In defense of Joe Lieberman

Why is Lieberman doing this? From his perspective as a senator from Connecticut, Lieberman has to know that the current health-care legislation does not create a viable environment for any of the major health-care carriers within his state. Competition by your regulator does not yield competition: It yields regulation, and results in the elimination of the private parties who do not get the subsidy from the state, and who suffer from its restrictions. But more to the point, Lieberman has only insisted on stripping out the most radical elements from a deeply radical bill, never challenging its fundamental policy priorities. From that Democratic perspective, I think Lieberman actually saved Obamacare at its moment of greatest weakness. If he hadn’t, by his intransigence, given a heat shield to the equally nervous Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Evan Bayh, Jim Webb, and Ben Nelson—and the leadership hadn’t acceded to his demands, giving Obamacare a “moderate” gloss—one would have seen an exodus of crucial votes this week, instead of the fait accompli that Obamacare has now become.

There’s a bigger, nonconformist point here as well. Why shouldn’t one senator block the bill, or seek to change it? Why is that in any way an outrage? Lieberman has become the embodiment of the moral middle—socially liberal and fiscally conservative—and I, for one, accept his word that he is acting in accord with his political conscience in refusing to join the health-care herd.