Let’s start with an excerpt from today’s piece in The New Republic by Jonathan Cohn:

The public option is dead this morning. And this time, it isn’t coming back to life. The Senate isn’t going to include any version of the idea in its bill. And while the House can still demand a public option in conference, nobody I know expects the House to prevail.

The primary causes of death were the fierce opposition of special interests and the institutional habits of the United States Senate, in which a clear majority of senators representing an even clearer majority of the people lack the power to pass a bill. The time of death? Somewhere around 6:30 p.m. last night, during a meeting of the Democratic caucus, in which Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the votes for a public option just weren’t there–and that passing a health care reform bill, as quickly as possible, was too important to risk further debate and delay.

After the meeting, even stalwart public option defenders like Sherrod Brown and Jay Rockefeller signaled their grudging agreement. And that’s because they knew Reid was right. The Majority Leader had spent most of the last month trying to round up the votes for a public option and, when the votes weren’t there, he put negotiators in a room to come up with an acceptable compromise. They did, only it still wasn’t acceptable enough for Senator Joe Lieberman. And without Lieberman, the Democrats couldn’t move forward, at least not without great risk to the broader project. At the end of the day, Brown and Rockefeller and their allies simply care too much about people struggling with their medical bills–people who would still benefit, clearly, from reform without a public option–to mount further resistance. Lieberman, by all appearances, felt no compunction to put people over pique. That’s why he won.

Disappointed progressives may be wondering whether their efforts were a waste. They most decidedly were not. The campaign for the public option pushed the entire debate to the left–and, to use a military metaphor, it diverted enemy fire away from the rest of the bill. If Lieberman and his allies didn’t have the public option to attack, they would have tried to gut the subsidies, the exchanges, or some other key element. They would have hacked away at the bill, until it left more people uninsured and more people under-insured. The public option is the reason that didn’t happen…

I hesitated before including that last paragraph, as I don’t think we deserve to pat ourselves on the back for this, but I thought that maybe it would make a few of you out there a little less suicidal, so I decided to keep it… Regardless of whether or not we think that we as Progressives did a good job, I think we can all agree on one thing — Joe Lieberman is a miserable, vindictive little prick, who would rather see good, hard-working Americans die than give the Democrats a political victory.

So, to make a long story short… after coming to an agreement last week to “drop the public option in exchange for allowing 55 to 64-year-olds to buy into Medicare,” Lieberman came back to the Senate Democratic caucus yesterday, saying that he had changed his mind. Now, he said, he intended to block any bill with a buy-in.

And, it’s worth noting that Lieberman, until just a little while ago, not only supported the idea of a Medicare buy-in, but did so vigorously. Here’s a clip from the New York Times:

…Mr. Lieberman had supported the Medicare buy-in proposal in the past — both as the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee in 2000 and in more recent discussions about the health care system. In an interview this year, he reiterated his support for the concept.

But in the interview, Mr. Lieberman said that he grew apprehensive when a formal proposal began to take shape. He said he worried that the program would lead to financial trouble and contribute to the instability of the existing Medicare program.

And he said he was particularly troubled by the overly enthusiastic reaction to the proposal by some liberals, including Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York, who champions a fully government-run health care system…

So, as my friend Jim noted in a comment on an earlier thread, Lieberman suppported Medicare expansion until it became a real proposal that liberals liked, at which point, he promptly took the opposing side.

And, that, I think, pretty much sums up the character of Joe Lieberman. On the up side, while it’s much too little, much too late, people are finally beginning to see that Joe has to be gotten rid of. Here, along those lines, is a letter that went out to local MoveOn members tonight:

Dear MoveOn member,

First, Joe Lieberman helped President Bush invade Iraq, and the Democrats in Washington forgave him. Then, he endorsed John McCain, and they forgave him again. Then, he personally attacked Barack Obama at the Republican National Convention, and still the Democrats forgave him.

Now, Joe Lieberman is single-handedly gutting health care reform. The time for forgiveness is over. It’s time to hold Senator Lieberman accountable.

First, we’re going to launch a huge ad campaign to make sure every last Connecticut voter knows that Senator Lieberman is blocking strong reforms. Then, we’ll push Senate leaders to strip him of his chairmanship and seniority. Finally, we’ll work to defeat him in his next election.

Our goal is to raise $400,000 in the next 24 hours, to send a deafeningly loud message that we’ve had enough of Joe Lieberman. That’ll take at least 9 donations from Ypsilanti—can you chip in $5?

Sen. Lieberman has been one of the biggest obstacles to real health care reform with a public option all year. But over the past two weeks, he’s taken it to a dangerous new level.

First, he demanded that the public option be removed from the bill. Then, last night, he killed an expansion of Medicare—an idea that he himself championed just three months ago and that was added to the bill specifically to satisfy him.

He’s shown that he can’t be reasoned with. Most of all, Joe Lieberman can’t be allowed to stay in the U.S. Senate.

We can do this. Connecticut is a solidly blue state, going 60% for Obama in 2008. Polls in Connecticut show he’s in trouble. Thirty percent of Lieberman voters in 2006 said they would not vote for him again, and, in another poll, he trailed one possible Democratic opponent by a whopping 44 points.

We’ve had enough of Joe Lieberman. Please help raise $400,000 in the next 24 hours to send him home for good. To get there, we’ll need 9 people in Ypsilanti to help out. Can you contribute $5 right away?

Thanks for all you do.

Put some money in. It’ll make you feel good, like when you stuff a dollar into the Salvation Army kettle. I promise.

And the wrath isn’t stopping with Joe, either. People are also out for Lieberman’s wife Hadassah, and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who reportedly gave the word to Harry Reid to give in to the angry, little Senator from Connecticut. And, for what it’s worth, I think he deserves to take some heat for how this has all gone down.