The real reason why Lieberman is obstructing health care reform

See here (includes Hardball video).

FINEMAN: The other half is it's personal with Joe, not with Obama, 'cause don't forget that Obama, the President, supported Lieberman in the fight in the party in Connecticut. It's the grassroots left of the Democratic Party ...

MATTHEWS: That enjoyed his torture.

FINEMAN: That enjoyed his torture and this is payback to them. Obama, excuse me, the President's caught in the middle here. That's my take on it.

MATTHEWS: So he wants Markos Moulitsas to take a hit.

FINEMAN: He wants Moulitsas, he wants Firedoglake, he wants all those people who rode around on the bus of the challenger, who defeated him in the Democratic primary.

Howard Dean says (on Olbermann) kill the bill and start over with reconciliation. I disagree. Ron Wyden just said that things can be added later -- just vote for this thing now. I saw this from Ed Kilgore at Salon here:

...the fact remains that there are only 58 reasonably assured votes for cloture on the recently negotiated Team of Ten "deal" for health care reform. Assuming Ben Nelson can be brought aboard without highly divisive concessions on the abortion issue, that still leaves one vote to be secured from a universe of just three senators: Lieberman, Snowe and Collins. So what are the options left to the White House and the Democratic congressional leadership?

(1) Forget about Lieberman and go after Snowe and/or Collins. It would obviously be satisfying to most Democrats to deny Joe Lieberman the opportunity to be King of the Senate and Arbiter of Health Reform, or more to the point, the chance to screw up or kill the legislation down the road....

(2) Give Lieberman what he wants and then fix the legislation later. The key argument here is that the very items Lieberman is objecting to--an option for some younger Americans to buy into Medicare, and any sort of public option--are budget savers which could without question be added later (say, next year) via the budget reconciliation route, which only requires 50 votes....

(3) Threaten Lieberman with loss of his seniority unless he votes for cloture. Without question, it was a major mistake for the Democratic Caucus to allow Lieberman to maintain his seniority after the 2008 elections without an ironclad pledge that he would support the Caucus on all procedural votes, including cloture votes....

(4) Reframe the bill to use reconciliation. This is the strategy many progressives have been urging all along, for the obvious reason that it gets rid of the need for more than 50 Senate votes and also would make it vastly easier to craft a Senate bill that's close enough to the House bill to avoid friction in a House-Senate conference....

(5) Go back to the drawing board. Before resorting to any of the above unsavory options, health reform supporters will undoubtedly make some effort to devise yet another compromise that can obtain that 60th vote without losing existing supporters....

Maybe I'm missing something, but these seem to be the options at present, and none of them are particularly good. We may be once again at a crucial juncture where progressives--and most of all, the President--simply have to decide what percentage of a loaf is acceptable.

Tom Harkin says on Rachel Maddow that the bill is not a "mansion" but it has a strong foundation and can be added on to. He said it also has a strong roof -- that it will cover a lot of new people.