Moral Responsibility: Fortunately for us all, Joe Lieberman’s role as “Founding Chair” of “No Labels” appears to have failed to raise the chances that neofascist Republicans will dominate American politics in the next few years. And Joe Lieberman was just an average senator But it remains that case that, of all American senators since 2000, Joe Lieberman had the largest VBER—Value Below Expected Replacement. Other senators as bad and worse can be seen largely as transmission belts reflecting the views of the majority of the state from which they were from. Joe Lieberman made a big difference. If not for him, ObamaCare would have had a public option, for one thing.

No Lieberman sympathizers could ever enunciate a sensible policy reason for his decision to veto the public option. The only two possibilities that seemed to make any sense for his actions were (1) attention-seeking chaos monkey, and (2) a profound psychological need to show a Black man that he was not that powerful after all:

Mara Gay: Why Lieberman Hates the Public Option: ‘Theories explaining the senator's threat to filibuster the health care bill if it includes a public option… <theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/1…>