~~ Lieberman, being a huge Iraq War backer, was defeated by an anti-war democrat (Ned Lamont) in the 2006 Connecticut Democratic Senate Primary. Lieberman then ran in the general as an independent, but got significant backing from national Democrats and squeaked to victory in a three-way race. One of the Dems who came to CT to stump for Lieberman, and against the anti-war Democratic nominee, was freshman Senator Obama. Three years later President Obama's trying to pass the ACA against lockstep GOP obstruction. The Dems nominally had 60 votes in the senate, but only just that, so any one Dem(ish) senator who wanted to be an asshole could demand any concession they wanted. Lieberman was that asshole, and demanded the removal of the public option, which you should remember had already passed the house by a safe margin. Although Obama was nominally in favor of the public option, as soon as Lieberman raised a stink he caved. Because of Ted Kennedy dying and Martha Coakley shitting the bed the Democrats lost their filibuster proof Senate caucus anyway, and so decided to pass the public-option-free Senate version of the ACA via reconciliation, a process which bypassed filibusters. Obama did not lift a finger to restore the public option after the 60th vote was gone and they decided to use reconciliation. In subsequent years, when bitter progressives blamed Obama for watering down the ACA, the favorite liberal talking point was that it was all actually Lieberman's fault, and since he was then an independent who'd burned bridges with the party the liberals feel that exonerates Obama. Since Obama a) could have saved the public option anyway, if he gave a shit, and b) campaigned for Lieberman in 2006, knowing full well that he was too right for his own state party, blaming Lieberman has the appearance of being a scapegoat engineered by Mr. 4-D Chess himself to take the blame for Obama going full neolib as soon as he got in a position to enact change.~~ Connecticut is home to multiple large health insurance companies.

FTFY.