Dems are bungling the Lieberman issue

The Senate Majority Leader should have publicly taken the hard line stance stripping Lieberman of all his committee leadership posts and banning him from the party. The President for Unity and Changing the Tone in Washington should have publicly disagreed in a magnanimous gesture of "reaching across the aisle." The two could then have reached a compromise where the independent senator stays in the caucus, cedes his cherished chairmanship of the prestigious Homeland Security Committee, and instead takes a committee post on some lesser body where his views are more in line with the Democratic majority.

Such a compromise would both appeal to the loyal party base and burnish Obama's reputation with the public as a uniter.


Personally, I see no sense in banishing Traitor Joe from the caucus. Once you have the majority in the Senate you get all the leadership positions. Senators can vote with or against their caucus any time and often do. Lieberman gambled big and lost big, so it must be expected that he pay some price.

dump his ass

but we damn well better not reach more than half way across it.

his aide is defending him and saying it isn't fair. He did not hold one hearing in the past two years on any of the actions of the Bush administration. That alone marks him as opposed to even the centralist, much less the liberal wing of the party. I say if he doesn't take what IMOP was a very good offer he can walk. Democrats in the senate need backbone and need to act while keeping this away from Obama.

I could get used to this!