Meet the "slow-learners on the Dem side" and their Repub allies: the "Seven Senate centrists"

Beware of "Gangs"

by mcjoan

There's a new one, loosely forming in the Senate and comprised of some apparent slow-learners on the Dem side.


Note that that this group who were so "significant" to passing Obama's stimulus package were also instrumental in stripping it of what arguably would have been the most direct and effective means of stimulus--aid to states. That Wydena nd McCaskill are working with the same group that would also strip healthcare reform of its most effective elements is frustrating, to say the least.

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The bill for Lieberman's gavel comes due

by David Waldman


Remember back in November, when Democrats had won the election, Barack Obama would become president, and Senate Democrats were getting ready to reorganize an expanded majority? Remember when they were asking themselves whether there ought to be any consequences for Joe Lieberman's endorsement of and campaigning for McCain for president?

Yes, back then, Joe was "with us on everything but the war," and we had to swallow our pride and maybe even bet against our guts by allowing him to keep the gavel of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, because (we were told) otherwise he'd be tempted to jump ship and join the Republicans, effectively blocking the Democratic drive for a supposedly "filibuster-proof" caucus of 60.

We were urged by the likes of Evan Bayh, and eventually both Harry Reid and Barack Obama as well, that we had to put sore feelings aside and hold the caucus together, because one day -- if we got them -- we'd need our 60 votes to do something important. And of course, everyone knew at the time that that something they had in mind was the signature goal of the incoming administration and expanded Congressional majority: health care reform.

Leaving aside for the time being that the sweeping health care reform initiative is poised to become something closer to a stopgap, incrementalist health insurance reform bill, it really doesn't take much to see where this chronology leaves us. The bill for Joe Lieberman's gavel has come due, and you'd be right to question whether the people who sold you the deal are holding up their end of the bargain.

When Massachusetts sends us their interim appointment to Ted Kennedy's seat, the Senate Democratic Caucus will account for fully 60 votes. If the health insurance reform bill, watered down as though it may be, cannot get past a cloture vote now, the fault lies with a member or members of that Senate Democratic Caucus. And circumstances being what they are, the chances are that it will be a member or members who insisted in November that Joe Lieberman had to retain his gavel so that Democrats would have a chance to hold the very power they're now surrendering.

It would be a monumental failure of leadership -- both in the Senate and in the White House -- if the path they carved so carefully through the Lieberman thicket in November paid none of the dividends it promised.