Lieberman Back on Short List

Where before I noticed that Joe Lieber­man had been left off of the media’s short list of cen­trists who threaten to derail health reform, it seems that he’s now back on it (h/​t Sam Stein, HuffPo):

Over the Thanks­giv­ing break, Reid talked to those four sen­a­tors — Ben Nel­son of Nebraska, Joseph Lieber­man of Con­necti­cut, Mary Lan­drieu of Louisiana, and Blanche Lin­coln of Arkansas — to begin chart­ing out com­pro­mise approaches to reform, a lead­er­ship aide said.

You need 60, and each of these mod­er­ates has a very viable and polit­i­cally sound rea­son to not be one of those 60. They also have every incen­tive not to be one of 57, or 58, or 59, as the last hold­outs can claim pro­gres­sively more sway over the shape of the final bill.

If this group wants to see some real con­ces­sions made while avert­ing the risk that one or another of them will jump ship at the last minute and demand even more , I would think that they’d have some seri­ous con­ver­sa­tions among them­selves as to what pro­vi­sions could swing them as a bloc into that 60. Hold­ing out on an indi­vid­ual basis only makes sense if they can’t reach a larger agree­ment and would rather see the bill as a whole fail, which mind­set I can’t imag­ine for a set of already-​​vulnerable Democrats.

30 November 2009 – 4:34 pm | By Benjamin Daniels | Posted in Health Care, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (209)