General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: By Ditching the Public Option, Obama Gave His Enemies a Path to the Supreme Court [View all]JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)That item was the only real potential leverage.
Where you and I disagree is on how much Lieberman values those committee positions and what would happen if those were pulled.
I do think that Lieberman likes his committee positions a great deal, but not enough to throw the health care lobby under the bus. I think he places the health care lobby above his committee positions, and WAY above his constituents. After all, he no longer needs his constituents, he's not running again, so he can toss them overboard.
You have to also consider that Lieberman votes with the Dems about 90% with the Dems (source link below). I suspect that if they pulled his committee positions, that percentage falls significantly. And that's why Reid would not, and will not, pull them before the HCR vote. You pull them and you get no HCR at all, and then lose lots of other stuff down the road because Lieberman is a vindictive jerk.
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/L000304/votes/
Now of course I set this thought experiment such that all we need to do is flip Lieberman. The reality of course was that not only did we need Lieberman, but we also needed about 5 or 6 other blue dogs.
And you'd have to go through this exact same thought experiment with each of them as well.
When you do that, it gets harder and harder to figure out how Obama gets them all to go along.