Is Our Pundits Learning (Health Care “Reform” Version)

This is basically a rhetorical question I know, but as noted here, Joke Line tells everyone who will listen that Howard Dean is “dumb” because he urges a No vote on health care legislation that, except for maybe an amendment or two, does nothing to control the cost of coverage by expanding Medicare or providing a public option (though I will acknowledge that there are positive points to the bill without it …kind of like saying there are “positive points” to riding in a Model T versus a late-model Chevy sedan).

However, Joe Lieberman will continue to be treated with deference by the Beltway know-it-alls even though, as Ezra Klein tells us here…

We have a very sterile policy debate in this country. We talk about things in terms of costs, not lives. It's the equivalent of conducting wars from the air: You hide the damage. That might be helpful, in some cases. Too much passion can impede clear thinking. But we run the danger of forgetting the implications of our actions. It's fine to speak in terms of costs so long as we do not forget to think in terms of lives.

And as noted here, Lieberman has cut the guts out of health care reform as a “payback” to those bad liberal bloggers who had the audacity to support Ned Lamont in ’06 because of “short ride” Lieberman’s support for Dubya’s Not So Excellent Iraq Adventure…but Dean is the one who is called dumb (to say nothing of venal or callous, on Lieberman’s part)?

Check this out, Klein (Joe, I mean), and try telling anyone in these videos how “dumb” Dean is for actually caring about people who will pay the ultimate price for the cowardice of the fools we elected in the vain hope that they would actually represent us.