Collective Conscious

Lieber­man, via TPM:

“I’ve told them that I can’t sup­port a trigger–no, actu­ally, to be more explicit: If they say that it’s unlikely to be [pulled] then it’s unnec­es­sary,” Lieber­man said. “It’s an irri­tant. And I keep say­ing to my col­leagues: the under­ly­ing bill, that I would say 60 of us in the cau­cus sup­port, that is, the parts that we sup­port in the under­ly­ing bill, are so full of progress–let’s get that done, and stop try­ing to squeeze in things that some of us, respect­fully, just won’t accept.”

I actu­ally think that’s a very valid argu­ment. Policy-​​wise, a trig­ger that will never be trig­gered is not worth fight­ing over, from leadership’s per­spec­tive or from Lieberman’s. Its one virtue is that it will serve as a last-​​ditch bar­gain­ing chip to secure Lieberman’s nec­es­sary vote, even if it’s slated to get the axe in the end. I really do think we have him on board, and I don’t think he’s the hard­est vote to get. If a well-​​scored com­pro­mise comes out of CBO, and the pub­lic option can be nego­ti­ated off into irrel­e­vance while the Medicare expan­sion stands, we’ll be able to pass a half-​​decent social insur­ance expan­sion while simul­ta­ne­ously pulling off a much more impor­tant feat: the under­ly­ing bill. And that’s where I agree with Lieberman.