Lieber's Game

So what's Joe F'ckin Lieberman's game?  On one hand, Paul W. had a good point in earlier comments:

As much as I hate Lieberman more when he is happy than when he is concerned, giving him a face saving victory but getting a big down payment on reform is nothing to snub one's nose at.

Which is true.  Like it or not, the Senate's about horse trading and always will be.  On the other hand, Joe (and Ben Nelson) are still complaining about the Medicare/OPM compromise plan as "unacceptable" and a "deal-breaker" that they will both continue to oppose.

As Marcy Wheeler puts it,

Until we stop pretending these two men are brokering in good faith, we will never get to the point in the discussion of how we get the best health care reform without some industry mole spiking the reform. These men will not support anything less than an out and out bailout of the health care industry, and to hell with the federal budget, and pretending they will just poisons the efforts of those bargaining in good faith.

They understand that if they filibuster the plan, it's dead.  They keep trying to get what they can before everything is swept off the table and just put into budget reconciliation.  If they push too hard, the plan folds.  If they don't push hard enough, well, why negotiate?

This has been going on now for six months.  Every time they come with a new excuse, as Marcy says.  At what point does Obama stop giving into insanity and expecting a different result from these two clowns?

In other words, why is America's health care 100% dependent on the ego of Joe F'ckin Lieberman?  There's something fundamentally wrong with that.