Harry Reid's leadership has been about as bad as it gets. He complained that we needed 60 votes to pass anything and now that we have it, he still is complaining. We're not fighting the Republicans who have no power, but the Conservadems who are blocking real reform.
Bill Frist never had 60 votes. Bill Frist never cared. Republicans ran the Senate as if they owned the place, even when enjoying razor-thin majorities.
Yet when Democrats took the chamber, the first thing Harry Reid did was complain that he couldn't do anything because he didn't have 60 votes.
Then voters delivered 59 votes. And Harry Reid whined that he still couldn't do anything. In fact, nothing would ever get accomplished unless they had 60, and to do that, they had to bring turncoat Joe Lieberman back into the fold, even though he had spent the previous year making common cause with John McCain and Sarah Palin, even speaking at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota. You see, we were told, Joe Lieberman is with us on everything except the war! So we need him for 60, and when we have 60, everyone will get ponies! And if Lieberman strays, why, Evan Bayh said Senate Democrats could punish him!
We're told that Lieberman needs to still be part of the action because he's with us on everything except the war. Now we have to include health care on his list of shit he's against us on. What next?
Kos continues:
And take special note of this sentence:
Senator Reid is focused on crafting a health care bill that will overcome a Republican filibuster.
Republican filibuster? Democrats have 60 votes. There is no Republican filibuster, just a Democratic one. The problem is Reid's inability to keep his caucus together. His office can't even be honest about Reid's leadership failures. Fucking liars.
I'll take a Chuck Schumer-run Senate with 57 Democrats (bye bye Reid, Lieberman, and Lincoln) than a Harry Reid-run one with 75 Democrats.
We need an up or down vote on health care. If Reid can't get his own party to vote for cloture, he should step down as leader. He's a joke.
And Holy Joe is definitely standing in the way of health care reform. Is he just a mean old man who just wants revenge because he was a warmonger that got booted out of the Democratic party by his own voters? Why take it out on America and oppose real reform? He had his chance when he bolted and supported Sarah Palin and McCain.
Harry Reid promised to keep Joe in line and on Cavuto he's actively working against him. Lieberman tells Cavuto that he's against reconciliation because it would kill bipartisanship. How much bipartisanship have you seen during this health care debate? And once again this bitter man is talking the Republican line of "we're doing too much, and we must slow down." If he can't even vote for a bill that appeases the Baucus Dogs, then what will he vote for?
If one Republican vote for the Baucus health insurance "reform" bill makes it bipartisan, how many Democratic "no" votes on cloture does it take to make a filibuster of the public option bipartisan?
Maybe Glenn Thrush knows. Or maybe not. After all, he granted anonymity for this important observation:
"If there really is such a groundswell of support for the public option, perhaps senator Schumer would like to show the caucus, especially the centrist Democrats, how he can come up with the 60 votes necessary to overcome the [Republican] filibuster that he damn well knows is coming," said a senior Democrat.
In a full Senate, a "Republican filibuster" requires 41 "no" votes on cloture to sustain. There are only 40 Republicans in the Senate.
UPDATE: Mike Stark found Joe before he entered a car and asked him if he would filibuster a health care bill that had the public option.
The first person I saw on the Hill tonight was Senator Joe Lieberman. He was exiting the House side of the Capitol and looking for his driver.
I tried to press him a little on his non-committal answer re: filibustering health care over the public option. Maybe I’m inclined toward optimism, but I’m thinking he’s hoping he doesn’t have to make that decision
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