No sooner had they voted to move the health debate forward, than Senators. Joe Lieberman, I/D-Conn., and Ben Nelson, D-Neb., threatened to stop it in its tracks. Both "indicated Sunday that they will not vote to pass the package if it includes a government-run insurance program," no matter what the people in their states actually want, no matter what positive difference it might make. Lieberman's state of Connecticut is overwhelmingly for a public option--68% overall, including 83% of Democrats and 73% of independents. He's against it. No matter what. Private insurers are Ben Nelson's biggest donors. Nelson's been against a public option from the start -- back in May he said it was because the public plan 'would be too attractive and would hurt the private insurance plans.? Yet 46% of the Nebraska Democrats asked in a new poll would be less likely to support Nelson in a primary if he filibusters health care. At least in the House, so called Blue Dog Democrats claimed their opposition was based on some semblance of political calculus. Big city liberals just don't understand what it's like "out there" in tenuously democratic Blue Dog districts with a mid term looming -- the argument, mostly unchallenged, led to concessions after concession by House leadership. Even that conventional calculus deserves a second look. Are all those Blue Dog seats really in so much danger? Michael Tomasky, writing in the New York Review of Books, said it's not necessarily true that the Blue Dogs are ham-strung by their districts. "All but a small number of these Democrats won their own races by a greater margin than McCain's over Obama in the district. Thirty of them beat their GOP opponents by 10 percentage points more than McCain beat Obama." Moreover, as Tomasky continues, "for the vast majority of members of Congress, once you've been elected and reelected once or twice, it takes either a pretty big scandal or a rare historical tidal wave (as in 1994) to produce defeat." The Blue Dogs' opposition to the public option never did make much sense. If their biggest concern is cost: there's no more effective cost-container on the table than a robust public option. And the Blue Dogs' districts tend to be poorer?where people could benefit from a public option the most. So what's playign out here? It's not substantive; it's not even political in voting-booth sense. What's playing out is pocket book politics - the legislator's pocket book. Lieberman's received over $4 million from health related business and private insurance companies over his career. It's not people politics, it's campaign contribution politics that are playing out in the Senate. The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter.com. Less