Lieberman holds his post (AP Photo/Lauren Victoria Burke)
Making up with Lieberman
So, “Democrats decided not to boil Joe Lieberman in oil after all,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. The Connecticut senator will get to keep his powerful post as chairman of the Homeland Security Committee despite his support for Republican John McCain in the presidential election. Democrats still have hope for a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority as long as Lieberman votes with them, so “Lieberman alive is of more use to the new president than Lieberman banished.”
Joe Lieberman is definitely “a survivor,” said Joe Gandelman in The Moderate Voice. The former Democrat -- now an independent although some progressive Democrats might call him a "closet Republican" -- will lose the chairmanship of a subcommittee on global warming, but that amounts to “little more than a slap on the wrist.”
Which amounts to a slap in the face, said Markos Moulitsas Zuniga in DailyKos, “for the American electorate that voted in overwhelming numbers for change from the discredited Bush/McCain/Lieberman policies.” In “a city known for tone-deafness, there clearly isn’t a more tone-deaf group than the Senate Dems.”
Lieberman’s fate “was always going to represent an interesting litmus test for how Obama and the Democrats would govern,” said Jim Geraghty in National Review Online. In the end, Democrats, so close to a filibuster-proof majority, couldn’t afford to give Lieberman the boot. “Score one for building a larger, and not necessarily consistently liberal coalition; score it as a loss for vengeance.”
Comment on this article
Recent comments | 6 total
None of the Obama team has any respect for Joe-the-traitor. He's a guy who is strictly out for NUMERO UNO, and he'd stab his best friend in the back to get what he wants -- and he'd enjoy it. Talk about a disloyal jerk who picked the wrong horse! However, the best way to neutralize this Benedict Arnold is to leave him in place and see if he cooperates with the Democratic agenda. If not, they can go after him later. He will probably be thrown out of the Senate by the Connecticut voters when he's next up for election.
This move makes the Dems seem weak - they always do - just let everyone get away with whatever - just doesn't seem right.
No one seems to remember that it was the Dems who kicked Lieberman to the curb when he supported the war and the Dems wanted to appear as doves. The Dems supported his opponent, and it was only by running as an independent that Lieberman, with the support of his constitutents, won against the party's manipulations. Why Lieberman wants to continue his association with this group of cut-throats and back-stabbers I'll never know, but aside from the war, he votes Dem straight down the line. All the Dems want is to get their 60 member filibuster proof majority. Never fear, the moment the Dems don't need Lieberman they will kick him in the groin and to the dump, and they won't look back. The Dems should be more concerned with the blue dog Dems who do not like the outrageous spending policies of the rest of the party.
Lieberman has been discredited and weakened, and although he keeps his chairmanship he has lost a good deal of political clout. Obama bore the brunt of Lieberman's bad judgment yet didn't want to get even in any way. That shows Obama's integrity and willingness to work with others in the best interests of the nation as a whole instead of just working for himself and his small group. That's change we can believe in!!
"Progressive Democrats" ... is that code for something?
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