Lieberman and the Filibuster

So Harry Reid, under some highly salutary pressure from organized labor, decides to commit to including a public insurance option in the forthcoming Senate version of health care reform, and Joe Lieberman replies by announcing his intention to turn coat and join a Republican filibuster of any bill that contains a public option. 
There are two issues here--one particular and one more general. 

1) First there is Lieberman's flagrant challenge to the authority of Reid and Obama.  The pair of them kept Lieberman in the caucus, with full seniority rank and committe assignments, when a good many Democrats wanted him punished for his enthusiastic and highly public embrace of the opposition's presidential candidate.  At the time, the public rationale for ignoring this treachery was that Lieberman would stand by his old party when it really counted.  That rationale is now in tatters--not only will he oppose a key element of the party's signature legislative initiative, he will also join with the opposition to keep any legislation containing that element from reaching the floor for an up-or-down vote.  Unchecked, his defection will encourage wavering Democrats to follow suit.  The coalition for serious reform will collapse. 

If there was ever a time for the maximum application of party discipline, this is it.  Reid and Obama must make it clear to Lieberman, at least privately, that if he persists in his announced course he will be stripped of seniority and committee assignments, expelled from the caucus, and liberated to seek his fortune among his true comrades on the other side of the aisle.  He should be told that no expense will be spared to defeat his 2012 reelection bid--that he will be made a high priority target, even if it means replacing him with a Republican.  And the word should also go out to wavering Democrats (Nelson, Landrieu, Bayh, whomever) to observe this treatment closely, and to contemplate how they would like to have it applied to them.

If the Democrats cannot enforce a party-line vote on cloture--on at least bringing their top legislative priority to the floor--then the opposition will (correctly) perceive a fatal weakness in the present Dem leadership, and they will exploit that weakness at every turn.  The chance for additional substantive reforms, on a whole range of issues (first and foremost, urgently-needed financial reform) will slip away,

2) Second, and more broadly, this demonstrates with great vividness the enormous continuing damage done to liberal/progressive interests by the modern ("procedural") filibuster.  It is the single most undemocratic aspect of the most undemocratic elective body in the country.  And because it gives narrow (but compact and well-funded) interests a ready way to defeat highly-popular and effective policy changes, it does far more to damage liberal/progressive causes than it could ever do to restrain conservative excesses. Its destruction should be a top Democratic priority. 

To be sure, ending the filibuster would entail a titanic public fight.  Conservative interests (economic, partisan and ideological) are well aware of how depenendent they have become on their ability to use and abuse this anti-democratic tool, and they would defend ther prerogative with no holds barred.  Similarly, the mainstream media would eagerly take the opportunity to villify the Democrats for reckless "populism" (always a dirty word among the Washington press corps), and compete to play tin pot Ciceros to the vile Caesars of the left.

Well, let them come. 

Many of history's major political advances have entailed the demolition, usually through applied popular pressure for specific, substantive changes, of one procedural bullwark of privilege or another: the British Reform Bills, the post-Civil War Amendments, the court packing threat that finally pushed the Supreme Court to begin accepting the New Deal, the humbling of the Congressional committee barrons that made possible the passage of the Civil Rights bills.  If the filibuster had already joined these other oligarchical instruments in the dust bin of history, then universal health care and strong union rights, among other long-standing progressive priorities, would long since have become the law of the land.  And if we fail to destroy the filibuster now, when the party's strength as it a high point, it's hard to see how the hope for fundamental change can avoid being quashed for another generation.