The hot You Tube of the day — dug up by The Plum Line, and spreading like wildfire — is Sen. Joe Lieberman supporting the expansion of Medicare to 55-64 year-olds … a mere three months before he announced his opposition to it yesterday.
Of course, Lieberman needs to be called out on his 180-degree red-belly flip-flop. But I suspect he knows full well what he did, and does not possess the shame to care.
If it is the case, as Ezra Klein argued today, that Lieberman is a pathetic petty man motivated by settling scores with liberal opponents, all the shaming and pressuring in the world won’t change his position.
Nor, apparently, is compromising. Negotiating with him appears to be hopeless.
And without Lieberman, it’s hard to see how you get to 60 votes to avert a filibuster. The only plausible Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, have been just as opposed to any form of public plan option. So who can you replace Lieberman’s vote with?
If 60 is just not an option, there is no other route but using Senate budget rules that prevent filibusters and only require simple majority votes.
According to Time’s Karen Tumulty, the Senate leadership is still resisting reconciliation. That path certainly comes with trade-offs, as many reform provisions could get stripped for not being germane to the budget.
But we may be coming down to the point where it’s partial reform by simple majority vote, or nothing.
