Ask yourself whose votes Joe Lieberman needs to win in 2012. He serves them. Anyone else can jump off a cliff. Or be pushed.
Pro Tip
by Tim F| 88 Comments
This post is in: Assholes
by Tim F| 88 Comments
This post is in: Assholes
Ask yourself whose votes Joe Lieberman needs to win in 2012. He serves them. Anyone else can jump off a cliff. Or be pushed.
Comments are closed.
Person of Choler
I answered myself that the votes he needs to win are from people who are worried about the size, complexity, and intrusiveness of the health care reform bill and are suspicious of the opacity of the drafting process and the tactics to ram it through the Congress.
Jab Facecrunch
Aetna’s?
Davis X. Machina
I’ll take all the action you’re giving he doesn’t even run.
bob h
Holy Joe is not getting the support of religious leaders in CT at this point. Last week in the Hartford Courant (12/9/09) I saw a full-page ad taken out by hundreds of them asking him in semi-sarcastic tones to think about his schtick on HCR.
MikeJ
@Person of Choler: I’m all for making the bill smaller and less complex. Erase any age requirement to buy into medicare. Bingo, one page. Still one page when you require the government to negotiate drug prices the way every other country in the world does.
I somehow doubt you would approve of the small and less complex answer either.
aimai
I agree with Davis X. Machina. Lieberman does not intend to run. If he can keep campaign monies for his own use, he’ll keep collecting money from PACS and Likud etc… but he and his wife are aiming themselves for a nice soft landing in a think tank or some insurance company or neocon sinecure. There’s no percentage at all in continuing to destroy health care if he’s running as a democrat. This stuff is way to high profile and CT voters (if not businesses) are way to democratic for this. And if he’s intending to run as a republican he’ll have to switch parties and lose to an actual democrat now that he can’t pretend to be best friends with reid and obama a second time, as he did in his stealth campaign against lamont.
He’s not going to run again. There’s nothing they can offer him at this point that will budge him. Its over. Its Reconciliation or nothing and they really don’t want to do reconciliation.
aimai
Brien Jackson
Lieberman isn’t going to win in 2012. Not a chance in hell. And he knows it too, which is why he’s free to be his sociopathic self.
Comrade Darkness
@Davis X. Machina: I don’t know. He craves a platform for his obnoxiously hypocritical grandstanding. He may pull in the whore diamonds as a lobbiest, but I somehow don’t think that’s going to make him happy. And he’s gotten rich in government just fine. Although, he could retire tomorrow and play President Lieberman on the horribly liberal teevee forever, so that might suffice.
I had imagined Hopey would make him ambassador to Israel and be done with him. Sadly, no.
Oh, and I might add the bestest of all reasons for Droopy Dog to run again? Getting even with the Democrats, which is his sole purpose of existence. Running on the Democratic line would drain the coffers of the Democratic candidate quite nicely. That’d be such a nice parting fuck you gift, I really don’t think he can resist.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Unfortunately for Schmoe, CEOs can still only cast one vote. I’m sure he’s working on that though.
kay
Take out the individual mandates and Lieberman will be lose interest in the whole process.
He was only in it to hand-deliver 30 million new mandated purchasers to private insurers. If he can’t achieve that industry goal, he won’t bother showing up at all, as evidenced by his no-show at the compromise meetings.
No point in attending a meeting on a non-profit alternative if your whole objective is to deliver new consumers to a for-profit insurer.
aimai
Comerade Schmo–that was one of my suggestions, way earlier in the term. I thought Obama should offer to appoint Lieberman ambassador to Israel and just get him out of the Senate figuring any other person would be a little less damaged and evil in that position. And then, after a suitable period of time, recall Lieberman and ask for his resignation.
aimai
trizzlor
As a lifelong CT resident, I’m pretty sure Lieberman doesn’t have much of a chance in 2012, especially considering the Democrats coming in from the minors to challenge him. I don’t like to psychoanalyze politicians, but I agree with the idea that bitterness over his primary loss (both towards the party and the voter) is what’s driving his record now. Still, as much as he’s killing the HCR process, I’m pretty proud of the Dem party for not pushing him out, as I imagine Republicans certainly would with an un-cooperative senator who doesn’t represent their constituency. Party politics is about getting votes, not personal satisfaction, and Lieberman wouldn’t be any good at all on the other side of the aisle.
BTW, if we’re going to start applying thresholds of size & transparency to our bills, can we start with defense appropriations?
Davis X. Machina
Anyone who watched the flameout of Zell Miller knows the trajectory Lieberman’s on. He’s not even that original.
kay
I still can’t believe his wife is some sort of international advocate for breast cancer prevention.
Can you imagine? Mrs. Lieberman, the former lobbyist, takes the podium and does some stern finger wagging on women’s preventative health care in other countries. Because she’s been such an advocate for affordable health care here, in her own country.
Christ. Are they laughing out loud, or are they too polite?
Maybe they send her overseas because no one there knows her. Surely they could find someone better. It’s a big country.
Fulcanelli
Joe Lieberman: Ambassador to the Harkkonen?
Brian J
Well, at least Lieberman will have a new show, besides “Morning Joe,” “Fox and Friends,” “This Week,” “Face the Nation,” “Get Those Buns of Steel with Tiffany Peterson!,” and “Meet the Press” where he can provide his unique spin on things. That’s right, folks, Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie are launching a new morning show on MSNBC!
SenyorDave
It’s all about his wife who pimps for the drug company (or is she a whore for the drug companies, can’t decide which one?).
Lieberman acts like a holier-than-thou Jew. All I know is I’m Jewish, and his values are completely non-Jewish, or any other relgion I can think of.
He’s a disgrace, and I would hope that he has lost every friend in the Democratic party he ever had.
JenJen
@Brian J: I heard Savannah talking about her new show this morning on “Morning Joe” and I think I threw up a little bit in my mouth.
Interesting that the new show will replace Dylan Ratigan, moving him to 4:00. MSNBC just can’t stop jerking David Shuster’s chain, apparently, now that they’re bumping him from the 4:00 slot too. Ugh.
Michael D.
OT: But did you know that about half the posts written on Sullivan’s blog are written by Patrick Appel? And I don’t think Patrick’s response to this reader is good enough.
I know I’m different from most here. I actually like Sullivan’s blog (even when I strongly disagree with him.) I kinda feel duped.
kay
@SenyorDave:
Ezra Klein is just brutal to Lieberman this morning and Ezra Klein is the most patient person on the planet.
The CBO scoring on the expansion of Medicare is rumored to be good news, so Lieberman decided to oppose the provision before that news got out.
It’s pretty despicable behavior, and there is “no real policy objection”, according to Klein’s sources.
He’s going to kill health care reform out of spite? What a great ending to an undistinguished career.
Brian J
@kay:
For a long, long time, I defended Lieberman, not because I thought he wasn’t an asshole, but because I thought he was acting out of some convictions, however misguided. Now I think he’s just a petty, vindictive little prick. May his sorry ass be booted from the Senate and be spent speaking at neocon think thanks with stale food.
Napoleon
I have a hard time believing Lieberman has any chance to win the next election after what he has been doing and he must know it. What I am wondering is when does Dodd finally take Lieberman to task. I recall that he more or less was still defending him a couple of months ago.
PeakVT
OT: via Atrios, big happenings in Copenhagen.
Brien Jackson
@kay:
Ezra’s been beating up on Lieberman for weeks now, although that post was a little more frank than anything he’s written thus far.
JenJen
OMG I just found the PERFECT Christmas present for the hard-to-shop-for-mom-who-has-everything!
Face
At some point, he’s doing much more harm than good, and when that happens, you need to kick his ass to the door.
Right now he’s making Dems look like complete chumps. Pride alone ought to be reason enough to deep-six his chairmanships.
Person of Choler
MikeJ, Actually I would like to see reform of the health care mess, but I would like to have the reforming done in a straightforward, understandable, and transparent manner.
By the way, I think that governments SET drug prices, they don’t feel the need to negotiate.
ksmiami
Tell him if he doesn’t support HCR that they will strip him of his chairmanships, then take him to the woodshed with Rahm and Axelrod and see who comes out more bruised. Lieberman wants to be a vindictive little prick, fine, PUNISH HIM. I hate that little man.
JenJen
@kay: Indeed. Ezra Klein is shrill:
Pretty much.
kay
@Brien Jackson:
I think Ezra is probably as invested in health care reform as any Senator, at this point. I’m completely sympathetic to his losing patience, and I was pleased to see him get so….frank. I’ve really enjoyed reading him through this whole ordeal. I wish he was on television more, because he’s so familiar with the progress and process.
kay
@JenJen:
Isn’t that great? If you’re pissing him off, you’re really bad news.
Michael D.
I predict that Joe Lieberman will lose his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee if he opposes the Democrats.
Er…
LOL.
JenJen
@Michael D.: Exactly. Maybe just a strongly-worded letter will do.
ETA: Don’t miss Yglesias’ take on Lieberman here.
SpotWeld
In CT.. he needs the union vote.
He was able to get some support from there with his work on the BRAC and keeping the Groton sub-base open (at least he campaigned heavily on that.)
In short, in CT, he has to win on the local issues. He comes off as really dishwater on the national level.
Jay C
@Person of Choler:
“Opacity” of the HCR drafting process? AYFKM? The biggest problem with trying to get any substantive reform through Congress (well, the Senate mainly) hasn’t been the opacity of the process but the transparency! Every single step of every part of every proposal has been exposed to “debate” – i.e., subject to as much obstructionism as its opponents can muster, and publicize for as long as they can. Whether it’s from ideology or just obstructionism for obstruction’s sake (as with most Republicans) – or for whatever dickwad reasons dickwads like Joe Lieberman can fabricate – the whole process has been (openly, publicly) laid out for the public to scrutinize – regardless of the complexity of the final bill.
Several things about the HCR debate have been “opaque” – mainly the details of who is getting paid-off by whom to derail it – but the “process” isn’t one of them.
jwb
Given that the senate leadership claims to be “stunned” by Lieberman’s threats yesterday, I would say that we are about to see the Dems strategy for containing him. Seriously, even if they thought he could be won over, the leadership had to recognize that there was at least a 50% chance (if not greater) that he would behave this way, so I would think that they already have a contingency plan in place. (And if they don’t have a contingency plan, then the entire Democratic leadership in the Senate should be thrown out for incompetence.)
Napoleon
@JenJen:
Nah, I bet he gets nothing worse then an invite to the DSCC holiday party.
@kay:
On a similar note I really like what he had to say about Conrad last week (maybe the week before). It was a coda to the interview he did with him several weeks ago the sum and substance of which was although Conrad seems to think the Republicans dealt with him and Baucus in good faith on HCR, and Ezra thinks he is being honest in what he thinks, Ezra thinks he is too close to the situation to really see the Senate/Republicans for what it is/who they are.
I also like that he has taken to addressing more and more Senate disfunction.
Kryptik
Either Lieberman’s banking on Republican votes as well as peeling away Independents who he can flimflam again, he seems content simply to sabotage the whole of the Democratic party right now, simply because some dared to challenge him (oh, forget that most of his colleagues in DC supported him more than sanely possible until he dared to lose to Lamont).
Either way….fuck him. He seems to want to be contrarian simply because he can’t get his dessert first, despite having prime seat at the big boys table and getting to choose the menu for everyone personally.
Scott
If Lieberman hasn’t been punished by now, he never will be. Reid loves him and would never do anything to him. Holy Joe could kill Useless Harry’s family, and Reid would shrug it off.
Lieberman is only part of the problem. The Democratic leadership’s inability to kick a little ass is probably what’s fueling all this Epic Fail.
Redhand
VIA TPM:
* * * *
If there’s a more narcissistic, hypocritical, and bitter asshole in D.C. than Sen. Joe Lieberman, I’ve yet to see him/her. And that’s saying a lot when you consider the wankers that are there.
kay
@Napoleon:
I didn’t see that. What bothers me most about the Senate is that clubby friendship aspect. Why is Conrad getting all misty-eyed about his colleagues? Can he not step back and look at this situation? Do they really think voters care if they have these personal relationships?
They’re throwing chairs at each other in the House but they seem to get stuff out the door, in a halfway timely manner.
Then we get to the Senate, where all these relationships take precedence, and everything stalls, forever. How does this benefit their constituents?
I’m being held hostage to their personal problems, as far as I’m concerned.
PaulW
Legal question: is there any way for the state of Connecticut to recall their elected representatives in Congress? Is there a way for them to force Lieberman to return to the state to answer for his sins?
Otherwise, this is now all on you, citizens of Connecticut. You all better be getting out into the streets in protest like they are in Iran, and you all better be calling for Lieberman’s f-cking head on a f-cking rust-covered platter.
jwb
@Scott: No, the time hadn’t yet come to pull the trigger (and in any case, we are unlikely to see the trigger pulled in public unless there is no other choice).
Person of Choler
@jwb:
Was there substantive and public debate on the details and implications of the 2,000 page bills? I don’t think so, therefore I call the process opaque.
If you could show me the records of detailed public discussions I would consider the evidence and could change my mind. You could start by detailing debate on the 111 new agencies specified in the bill.
Keith G
@Michael D.: I have figured for a while now that Sullivan employees two young Log Cabin types who do a majority of his back ground work and some of his writing.
PeakVT
@PaulW: Federal officeholders can’t be recalled.
Kryptik
@PaulW:
No. There’s no recall option for a US Senator in any state, from what I know of.
We’re stuck with Holy Joe until 2012.
Oh….and protests won’t do a damn thing, you realize. Protests work on the assumption that Lieberman might actually be swayed by what people outside of his new BFFs in the Republican party think.
jwb
@PaulW: I’d say large-scale public demonstrations in favor of health care are long overdue.
me
What place of worship should Lieberman be hit in the face with?
jwb
@Kryptik: What evidence do you have that large-scale protests won’t be effective? Have they been tried?
jwb
@Person of Choler: Take your rightwing talking points and shove them up your ass.
Brian J
@Face:
It’s not even that he’s trying to stick to certain principles. It’s that he is pretty clearly operating in bad faith, refusing to stick to an agreement molded to please him that he supposedly could be happy with just a few days earlier. He keeps changing his mind, finding new reasons to thwart the process.
He’s like a person in a restaurant who sends every single meal back five times, and then refuses to leave a tip even after his meal is comped.
Michael D.
@Keith G: Not that I know for sure, but I’ve never heard that either Bodenner or Appel was gay – let alone Republican.
JenJen
@jwb: I second the motion.
GReynoldsCT00
@jwb:
What you said and I hope so on the contingency plan, but it irks me to no end how much latitude he was given by the CT State Central Committee for too long and still by the Senate Dems. I second the comment calling him a vindictive little prick. Enough is enough.
And BTW, I think is smug and arrogant enough to want to run again. Every time I think he can’t get worse, he does.
Person of Choler
@jwb:
“Take your rightwing talking points and shove them up your ass.”
Now there’s a logical and persuasive argument.
woody
You’re right! He won’t run.
In 2013, he’ll be appointed Ambassador to Isreal, by the Huckleberry/Palin (or whichever PUKE) ticket which replaces Obama…
Keith G
@JenJen: No not shrill. Jeeese.
In fact, Ezra is understating this pig’s impact on the poor and lower middle class.
He is a horrible man. May he rot.
mk3872
Doesn’t matter. He’s banking on the short-term memory of the U.S. voters to kick in.
Keep in mind, more & more Americans now believe the economic recession & bailouts were Obama’s fault, not Bush’s, just as an example …
GReynoldsCT00
@PaulW:
You can blame the Republicans and the Independents, this Dem worked against him from start to finish thank you very much. And contacting his office about anything is like kicking a rotten pumpkin, you get no where and your boot gets ruined.
Napoleon
80% of Dems want Holy Joe stripped of chair if he filibuster HCR.
@kay:
I am actually somewhat sympathetic to the whole personal relationship thing for various reasons, but more or less entirely on a practical basis. If someone tries to roll you on the basis of personal relationship or not do your job (i.e., the best thing for the American people) it would be outrageous not to put the personal relationship to the side. But many in the Senate seem to think the personal relationship is an end to itself (or like the family member of a person just found with 4 decapitated bodies in a freeze in the basement they can’t seem to bring themselves to believe that yes someone they believed in could do something like sell tens of thousands of lives down the river because they want to stick it to people who supported Ned Lamont).
Anyway, ultimately the filibuster is the problem here. If it goes no one cares what Nelson and Lieberman think.
JenJen
@Keith G: Oh, I agree with you. Tough to explain, but I use the word “shrill” in the comical sense. You know, “Shrill columnist is shrill” is one of those internet traditions of which we should all be aware. :-)
@Person of Choler: I found it as compelling as your response to comment #34, personally. Oh, wait… you didn’t actually respond to comment #34.
zmulls
I’m with those who think Lieberman is not going to run. He conned Independents last time by pretending to be an honest middle-of-the-road broker, and he knows he can’t run the same con two times running. Everyone to the left of Mitch McConnell hates him.
His wife is connected to the insurance industry. A quid pro quo will be impossible to prove and not explicitly criminal — but my guess is that if he kills Health Care Reform and can manage to preserve the mandate (giving the industry lots of new sheep to shear), he will get a half-million-dollar-a-year consulting position with a signing bonus at a major health-care provider.
While I’m sure he doesn’t mind pissing off DFH’s, that can’t be the whole of it. He doesn’t have any legacy now to protect. I think his post-Senatorial career is assured, as long as he delivers the goods on this issue. That’s why he keeps changing his rationale, and keeps moving the goalposts — it doesn’t matter what the reason is, he has to vote no and kill it, or no sinecure.
Col. Klink
He’s probably not running. He’ll take a big, fat job with Aetna or something and stuff his face with cash.
That said, I sincerely hope every American in greater New England who dies from lack of health insurance (and there will be thousands) in the coming years end up piled up on his front lawn. Maybe a huge mound of rotting corpses on his doorstep will make him feel some degree of shame. At least Hadassah and the neighbors will bitch to him about the stench.
Kryptik
@jwb:
Hrm…you know what, apologies. I think I misread PaulW’s intent for the protests.
Protests hoping to change Lieberman’s mind are pointless, just by looking at Lieberman’s modus operandi.
Protests hoping to get the other Dems to actually kick Lieberman’s ass to the curb…now that might actually get somewhere. Just hope the decision isn’t going to be left solely on Reid’s plate.
Keith G
@Michael D.: Read their own (non Dish) stuff, I have. Their politics is not far removed from their mentor’s, and that’s not a negative observation.
bago
@Person of Choler: If ten pages a day is too much for you to digest, I’ll be sure to keep that in mind for future policy debates.
El Cid
I don’t see why legislation that affects a major portion of our economy and the vast majority of our population should have to have many words and take up many pages.
All laws should be less than 20 words. This will help somehow. Also, brain hurt.
JenJen
@Michael D.: No kidding. “We tried bylines once and it made the blog read funny.” Seriously??
El Cid
Does he actually keep his cash in his cheeks and jowls? That would be an efficient use of space.
thomas Levenson
@SenyorDave: Exactly. Joe is the kind of Jew Isiah had in mind in the passage read on Yom Kippur:
I’m not much of a Jew as the Rabbis would have reckoned it…but if there is a core to any claim I have to religious practice, Isiah nails it. And by those lights, Joe has some ‘splainin to do…as always IMHO.
gnomedad
@JenJen:
Haha! That lady looks like Bible Spice herself plus a decade or two. Are you sure that didn’t slip through a temporal rift?
Bob In Pacifica
Lieberman is representing Hartford here. The question is whether he’s doing this because he wants to sabotage the bill (because the insurance industry thinks that they can sabotage the bill) or to get a few more percentage points of profit out of the bill (for the insurance company). That’s it. Lieberman cares not about people without insurance. He cares for insurance companies.
It would be nice to see Lieberman booted from all positions of power in the Democratic Party and that his constituents (insurance companies) suffer for his intransigence. Won’t happen, but it would be nice.
Mr Furious
@Michael D.: I agree, that’s a horseshit excuse/rationalization.
On the other hand, over the last few days, Sully’s blog has been riddled with “non-Andrew” bylines and I skip right on by. So he’s right that it hurts the blog.
But knowing this probably hurts it more.
Person of Choler
@bago:
Unfortunately, reading the drafts as they become available is not the same as following debate on what the provisions mean and what their implications are. I’d like to find out more of what the “Intent of the legislature” is.
CalD
My best guess is that Lieberman will try and run as a Republican next time around. He burned too many bridges in ’06 to ever run again as a Democrat again. I doubt that even he believes he could win as an indie in a real 3-way race and if the Republicans won’t put up a candidate next time around I’ll bet the Club for Growth and/or someone like them will.
And of course if his ego would let him retire from the club and rest on his laurels we wouldn’t be having this conversation. If I’m right he’s racking up Brownie points for a party switch and the fact that he gets to stick it to people who hurt his widdle feewings last time in the process, that’s just cake.
jwb
@CalD: No, I don’t think Lieberman’s looking for a party change. If that was the plan, I think he’d have already done it. So if he does change parties at this point, I think it will because he is forced out (or believes he is about to be forced out). As to whether he will run again, my sense is that he is not planning to, but that he’ll reevaluate come 2011.
Persia
I don’t think Lieberman will run; I think he’ll retire to a nice fat Republican-friendly lobbying career.
Ezra’s getting pissed. Bloggers, take up the 150,000-life meme and run with it, please!
Redhand
@70, Thos. Levenson.
Great post! To a goy it’s priceless to read the the put-down of Holy Joe as “the kind of Jew Isiah had in mind in the passage read on Yom Kippur.”
I particularly like the “Because on your fast day – You see to your business” part.
Mr Furious
Lieberman has no intention of running again, but he can’t say that yet.
Reid and Obama blew this last year when they blinked with Lieberman. The writing was on the wall with HoJo, and they thought they could put a leash on him. Stupid.
It was one of a long line of stupid, weak moves by Reid, and a surprisingly boneheaded play by Obama.
He wasn’t needed to give the Dems 51 and the majority and all that came with that (which would have been worth it), he was simply padding the lead short of 60.
For them to think he would reliably vote with Dems in exactly this type of situation is the height of naivety. If anything should be clear after his campaigning for McCain, it’s that he doesn’t give a shit about the Democratic partyor agenda, only himself and jockeying for whatever comes after this term, because he sealed his fate with the voters a long time ago.
His move towards McCain was a calculated and transparent gamble towards a position in that Cabinet. He lost and should have been castrated for it. Instead, they let him keep his chairs and seniority, and have let him run rampant all over them every day since.
Now Lieberman really DOES hold some cards. They can’t yank his Chairs effective immediately, and if they hammer him now, he can use his Committee to make life very difficult for Obama.
Punishing him then will have the optics of a cover-up and/or protecting Obama.
In essence, they blew this thirteen months ago. Lieberman would still be the GOP’s 41st vote, but he’d be neutered otherwise.
jwb
@Mr Furious: I don’t pretend to understand this part of the Senate rules, but surely since Lieberman is an independent there must be something in the deal he has with the Dems that serves as a check on him simply going over to the Republicans and retaining his chair. I seem to recall something about Lieberman needing to vote with the caucus on certain procedural matters.
Barry
jwb, if they do anything to him, it’ll be the first time that they did anything to any Dem Senator, for many, many years (probably decades). I’d love to see it, and I’d pay good money for a hi-def DVD with surround sound, but I don’t believe it until it’s happened, and been confirmed by multiple sources.
As for Lieberman’s plans, they seem to me to be:
1) Be a maximum *sshole, boosting his ego and bankroll.
2) F*ck the Democratic Party and Obama – seriously, he really hopes to trash the administration. And, of course, f*cking the Democratic Party seems to be a consequence-free behavior, even for Senators who are caucusing with the Dems.
3) In 2012, there’s a choice:
a) Retire with many millions of bribes in the the bank, and many more millions every year from grateful insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
b) If the Obama looks in actual reach of not being re-elected [1], run as a Republican, against Obama and those Evul Librul Dems. His hope here would be that the GOP president would have good enough coattails to get Lieberman reelected (along with truly massive corp support, and massive disillusion and horrible turnout among liberals).
[1] I’d put my money on Obama being reelected in 2012, but the major obstacle to Obama having a truly tough re-election campaign is really the absence of a good GOP candidate. Right now he seems to be government more as a barely-credibly centrist Democrat who’s being well paid by the GOP to do a bit of clean-up with minimal damage to corporate interests, trash the Democratic Party in doing so and restore the GOP in 2012.
slippy
@Fulcanelli: Lieberman needs to be made Ambassador to Venus.
Mr Furious
I really don’t want to ever read again how “Lieberman [or other asshat Senator’s name here] doesn’t want to go down in history as the Senator who killed Health Care Reform.”
For Lieberman, that’s EXACTLY WHAT HE WANTS. His legacy is tied up in being a Junior Maverick, and straddling the fence playing his alleged party for fools.
Aside from that, the $$$ at the end of his or anyone else’s Senate tunure is more than enough to compensate for being an unnamed footnote forty years from now.
Kick. His. Fucking. Nuts. Now.
Mr Furious
jwb,
Any such agreement is strictly among “gentlemen” and not enforceable on Lieberman.
Worse than that, if I recall correctly, Reid cannot simply yank Joe’s seat between Senate sessions without a voteāmeaning Lieberman gets another year to find the Oversight Keys he lost during the Bush Administration and use his Committee to run all over Obama or actively scuttle any investigations of the prior Adminstration.
I’d be ecstatic if someone told me I was wrong, but that’s what I remember from this discussion last year, and why I thought it was particularly stupid to let him slide. They cannot punish him now.
Steeplejack
@Michael D.:
I was struck by the undertone of smugness in the two posts from Patrick Appel that you linked to. Ugh. But maybe that’s just me.
jwb
@Barry: In terms of being stripped of his position, it really depends on whether Lieberman has pissed off the centrists with his latest antics. As long as the centrists don’t mind, he’ll be toleratedāwhich is not the same thing as saying he won’t be punished nor that the Democratic leadership doesn’t have a plan to contain him. As I said, his actions have been entirely predictable, and I have to think that the leadership has a plan for that. In any case, the leadership is not likely to do anything in public unless they absolutely have toāso we may not even know that something happened until well after the fact. An alternative interpretation is that the leadership has no contingency plans and is basically incompetent, which is also a reasonable interpretation and consistent with the data; but for all their fecklessness, I don’t think the leadership is actually dumb and Lieberman’s statements yesterday actually had a bit of the desperation of someone playing his last card in them, so I tend to think they have to have had a plan for this situation.
JR
I tend to think of myself as pretty good at this whole politics thing, but I don’t see any way possible that Joe Lieberman can win in 2012. The GOP might nominate him and he’ll lose to a Dem, or he’ll run Indy again and lose to a Dem, or he won’t run. He can’t have our nomination (that much is for damn sure) and the fact that he’s a flaming liar and a hypocrite is not unknown to the people of Connecticut.
He’s grabbing staplers and light bulbs on his way out the door. This display of craven bullshit is to secure his future career, not his incumbency.