Bitter, Party Of One

Peter Beinart tries to determine why Joe Lieberman - a domestic liberal who regularly received "nearly perfect scores from the American Public Health Association, which backs a single-payer health-care system" - is suddenly trying to sink the public option:

Because he’s bitter. According to former staffers and associates, he was upset by his dismal showing in the 2004 Democratic presidential primary. And he was enraged by the tepid support he got from many party leaders in 2006, when he lost the Democratic primary to an anti-war activist and won reelection as an independent. Gradually, this personal alienation has eaten away at his liberal domestic views. His staff has grown markedly more conservative in recent years, and his closest friends in Congress are now Republicans John McCain and Lindsey Graham. For Lieberman, the personal has become political, and it has pushed him further to the right. [...H]e's becoming a standard-issue conservative.

Make that a standard issue Republican.

(Photo: US Senator and Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Joe Lieberman listens to testimony during a full committee hearing on 'The Fort Hood Attack: A Preliminary Assessment' on November 19, 2009 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.By Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images)