Xanadu Or Bust

If only Obama had channeled the rage of deadender progressives in his public comments, then Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson would beg for mercy and demand a much stronger public option. Did I get that right? If Obama wasn't weak and ineffective (or if he had the stones of St. Hillary of Clinton) then he could bend the will of a couple senators who would just assume that health care reform drifted away into the ether so they could concentrate on less controversial legislation. Is that what the far left is selling? Never mind senate rules and the unfortunate fact that having the exact number of votes you need means every Senator in the Democratic caucus is a walking filibuster. I guess this is what happens when you're a once-in-an-every-other generation candidate. People figure Obama can turn water into wine and Lieberman into a decent human being.

I need to smoke more drugs just to keep up with the hallucinations coming from the left. Talk about getting the vapors:

Joe Lieberman's reckless decision to blow up last week's compromise has had exactly the impact many of us predicted. Much of the left has flipped into vicious, angry opposition to the bill. Is that because the Medicare buy-in, a good but limited policy, has disappeared from the bill? Ostensibly. But not really. If you don't believe the bill has cost controls, Medicare buy-in was not an answer to your concerns. If you believe the mandate is bad policy, letting the small slice of exchange-users between 55 and 64 choose public insurance did not answer your fears.

Lieberman has tossed the process into chaos. But the short-term satisfactions won't overwhelm the long-term judgments. Lieberman is "point person" because he has appointed himself the 60th senator. Every other member of the Democratic caucus could have done the same, but most all have judged the underlying bill more important than their disagreements with it. Lieberman did the opposite, and there's little evidence that he actually had disagreements with the bill so much as dislike for some of its supporters.

Of the many things I find incredible about this freak out, it's the flimsy rationale that losing a weak-ass public option will turn us all into slaves to insurance corporatism. Unreal.