Joe Lieberman's threat to filibuster any health care bill with a public option could kill health reform this year. | AP Photo | John Shinkle/POLITICO Lieberman brushes off critics

Sen. Joe Lieberman’s threat to filibuster any health care bill with a public option could kill health reform this year — and embolden Democratic challengers who’d like to send him packing in 2012.

But Lieberman doesn’t seem worried.


“I don’t think about that stuff,” Lieberman told POLITICO this week. “I’m just — I’m being a legislator. After what I went through in 2006, there’s nothing much more that anybody [who] disagrees with me can try to do.”

Lieberman left the Democratic Party in 2006 after liberal Ned Lamont beat him in Connecticut’s Democratic Senate primary. Lieberman defeated Lamont in the general election and returned to Washington as an independent, where he continues to caucus with Democrats — even though he accuses them of engaging in a bit of bait and switch when it comes to the public option.

“It’s classic politics of our time that if you look at the campaign last year, presidential, you can’t find a mention of public option,” Lieberman said. “It was added after the election as a part of what we normally consider health insurance reform — insurance market reforms, cover people, cover people who are not covered.

In fact, the 2008 Democratic Party Platform referred to the need for a “public plan,” and candidate Barack Obama referred more than once to the idea of providing people who can’t get private insurance with government-backed insurance similar to that which members of Congress get.

But Lieberman says support for the public option has now become a “litmus test” for Democrats, adding: “I thought Democrats were against litmus tests.”

Despite the strong words against some in his old party, Lieberman still entertains the idea of a reunion. Asked this week if he might run again as a Democrat in 2012, Lieberman smiled and said, “Yeah, sure.”

“I’m for health care reform,” Lieberman told POLITICO. “And, of course, this will all be over by then, and I hope we will be strongly supporting health care reform. I haven’t changed my thoughts about 2012, which is, I’m keeping all my options open.

“The wonderful thing of being an independent: You have options.”

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), No. 4 in the Senate GOP leadership, said if Lieberman wants to become a Republican, he “would be welcomed, and there would be a real effort to make him feel at home.”

But when it comes to the Democratic Party, political experts and polls suggest that Lieberman’s options may be more limited.

“My sense is that when he announced he would filibuster the public option, he was saying goodbye to the Democratic Party,” said Doug Schwartz, director of the Quinnipiac University poll in Hamden, Conn. “My sense is, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

In a new Quinnipiac poll, Connecticut voters said by a 2-to-1 margin that Lieberman’s views on the issues put him closer to Republicans than to Democrats. And just 12 percent of the respondents said he should run as a Democrat if he runs again in 2012; 55 percent said he should remain an independent, while 20 percent said he should cross over completely and run as a Republican.

In an interview, Richard Blumenthal, the state attorney general, said he’s getting more encouragement from Democrats in Connecticut to consider a challenge to Lieberman in 2012. A February Quinnipiac poll found that Blumenthal would beat Lieberman by a 28-point margin.

A September Research 2000 poll found that Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell would defeat both Blumenthal and Lieberman in a potential three-way 2012 matchup; the same poll found that 68 percent of the state’s voters support the public option.

Blumenthal has long signaled an interest in the seat and may have an opening now that Lamont appears to be prepared to run for governor and Rell has announced she won’t seek a third term next year.

Blumenthal said he was first focusing on his own reelection bid in 2010 before “considering other options” for the 2012 cycle.

“I’m disappointed by his threat to filibuster and effectively kill all health reform,” said Blumenthal, adding that there have been “depths and breadths” of anger at Lieberman over his position on the public option.

Democratic strategists in the state said that Blumenthal may not be alone in sensing an opportunity against Lieberman, with some also pointing to two-term Rep. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) as a potential challenger.

George Jepsen, a former state party chairman and former state Senate majority leader, said that Lieberman may be attempting to endear himself to GOP voters, since he could potentially win in 2012 by picking off 75 percent of Republican voters, about half of the independent vote and about one-quarter of Democrats.

“He’s really burned every bridge in sight,” Jepsen said of Lieberman’s relationship with the Democratic Party.

Lieberman, the Democrats’ 2000 vice presidential nominee, campaigned for Republican John McCain in 2008 and criticized Democrat Barack Obama on foreign policy issues. Sympathetic Democrats have long insisted that Lieberman is an important ally on domestic issues. But by vowing to block a vote on the public option, he has distanced himself from the party on a key domestic policy front.

Lieberman said it’s the “wrong time” to create a government insurance program, claiming it would increase the national debt, probably raise taxes and increase premiums for insurance holders.

But Democrats said that Lieberman is employing GOP talking points in distorting the virtues of a public option, noting it’s the one entity that could control costs — by adding a major new provider to the marketplace that would force private insurers to reduce their costs. And while other centrist senators have expressed reservations about the public option, no Democrat has gone so far as to threaten a filibuster, which could only be defeated with 60 votes.

Lieberman said he won’t block efforts to begin the debate, but he will filibuster a public option to end the debate.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said he didn't want to speculate how Senate Democrats would deal with a Lieberman filibuster, but he pushed back on calls from the left to threaten Lieberman.

"A harder line does not deliver votes," Durbin said. "In the end, we need 60 votes. We want to work with Sen. Lieberman -- try to -- if we can resolve any differences that he has and come up with a bill that we can all support."

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