them. He'd supported the idea when he ran for president with Al Gore, and he'd reaffirmed that support three months prior to its emergence in the health-care debate during an interview with the editorial board of the Connecticut Post. But now that it was on the table, he seemed to be groping for reasons to oppose it. About the best he managed was that it was "duplicative," which was about as nonsensical a position as could be imagined. Nevertheless, he swore to filibuster the bill if the buy-in option was added. The proposal was duly removed.

It's easy to say that this made for worse policy. Medicare buy-in was a smart, helpful idea that should've been included in the legislation. It's harder to say whether it had a defined political cost in the election: Liberals would've been a lot happier if they'd managed to add this to the law, and maybe more of them would've turned out to vote. Seniors might've been pleased to see Medicare's finances improved, and many of the people who would've been helped by the new rule would've been, well, their children. The law could've begun delivering benefits earlier, and maybe that would've helped its popularity. Polls of doctors and the public have repeatedly shown broad support for making Medicare available to more Americans.

I couldn't agree more. Lieberman is an egomaniacal hypocrite, and an embarrassment to the great people of Connecticut, who should be used to good representation in Congress by now. They should kick this bum out, ASAP. Let's not try to re-write history though. Back in 2008, Lieberman backed John McCain for President. Rather than kick him to the curb, Democrats welcomed him back with open arms, all in the name of bi-partisanship/kumbaya/whatever other crap they cited. They should have stripped him of his chairmanship and kicked him to the curb. Back during the health care debate,  President Obama chose to empower the moderates in the Senate, letting Max Baucus convene his "gang of 6" to come to a compromise, empowering all the Lieberman-ish forces in that chamber to slow this down, and ultimately allowing the August 2009 rush of crazies at town halls, which watered this down. My point is, it's fun to blame Lieberman, and right, but let's not pretend we didn't mess this up along the way.