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the culture of the United States Senate and the limited "power" of the majority leader.
I wish that the caucus had stripped lieberman of his HSC committee and offered him some lesser chairmanship instead. But I can't say I'm all that surprised at the result.
First, the Senate is one of the world's most exclusive "clubs" and the relationships between and among them defy logic sometimes. For example, it was just reported how Joe Biden, while campaigning in North Carolina, reached out to Jesse Helms' widow to see how she was doing and to express to her how much he misses Jesse. In 2001, the Democrats welcomed Jim Jeffords with open arms, giving him a committee chair and a couple of other plum committee assignments, notwithstanding the fact that he had endorsed chimpy in the presidential election and had voted with the repubs 75 percent of the time before he became an independent. Close personal friendships among senators often cross party lines. And seniority rules in the Senate in a way that's hard to fathom from the outside (and Jeffords was allowed by the Democrats to retain all of the seniority he'd accumulated as a republican when he entered the Democratic caucus). So, it shouldn't come as a total shock that Lieberman, who has more seniority than 2/3rds of the Democrats in the Senate, was able to hang on.
Second, for those that are condemning Reid for allowing Lieberman to keep his chairmanship, how would you have had him prevent the result. What leverage in terms of "strongarming" the caucus did Reid have, given the reports that an overwhelming majority of the caucus voted, in a secret ballot, to allow lieberman to keep his chairmanship? Threaten to take away their committee chairs? Well, that would require a vote of the caucus and if they weren't going to vote to take away lieberman's chair, what makes you think they were going to vote to take away the chair of anyone who supported lieberman?
The result sucks, no question. But it shouldn't come as a suprise, nor can "blame" be laid at any single person's feet -- its institutional
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