Politics is boring.
After all the hub and ub, the Obama Administration, the 60 seat Democratic Senate, and the 40 some Democratic Congressional Majority margin is about to pass…
Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts state Health Care bill from a few years’ back. This is where Joseph Lieberman’s desire to subtract has gotten us — back over to individual mandates with welfare subsidies at the lower income range and sans any cost levelling device (what the “Government Mandate” was supposed to be), or expansion of Medicare (with a high deductable). Two things to recall from Romney’s great adventure: first, Ted Kennedy was standing right next to him on that one, and secondly — well, Romney represented the right-edge of a Republican bullwark against a liberal Democratic Massachusetts legislator — I don’t quite know what to express Obama as in relation to his Congress.
… Maybe somewhere in the Obama / Emanuel / Lieberman axis of Legislative Political Effect against Policy?
A few points need to be made on Lieberman’s place in the Lieberman – Landrieu – Lincoln – Nelson group. In addition to the “Spite” angle, and the “Keep myself relevant” angle of Lieberman’s motivations, there is something in the breakdown of the party system, as against — say — Licoln. Blanche Lincoln has a self preservation interest in a successful Obama presidency — even if the other part of her equation, separate herself from him — is at odds and undermines that interest. It is the act of swimming in a electorate stream for re-election with an Obama at a 40 percent approval rating in Arkansas as against an Obama at a 30 percent approval rating. Lieberman, meanwhile, has a self interest in a failed Obama presidency — a Republican president elected in 2012 would tap him into his cabinet, and he can continue grand-standing in the Zell Miller tradition.
That is the problem of relaying on a process of 60 votes to pass through anything. In a previous blog post, I Monday Morning quarterbacked the Democrats to could have should have (would have?) changed the rule at the start of 2007 — when the effect was in the distance and beyond immediate fights. Though, then we may just see Conservative Dems come out of the woodwork to do what it currently takes all of one Lieberman to do — curb the liberals to get the “only thing non-negotiable” is to sign something.
There we see the other end of the Case against the Political Ideolouges of Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul — fighting as they do for narrowly defined principles as against narrowly defined political effect. Funny thing here — as we see Howard Dean bleat about, having argured for passing what parts can be passed through this process and some parts passed through Reconciliation (which, I guess, would require some gimmick to seperate it in the minds of the 60 vote requirers) — and who knows what the effectiveness of the Dean strategum would have been — but he would represent the center point against the Obama / Emanuel / Lieberman political effect versus Ron Paul / Dennis Kucinich Ideologue hunter… though, at this point, everything gets drowned from him down to “Kill the Bill”. Then again, Dean has other priorities of policy than Obama.