Joe Lieberman: The man without a party

Scott Payne makes some excellent points about Lieberman and his lack of attachment to a political party:

However, if political parties are good for anything — and there are times where I fail to see that they are — it is for their ability to enforce a more immediate sense of accountability and provide a means of at least dissuading — if not reigning in — the kind of political grandstanding we’ve all just witnessed. Insofar as Joe Lieberman remains a man without a party who has, in recent years, cultivated a reputation for being, in the words of everyone’s favourite author, a real maverick, he places himself outside of the affiliated restraints experienced by most of his peers. In someone of character, such freedom and flexibility could be a real strength and asset, but all too often it manifests in self-aggrandizing and sort-sighted manipulation of a system that is all too open to manipulation.

And all of this just because Lieberman was willing, once elected, to step outside of a two-party system that most people acknowledge is increasingly ill-equipped to meet the needs to American voters.

This is a really good point and one that has been largely overlooked in discussion of Joe Lieberman’s antics over healthcare.  Sure, there are a handful of conservative Democrats who are also roadblocks to reform, but they have specific issues that motivate them and they can be wooed through the natural courting process.  Ben Nelson needs some assurance on abortion funding and then he’s on board, for instance.  Lieberman just seems to want to stick it to the Democrats, and he can do that because he’s not a Democrat anymore.

But the one important piece of this puzzle that’s missing from Scott’s analysis is that if we didn’t have a filibuster, or if we had a filibuster that was itself limited to a set amount of time, we wouldn’t have Joe Lieberman calling the shots whether or not he was a Democrat or an Independent. He’d be completely marginalized, and I bet he’d be playing ball.