I've been thinking about the report that the White House is denying that they told Harry Reid to give up on the Medicare opt-in and find some settlement with Lieberman. Regardless of who's lying and who's telling the truth, the story is quite telling as to just how bad the relationship has gotten between the Majority Leader and the President. Either Barack Obama is trying to strong arm Harry Reid, and Harry Reid is going public about it to kill the effort and embarrass the President. Or Harry Reid is planning on caving to Lieberman, all on his own, and wants to pin the blame on the President. Either possibility suggests that the relationship between the two man is crap.
Lieberman was for a Medicare buy-in program only three months ago. Since then, the idea actually might save health care reform, so Lieberman is now against it.
Matt Yglesias welcomes us to the Lieberman Administration:
I agree with Chris Bowers that in a lot of ways the real story here is that the Senate leadership has, at every step of this process, underscored that a “reconciliation” path to a health care bill is off the table. That means Lieberman has unlimited control over what happens, and no incentive to compromise, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he’s being uncompromising.FDL on the Liebocrats winning control of the Senate.
Andrew has even more reactions to Lieberman from various pundits around the Web.
