Lieberman’s threat of filibuster looms large

“Joe,’’ drawled Mary Landrieu, a Senator from Louisiana and one of Lieberman’s closest Democratic allies, “that’s when you were a liberal.’’

Lieberman’s mercurial ideology has amused, confounded, and frustrated Democrats for years. As the health care spotlight now moves from the US House to the Senate, the shape-shifting independent Connecticut senator and former vice presidential candidate is again aggravating his former party.

His vow to support a Republican filibuster of health care legislation if it contains a public health insurance option makes him a pivotal player and, he says, a spokesman for a silent minority-within-the-majority.

“Although I’ve spoken out a little more explicitly about this, it’s clear there are a number of moderate Democrats who are not happy with the public option,’’ Lieberman said recently. “I’d say the number not happy with the way Senator Reid has framed it is in double figures, which may surprise people. That’s in different levels of intensity.’’

After House passage Saturday of a health care bill with a public insurance plan, focus turns more intensely to the Senate and Lieberman’s pivotal role.

Other Senate Democrats, including Indiana’s Evan Bayh, Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, and Landrieu, have expressed doubts about a public insurance plan, but none has been as direct in threatening to join Republicans looking to kill it. Lieberman said he did because he worried that majority leader Harry Reid wasn’t “ready to negotiate on a public option now.’’

“I have the greatest confidence in Joe Lieberman’s ability as a legislator,’’ Reid said. “And he will work with us when this gets on the floor, and I’m sure he’ll have some interesting things to do in the way of an amendment. But Joe Lieberman is the least of Harry Reid’s problems.’’

Among Democrats chafing against Reid’s proposal, Lieberman cuts an unusual profile. He is the only one from a reliably blue state - with the most to lose politically from impeding President Obama’s agenda - yet was elected to his seat despite opposition from much of the Democratic establishment.

“I’ve always felt that I was an independent-minded Democrat, and I was,’’ Lieberman said. “Nonetheless, I do feel more fully independent being elected an independent. It’s just a fact of life.’’

Lieberman eagerly rebuffed claims made by liberal activists that his approach to health care has been shaped by insurance interests, more densely packed in Connecticut than any other state. He has received about $800,000 since 2000 from insurance industry sources, and industry-affiliated political action committees have given more generously to his campaign fund than those from any other sector.

“I’m not taking the positions I am to protect the health insurance companies in the state,’’ Lieberman said. “I’m thinking about the economy of the state and the people of the state.’’

The coming health care votes will be the latest stops on a long journey of partisan self-discovery for Lieberman, who was Al Gore’s running mate on the Democratic ticket in 2000 and John McCain’s sentimental favorite to be the Republican vice presidential nominee eight years later.

In between, Lieberman sought and failed to win the Democratic presidential nomination and renomination to his Senate seat. When he was reelected in 2006, it was on the “Connecticut for Lieberman’’ ballot line.

“Senator Lieberman has always prided himself on being an independent person, but I certainly think that losing the primary and going on to win the election clearly defined a change for him from a party perspective,’’ said Nancy DiNardo, chairwoman of the Connecticut Democratic Party.

Today, Lieberman is a registered Democrat who attaches himself to the party in the Senate. He likes to refer to himself as an “independent Democrat,’’ although he chose not to cast a ballot in his party’s presidential primary last year and was denied his right to vote as a convention superdelegate because he had endorsed McCain, a close friend.

After the election, Democrats agitated to expel Lieberman from their ranks. Reid, at Obama’s direction, rebuffed an effort to remove Lieberman from a committee chairmanship.

“There was a lot of pressure on Lieberman because of his position in Iraq,’’ said Dan Gerstein, a former Lieberman aide. “Reid just didn’t buy that litmus-test politics.’’

Lieberman has since voted overwhelmingly with Democrats as he aligns himself with hawkish Republicans on foreign-policy issues. This winter, he made himself a central player in negotiations that secured two crucial Republican votes for Obama’s stimulus package.

“The reality is that everything we’ve asked for this year or lobbied on behalf of, he has been pretty good on,’’ said John Olsen, president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO. “This is the first big thing coming out.’’

Yet Lieberman acknowledges it was unlikely he would be able to sustain such goodwill from Democrats. He is drawn to conflict - he celebrates “Inglourious Basterds,’’ Quentin Tarantino’s fantasy World War II film, as “cathartic’’ - and recalls the times he went against his party with the nostalgia some save for summer flings. Just thinking about a long-ago crossover vote for a capital gains tax cut brightens Lieberman’s worried countenance.

“I feel good, it’s been a good chapter in my career, I’m doing my independent thing but I feel I’m out of the crossfire,’’ he recalls telling his wife last month. “Then, Hadassah said: ‘Knowing you, you’ll be back in the crossfire some time soon.’ ’’

Lieberman used to place himself in the mainstream of Democratic thinking on health care, campaigning for president with a promise to deliver “universal’’ coverage. Today he describes himself as “a very strong supporter of health care reform’’ who supports stronger regulation of insurance companies and elimination of their federal antitrust exemption.

But he uses the Republicans’ preferred language when dismissing any public insurance plan, calling it an “entitlement’’ that is “probably being advocated by some people who really want a totally government controlled single-payer system.’’

The so-called public option, he says, is a “harmful appendage on the body of health care moving forward, but it’s a late addition to the body. If you look back over the discussions of health care reform over the years, there’s nothing like this. This became another litmus test, and I think a really unnecessary one.’’

Connecticut Democrats and unions are lobbying their junior senator to support the bill, although some concede that they are girding for disappointment.

“What we want at the end of the day is for this to pass,’’ said Olsen, who said his membership was less concerned about Lieberman’s position on a final bill than about his backing of a Republican filibuster. “We’d be disappointed in Senator Lieberman but appreciative that he allows us to have the vote.’’