Disappearing – Super Deluxe
Ezra Klein has a post today calling a spade a spade:
At this point, Lieberman seems primarily motivated by torturing liberals. That is to say, he seems willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.
This, of course, raised a firestorm. Charles Lane, editor at the Washington Post, called it “venomous,” “disgusting,” and an “outrageous smear.”
The response from a lot of folks on the left can be exemplified by Matt Yglesias here:
Ezra Klein made this observation early today, earning him a baffling response from Washington Post editor Charles Lane. Lane is basically pissing his pants at the prospect of pointing out that Lieberman’s actions have consequences, deploying hugely inappropriate and massively uncollegial language. He accuses Ezra of perpetrating a “vile smear” and of having lost his mind. But one thing Lane doesn’t do over the course of his 500 word post is point out any errors in Ezra’s item.
This coming from a guy who, as best I can tell, has never raised a peep of objection to George Will and Charles Krauthammer regularly using the pages of The Washington Post to mislead the audience about crucial matters of public policy.
As I said in my Daily Beast column on Alan Grayson, the stark moralistic language Rep Grayson uses makes people very uncomfortable. Lieberman’s people are squirming at the accusation that he bought his Medicare concessions by threatening to kill people. Lame Washington Post editors are squealing. There’s a reason: Stark moralistic language works.
I find this “but Krauthammer is a jackass” retort to be worse than pointless. Who cares? It’s a non-sequiter and only makes the rest of the argument look petty.
I’m also pretty sympathetic to Lane’s general argument, which is that we tend to look for ulterior motives far too often – and refuse to acknowledge that there can be such a thing as differences of opinion. I’ve said repeatedly that one of things I like about Obama is his apparent belief that it’s important to debate with people in the assumption that they are actually arguing in good faith.
I’ve also said that I don’t really like the Grayson approach, not because I’m against “stark, moralistic language” as such, but because I think that lapsing into that sort of approach far too easily translates into imputing bad motives on those with whom you disagree. When you’re basic method of communciation is accusations that your opponents want to hurt people, it gets very difficult to come back out into the world where people may be wrong, but still reasonable.
That said, Lane’s criticism is misguided because there is incredibly strong evidence that Lieberman isn’t bargaining in good faith. That’s the point of all this criticism.
When you have a difference of opinion based on the details of a complicated situation, or a different set of value priorities, you’re going to end up with different judgments about the importance of policies. That’s fine. Democrats can and should emphasize the moral case for health care reform, but it wouldn’t be fair game to say that the Republicans are trying to filibuster because they hate sick people.
The thing with Lieberman is that we have about as stark evidence as we’re ever going to get of someone who clealry has NO interest whatsoever in the actual value that this policy can provide. In short, we can be as clear as we’re ever going to be that he is NOT bargaining in good faith.
He has supported precisely this Medicare buy-in previously, and voted for something very similar to it in the 2003 Medicare bill. And not just then, but Greg Sargent gets us the video of Lieberman proposing precisely this deal as a compromise just THREE MONTHS AGO. He makes nonsense arguments against things and when those are pointed out, he simply moves on to different nonsense. He’s invited into meetings to figure out a compromise and refuses to go. Then he signals to Reid and co. that he will consider the compromise they put together, waits for it to get resolved, and then comes out against it before the CBO even issues its judgment.
That’s what makes him so despicable. He has no policy objectives to this – and tons of his prior behavior made it clear that he sees the extraordinary value in getting health care reform done – but is willing to block it out of spite. That’s horrendous, irresponsible, and the sort of behavior that should get you impeached.
Anyways, it’s always important to get to the bright side. And here, the bright side is that in spite of all the Lieberman shenanigans there ARE actually some people in Congress who have been working on this in good faith: the Republican Senators from Maine. No matter how much Lieberman wants to keep jerking people around on this, there’s always a fallback available in the Finance Committee bill which Snowe (and possibly Collins) will get on board with. In which case, we won’t need Joe and he can go sit on the the other side of the aisle with his BFFs there.
All of which means that we’re going to get a very good health care bill – even though it’s going to be a lot worse than it COULD have been. It’s probably going to pass in the Senate within a couple weeks, and there’s a small chance we could have legislation ready for the president’s signature by the first couple weeks of next year. And for all the twists and turns and frustrations and everything else…that’s a big deal.