it's clear he does not have the votes. whence you listen to people like senator joe liberman on cnn's state of the union with candy crowley. basically saying that he and other centrist democrats are not on board with only extending middle class tax cuts. they want to also at least temporarily extend tax cuts for the rich. >> i think that, you know, it's easy enough to say that people who make a lot of money don't deserve a tax cut now, but the truth is, if you have more money, you spend more money, you invest more money, that's what we need to happen now to grow jobs in our economy. >> now, you'll remember how the president was trying to frame this a couple of weeks ago at a white house news conference. he was trying to frame the whole debate as republicans trying to hold those middle class tax cuts hostage, when, in fact, now he's got an independent democrat like joe liberman who essentially are holding this upright now because they also want to at least temporarily extend the tax cuts