There is a lot of revisionist history going on with Lincoln and HCR.

Blanche Lincoln's vote wasn't needed on the public option. Why? Because it was ALREADY going to fail. Lieberman made it clear that he would HAPPILY tank the entire HCR bill if it had any public component. He would relish doing it. Once Lieberman made that clear, Lincoln switched so she could sound more moderate on healthcare in the general.

In fact, Lincoln SUPPORTED the public option on her website before Lieberman made his intentions clear.

On the other hand, there was a vote where her vote was absolutely decisive. It was the final HCR cloture vote. She could have SINGLE-HANDEDLY killed the entire HCR bill and possibly saved herself (or at least lowered the margin significantly) in the general. But she didn't. She voted for HCR (along with Bernie Sanders, Maxine Waters, John Conyers, Anthony Weiner, Dennis Kucinich, etc.), and that vote allowed it to be enacted into law. When her vote was ACTUALLY needed, she voted with us. (By us, I mean the VAST majority of the Democratic Party who wanted the healthcare bill enacted into law, which is probably underrepresented on DU.)

I didn't particularly care who won the primary, since it is clear that both candidates would have lost handily. If I were voting, I probably would have leaned toward Halter since he appeared to be marginally more electable (in case some scandal shook the Republican candidate and the margins decreased from 20+ points). But I am sick of hearing about how Lincoln single handedly kill the public option, when in fact she probably would have supported it had she been the deciding vote.

Or drawing lines in the sand on an already watered-down bill?

She will be running in a MUCH more conservative electorate than many others. So she is not going to push for a bill to be more progressive when she knows she can't make the bill more progressive.

I believe (though obviously I can't prove it) that she would have supported the public option if her support meaned anything for actually getting a public option. Her website said she supported it before Lieberman made clear his intentions to filibuster. More importantly, if she were solely concerned with her electoral interests, she could have voted against the HCR bill and single-handedly killed it. The fact that she didn't tells me that she is more on our side with HCR than most here think.

Lieberman is the exact opposite of Lincoln. When his vote is decisive, he will actually use it against progressive aims because he really WANTS to kill progressive aims (as opposed to Lincoln, who tends to come out against progressive aims for electoral reasons after they are already dead). And Lieberman comes from a liberal state, where we could elect a MUCH more progressive senator. Our attention should be aimed at people like him (and in the House), not people like Lincoln who frankly are going to lose the general in their conservative electorates anyway (and probably is more liberal than her voting record on non-decisive votes indicates).

Excuses aside, it sure doesn't appear that she was encouraging more progressive, liberal reform. On the contrary, her lines in the sand set a ceiling on the reform that everyone else had to work with. You are only as strong as your weakest link, and Blanche was among the weakest on this reform. Rather than appeal to her constituency and attempt to realign the political spectrum to any degree, she caved into what was surface "possible" in her state, and thereby, affected reform that will touch the entire nation.

If anyone is re-writing her role her, Im afraid it is you.

She did in fact have the public option on her website until Wellpoint (Blue Cross/Blue Shield) stepped up and paid her campaign something like $325,000. In late August or early September, she 'changed her mind' on the public option and declared it was too expensive. I wrote my letter, telling her I was done with her, on Sept. 3, 2009. She or her office replied a couple of weeks later.