Joseph Lieberman, senator and vice-presidential nominee, dies at 82

jeffw@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 185 points –
washingtonpost.com
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This asshole fucked us all over and made sure we never had the single payer option on the ACA.

He sold us all out for the insurance companies. For that he can fuck right off into eternity.

This guy almost singlehandedly eliminated the public option for healthcare in this country.

For that he can get fucked.

No, HE DID. The dems needed his vote to pass the ACA, and he made them get rid of the single payer option.

He had help. Ben Nelson deserves as much blame as the Democratic Party's vp nominee.

Dems are masters of "just needed this one 'centrist' vote" between their rank to be sure nothing progressive pass.

If you have no margin of error then that's the way it is. Every vote can be a veto.

What's really interesting is how the bar was 60 votes when this was happening but it's now 50 votes due to massive watering down of veto power in the Senate.

Yeah something the article bot (or perhaps the article irself, idk) failed to include.

Obits are usually written years before someone dies. What is included and not included is on purpose. Obit writer is a full time job for big papers. A good obit writer has a massive trove of them written about living folks. Its not (currently) a bot thing.

This fucker did so much damage to American democracy. I’m not one to celebrate anyone’s death, but I will not miss this asshole.

Note: I am Jewish, this man has never represented me or my religion.

I will always remember Joe Lieberman for his attempts to take away my health care and video games.

This asshole destroyed the public option, then a few years later my life was destroyed by medical bankruptcy.

It is sad that he got to live a full life surrounded by loved ones. He deserved so much worse.

Rest in piss, you wont be missed.

Welcome to America! It will happen to you again, too!

I say this a lot, but I'll do it again. We should always speak good of the dead.

Joe Lieberman is dead. Good.

Thanks for the no healthcare Joe, you bastard.

I thought this might be on a post I made about Biden and I was gearing up for an argument lol. But nah, nothing to dispute there

Biden ran on revisiting the public option in 2020 then didn't even try to do anything about it.

Centrists should read this thread to see how well they are regarded by history.

Hold back progress and call your obstruction "incrementalism" and you will have people celebrate your death.

No offense, but Lemmy /= history books. These are the same history books that laud Reagan

Reagan’s enshrining as a conservative saint was largely due to the efforts of Grover Norquist in the 90s.

Lieberman has no Norquist, as neither side cares for centrists. There will be some weird glowing op-eds from the usual corporate rags, but they lack the power they had in the 90s.

He will mostly be forgotten except in places like Lemmy, where he will pop up as one of those "hey did you know why we don't have proper healthcare?" TIL posts.

And the lesson centrists took from that is "be like Reagan."

Which explains congress' actions to prevent the rail strike.

EDIT: Also, it's real neat that when Lemmy is in agreement that centrism is garbage that holds the nation back, Lemmy isn't reality and its consensus can be ignored. But say that Biden should stop supporting Netanyahu's genocide, and suddenly Lemmy is used by so many people and is so instrumental in the formation of public opinion that Russia is paying shills to be here.

So, anyways... what's everyone doing tonight?

I'm surprised anyone cared about this post tbh. This comment just made me think about that lol.

Everybody's talking about his role in the ACA and video games, but I am firmly of the belief that if Gore hadn't picked him for VP he would have won the election. Having Lieberman on the ticket turned off enough people on the left.

Gore did win the election. He only didn't get into office because a violent Republican coup (the "Brooks Brothers Riot") forcibly stopped the votes from being counted.

I'm aware that Gore did, in fact, win the election. However, without the factors that mindbleach mentioned and, I think, Lieberman being on the ticket it would have taken the powers of Brooks Brothers, Banana Republic, and Forever 21 combined to overturn it.

If only he could have had the same lack of healthcare he wanted the public to have, this day would have come sooner.

Hopefully he and Kissinger are staying nice and warm.

I don’t believe in hell for a lot of reasons, but if one did exist Kissinger would have taken over for the devil by now because that’s just the sort of asshole he was

In case anyone wants to find out what the penalty for getting caught pissing on a grave in Arlington National Cemetery is

Im saving my one shot for when McConnell is in the ground. Not that he deserves it more than old Hank but I made myself a promise and I intend to fulfill it one day, maybe soon!

Just piss in a jar, then bring it to the cemetery, and casually kick it over on top of their grave.

A good plan if I can’t devise a way to do it more disrespectfully

Fill otherwise empty alcohol bottle with liquid of choice. No one's gonna get on your case for pouring one out.

Ideally, the bottle should have previously contained something gross. Like Malort.

Can i just mail some piss and have it dumped on the grave? Is that a thing?

Sounds like a business opportunity for someone

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Joseph I. Lieberman, the doggedly independent four-term U.S. senator from Connecticut who was the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000, becoming the first Jewish candidate on the national ticket of a major party, died March 27 in New York City.

His transition from Al Gore’s running mate in 2000 on the Democratic ticket to high-profile cheerleader for Republican presidential candidate John McCain eight years later was a turnaround unmatched in recent American politics.

Mr. Lieberman generally voted with his party, but he sided with Republicans on cutting the capital gains tax, funding vouchers that parents could use to send their children to private schools, and placing new restrictions on consumer lawsuits against corporations, the latter of special interest to Connecticut’s large insurance companies.

But unlike many of those colleagues, Mr. Lieberman continued to support the 2003 invasion after Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction failed to materialize and U.S.-led occupation forces bogged down in civil war and anti-coalition insurgency.

He helped enact a 1996 law requiring new TV sets to have a device that enabled parents to block objectionable programs, and he teamed up with conservative commentator William J. Bennett to hand out “Silver Sewer Awards” for media content deemed “cultural pollution.” Along with headlines, Mr. Lieberman garnered loathing from the entertainment industry.

Considered the most moderate of the party’s nine 2004 hopefuls, Mr. Lieberman contended that his record on the environment and social issues combined with his strong stand on defense made him the Democrat best positioned to attract independents and defeat Bush.


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