December 17th, 2009

Philadelphia Inq reports:

I’m not quite sure how we wound up with President Lieberman. Last I recall, he completed his sole bid for the presidency on Feb. 3, 2004, when he got his butt kicked by losing seven out of seven Democratic contests.

Yet thanks to the undemocratic rules and routinized dysfunction of the U.S. Senate, this guy gets the opportunity to issue peremptory decrees about health care reform, with the aim of bending the overwhelming Democratic majority to his whimsical will. All because he has set himself up as the crucial 60th vote in a chamber that now seems to require 60 votes for passage of anything remotely substantive.

My aim today is not to detail Lieberman’s latest craven act, in which he declared his stalwart opposition to the Democratic health reform compromise that would’ve allowed people over age 55 to buy into Medicare – just three short months after he had publicly voiced support for allowing people over age 55 to buy into Medicare, a stance he had also supported when he was Al Gore’s running mate. Nor is my aim to replay the ongoing debate over what really motivates Lieberman’s obstructionism. (Is he still bitter about his ‘06 Senate Democratic primary defeat? Is he trying to torpedo health reform in order to please the private health insurance industry that has pumped $1 million into his career? At this point, who cares?)

What interests me most is how Lieberman has become a prime symptom of the Senate’s institutional ills. He has been exercising virtual veto power over health care reform only because the Democrats sorely need him as the 60th vote, and the only reason they sorely need him is because – thanks to the omnipresent threat of a filibuster, and thanks to the extreme partisan polarization – the Senate can barely pass ordinary legislation anymore unless there are 60 votes to do it. That’s the bare number required to break a filibuster and thus prevent a minority from thwarting the majority.

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