It has little to do with your feelings toward the Obama administration, toward Rahm Emmanuel, toward Harry Reid, or anyone else.
Because it's a cold hard political fact; if you want to accomplish anything even remotely progressive for the rest of this administration, you can't let Joe Lieberman hold the legislative power he is currently holding.
This was brought to my attention from a post on Firedoglake, but it is originally from the Washington Post:
In the wake of the health-care debate, winning Republican support for such a bill is crucial, even if it might mean adding provisions favored by the nuclear and oil industries, or scaling back the legislation's scope.
"I don't think the Senate has an appetite for another such epic, polarized legislative war this session," said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), who met with Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) on Wednesday to strategize on how to enlist support for a compromise climate bill they are writing.
Get that? Joe Lieberman says that the Senate just doesn't have the capacity to pass any more progressive legislation (not even as "progressive" as the weak-tea health care reform bill). Climate change? EFCA? Repealing DOMA? If Joe Lieberman has anything to say about it, fat chance. He is basically saying he wants to hold the Senate, and the entire Congress, hostage.
That nice majority in the House? Worthless:
Democratic centrists have informed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) they will accept few changes in the final healthcare bill negotiated between the House and Senate.
These centrists have decided that any legislation that passes through Congress will be their legislation, uncompromised, or nothing.
That nice majority in the Senate? Worthless. As Joe Lieberman is saying, if it doesn't have the Republican seal of approval, that elusive bipartisanship, he won't let it break the filibuster.
On one level, I have to admire their strength of their strategy. They have taken massive majorities in the House and Senate and effectively turned it into a Republican congress. They are acting more conservative than the DLC ever did. Basically, this is what we get for putting Republicans in Democrat clothing to win a meaningless majority, but that's another subject...
Here is where we stand. If we don't do something to break their stranglehold on the Congress, we'll probably be looking back at the health care bill, which we hold our noses to pass, as if it were some golden ideal of progressive thought compared to what else we get. You don't have to take my word for it, Joe Lieberman is coming right out and telling you that's his plan.
So what do we do? Do we capitulate to him? Do we make him Emperor Sixtieth-Vote for the rest of our time at the levers of our democracy? Or do we cut our losses, cut him down to size, and try to approach our goals from a more reality-based perspective about our legislative strength and what tactics we need to be using to achieve victory?
Because like it or not, we do not have 60 votes on our side, and we never did.
Every single senator has the exact same power over the process that Lieberman has. I say it's time we stop letting him be the only one willing to use it. The sooner we come to terms with where he actually stands, the sooner we can stop using strategies that depend on his support to succeed. It's just like when we were screaming at Obama to stop trying to get support from a Republican party that was not going to help him under any circumstances.
We need to take our own advice. We need to cut him out of the process, and stop giving him this power.
We can start with the health care bill, by supporting House progressives as they try to defend the institutional legitimacy of that chamber of congress. Success on that front would be a huge step in the right direction; we could deal with a problematic Senate as long as the House is holding its own. As far as the Senate goes, we need to start thinking outside the box and change the rules of the game. But to do that, we all have to be willing to stare the other side down, and that means when our leaders are standing up to them (and by leaders I mean the people who are actually putting their necks on the line for real progressive change in this country, who are willing to go outside their political comfort zone), we have to stop cutting them off at the knees because we're too scared.
And frankly, we could stand to end the witch hunts of anyone that bothers to stand up to the institutional leadership when they are shirking their responsibility.