Taking Flip-Flopping To a New Level

"It’s not entirely clear that Lieberman was offering a full-throated current endorsement of the proposal, but his tone is clearly positive and approving. It’s yet another sign, as if you needed one, that Lieberman’s current opposition to the Senate proposal doesn’t appear to have any roots in a genuine policy disagreement." - Greg Sargent's Blog-The Plum Line.  Video taken from an interview with a newspaper in his homestate of Connecticut.

What is clear is what he said yesterday:  "Lieberman punctuated the discussion by telling the majority leader directly that he will vote against the bill if the Medicare buy-in and public option provisions remain in it. Roll Call reports that Lieberman said he would also support a Republican filibuster of legislation that included these provisions.
RECAP:  1.  Three months ago, Senator Lieberman offered what I characterize as strong support for a Medicare buy in-for folks 50-55.  2.  Yesterday, he said in no uncertain terms that he will filibuster just such a bill if it contains a medicare buy-in and a public option.  3.  There is no public option in the current bill.

On third thought:  Now, the counter-argument is that Lieberman may well come up with a reason to back away from that bill as well. Given his obvious bad-faith negotiation, that's certainly a danger. But Olympia Snowe is not negotiating in bad faith, and she, unlike Lieberman, actually seems to care about health care reform. So even if you revert to something like the Senate Finance bill and Lieberman tries to stab you in the back, you can still pick up Snowe. (A fact that itself reduces the chance that Lieberman will attempt a second act of sabotage -- why try to knife health care reform if you can't kill it?)

Finally, the defining post by Lee Siegel as to who Joe Lieberman really is, and why he does what he does.
"I grew up surrounded by non-religious Jews who were guided by the principle of rachmones, meaning “compassion.” They were guided by feeling, too, but it was not the absolute certitude of fundamentalist feeling. Rather, it was the feeling that life changes fast, and that people are vulnerable. They were gentle and ironic people. They liked this Yiddish saying: “God loves the poor, but helps the rich.” They probably lost more than they won in life, but they never fooled themselves into thinking that they were doing good when they were merely doing well."