[AngusJS]

Originally Posted by August

Why do Democrats always have to have a scapegoat to blame their parties flaws upon?

In this instance, Lieberboy does deserve a lot of the blame. He supported a Medicare buy-in in September (IIRC), but upon hearing that some Democrats were toying with the idea, flip-flopped.

http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.c...he-fallout/?hp

Mr. Lieberman had supported the Medicare buy-in proposal in the past — both as the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee in 2000 and in more recent discussions about the health care system. In an interview this year, he reiterated his support for the concept.


But in the interview, Mr. Lieberman said that he grew apprehensive when a formal proposal began to take shape. He said he worried that the program would lead to financial trouble and contribute to the instability of the existing Medicare program.


And he said he was particularly troubled by the overly enthusiastic reaction to the proposal by some liberals, including Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York, who champions a fully government-run health care system.


“Congressman Weiner made a comment that Medicare-buy in is better than a public option, it’s the beginning of a road to single-payer,” Mr. Lieberman said. “Jacob Hacker, who’s a Yale professor who is actually the man who created the public option, said, ‘This is a dream. This is better than a public option. This is a giant step.’”


Some Democratic senators who have discussed the health care proposal with Mr. Lieberman have said his positions are inconsistent and at times incoherent. Some say he is shifting further to the right politically in anticipation of a re-election bid in 2012.

The way he acted throughout the process gives the impression that he's doing this out of spite for being primaried.

The truth is the Democrats with solid majorities

As it turned out, not really. The Democrats had a ~54 seat majority in the Senate; the other senators either had conservative constituencies, or were Lieberboy.

...had a golden opportunity to make real progress on something they claim is so important to them and they blew it

This is true. Regardless of the shakiness of the Senate majority, the Democratic leadership could have done so much better, and deserve most of the blame.

Meanwhile the Dems tossed band aids at the real problem the people put their party into power in the first place. To paraphrase a Clinton era Democrat; "It's the economy stupid". Unemployment is running at 10% and the economy shows little sign of recovery.

Well, we have stopped losing hundreds of thousands of jobs a month.

Of course maybe that's because there are no more jobs to lose.

I have to say that if they don't expect to get "Scott Browned" on a national level come November the leadership of the Democratic party had better get on the stick and quick.

I agree. Obama's policies have done little to ensure that another financial crisis on the scale of 08 won't happen again.

Of course, I'm not sure Republican policies would be all that much better. In fact, if we had "let them fail" as a lot of conservatives were saying, we might now be wishing we could have just a 10% unemployment rate as opposed to what we'd have if the unchecked financial meltdown had resulted in the China Syndrome.