A MoveOn parody of the Senate Democrats' lame response to Joe Lieberman's antics about says it all…
And if you're forgetting how direly all of this matters to black America, by the way, here's a reminder.
But for all the anger around Lieberman, the fault lies in the White House. Many of us have criticized the president's willingness to fight for his purported reform values. Salon's Glenn Greenwald, however, makes a different argument: The gutted, insurance-industry handout that the Senate is now preparing is exactly the bill the White House was playing for all along. He makes a good case. After all, when the White House has wanted to turn the screws on progressive congress members, it sure hasn't hesitated to do so. Lieberman's smug tantrum against liberal Democrats may well be fueled by the fact that he knows he's in ideological sync with the White House.
But the White House may have finally succeeded in making enemies of its friends on this one. As Huffington Post is reporting, labor — an indispensable part of any Democratic president's coalition — has inched closer than ever to breaking with President Obama. SEIU President Andy Stern, who has been a key Obama supporter, declared in a public letter to his members, "President Obama must remember his own words from the campaign. His call of 'Yes We Can' was not just to us, not just to the millions of people who voted for him, but to himself." Ouch. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka went even further in a statement, declaring the current Senate bill needs "substantial changes" to become "worthy of the support of working men and women." If Labor officially joins the growing cry to let this bill fail, Obama will have a true mess on his hands. One of his own making.