60th vote? Goodbye & good riddance

Do you think it’s struck Joe lieberman yet that he’s the biggest loser in Tuesday’s election? Brown will get booted in 2012; he’s little more than a trivia answer in the making. But Joe: He was the Dog Wagging the Dems’ Tail. He held them hostage for his version of health care (and anything else for which zero Republicans would vote, which was everything). He had clout; he had meaning.

And now, he’s got dick.

Let’s be grateful: Joe Lieberman is no longer the 60th Vote; he has nothing with which to threaten Harry Reid and Barack Obama anymore. The GOP can now filibuster the shit out of everything to come before the Senate, and the only thing Joe can do is pretend he might get McCain or Graham, his threesome soulmates, to maybe consider possibly perhaps…. Everyone knows that the Dems’ agenda in the Senate, not to mention the Congress and the nation, is pretty well screwed in that regards. So Joe?

A big fat zero.

Same for Ben Nelson, and Mary Landreiu, and anyone else in the Democratic caucus who thought they could leverage that 60th vote for their own gain. It’s gone, and the wonderful irony is that had they not played that game, especially with health care reform, they might have undermined the momentum in Massachusetts that led independent voters to vote for Brown. They hoisted themselves on their own hubris.

I hope it hurts.

This is not cause for celebration, as such, but we can take a few minutes to gloat. The tiny-brained idiots who thought they could hold the nation ransom for personal gain now find they have nothing. Less than nothing. lieberman will be gone in 2012, and with luck we’ll see others depart this year and in ‘12 who put their own narrow agenda ahead of the good of the nation. If the loss in Massachusetts drives some of these craven fools from office, then wonderful. We’ll all be better for it, even if we have to spend the coming weeks with Rush, Hannity and the rest of the Fox-before-America crowd chortle as if they gained something.

Here’s what they do get: The clear message that failure to act this year is the GOP’s fault. Obama will continue to bring his programs to Congress; the House will continue to pass pretty decent legislation; and when the Senate is unable to do anything because the Dems only have 59 votes, there will be no doubt who is stopping government dead in its tracks. Up til now, it was easy to blame the Dems: “They have a super-majority; why can’t they get anything done?” No more. Now the focus will be on the Republicans to work with the Dems. We’ve seen Obama reached out to the GOP, and we’ve seen them respond with churlish obstructionism.

Now we’ll see them without the cover of the Democrat’s so-called super-majority. Not gonna be a pretty picture.

This will help Obama more than anyone, I think. He’ll still expect the Congress to take the lead on their legislation, but knowing how limited their ability to get anything done in the Senate, and with the message that a tea-party backed candidate can tap into voter discontent, I believe Obama will go back on the campaign trail as if it were 2008. And he should. The nation needs him out front, vocal and visible. We need him placing the onus of Senate failure squarely on the Republicans, but far more, we need him urging the country on to better times, better ways. The Democrats have taken a hit, albeit one that should redound to their benefit. Barack Obama, reprising his role as The Candidate, can take this unpleasant result in Massachusetts and use it to begin his party’s “comeback”.

In the meantime, buck up, me hearties. No longer do we have Joe lieberman to kick us around. His ass is toast, and it couldn’t happen to a more deserving fellow. Now Reid and the Democrats can set aside trying to craft weak-ass legislation and move on to their real job: governing. They have a majority, and last time I checked, that should be sufficient in a democracy. Have the House pass the Senate bill, and then have the Senate pass the public option via reconciliation (thanks to Henry Kraemer for that insight). This can be turned around to the good of the nation. Climate legislation was never going to be passed this year anyway; since they can pass a health care bill without worrying about “Senator” Brown (more accurately, that would be Interim-Senator), they should do that. They can then cruise into November with a solid record with which to maintain their Congressional majorities.

But only if they keep their eyes on what really matters, and tonight, what really matters is that Joe lieberman has a new name: Mud.

Fool should have done something to either save Coakley or sink Brown; I think the latter would have been right up his alley.