Lieberman's Losing Bid for Influence

[draft_mario_cuomo]

==Maybe the 50 members of the Senate’s Democratic Caucus should just call the bluff of their 51st vote and tell Joe Lieberman to take a hike.

The junior Senator from Connecticut, who was elected as an independent last year after losing the faith of his home state’s Democratic Party, continues to flaunt his tie-breaking status, all but calling his former partisan colleagues terrorist coddlers and daring them to do something – anything – about it.

It’s a bullying, childish game he’s playing. If Mr. Lieberman were to walk away from the Democrats completely and to caucus with Senate Republicans, he would hand the G.O.P. its magical 50th vote, which, along with Vice-President Cheney’s vote, would strip Democrats of the narrow majority they won in the chamber last November. And so he chooses to torment the Democrats, siding with them for organizational purposes only to amplify – at every pivotal turn in the four-plus-year evolution of the Iraq War – the White House’s most shrill and demagogic attacks on the party’s foreign policy credibility.==

==This rhetorical disingenuousness is, of course, nothing new for “Holy Joe,” who routinely tries to pass off his hawkish war posture– which is at odds with the overwhelming majority of the American public – as the voice of bipartisan consensus-building. He champions the surge, reads from the White House’s script, and threatens to support next year’s Republican presidential nominee. And if his Democratic Senate colleagues have any thought of calling him out in public, well, there’s always the threat he reiterated to The Hill this week.==

==But what Harry Reid and Company might not realize is that, for all of Mr. Lieberman’s threats, Senate Democrats actually have the upper hand in the relationship with Mr. Lieberman. If they were to lay down the law with Mr. Lieberman, he might not run to the G.O.P. as quickly as he wants Democrats to believe he would. And even if he did, it would be a relatively minor and very short-term setback for Democrats – but one with long-lasting implications for Mr. Lieberman.==

Read the rest at http://www.observer.com/2007/liebermans-losing-battle-influence

[rabidchickens]

1. whats sad is

he did some reasonable things on the domestic economic level, his foreign policy and willingness to cohort with neo-cons and the religious right is a disgrace to CT and all his supporters

[LaPera]

2. What's sad is the democrats don't want the spy, and the republicans don't really need him...

The republicans are stopping democratic legislation with or without him.

Lieberman is just a pitiful old disgusting hack. Trying to pretend he still holds all the cards.

Just holding on for a lifetime of paychecks & kickbacks & title, with little or no power left, he's been exposed for the power hungry little fuck he is...and only his ego is left to remind him, he's still a senator, whore ...He's truly a shameless, sad figure!

[saltpoint]

3. Every once in a while in a good Southern novel someone's demented old

uncle or somebody has to be locked up in the attic.

I think Senator Lieberman has reached that milestone.

Very likely he reached it some time ago. His 4th-place finish in New Hampshire's primary in 2004 did not exactly stun the free world. He honestly believed he would finish first. He most certainly did not.

At least Dick Gephardt had the sense to know when it was time to step aside. A gracious man, Gephardt finished a disappointing 4th in Iowa with only 11% of the vote and was out of the race by midnight.

After New Hampshire plainly rejected his candidacy in very significant numbers, Lieberman pushed ahead, a halfwit Ahab chasing Moby-Dick. It was a long time between the primary voters' reckoning and Lieberman's departure. He's not vry good at reading trends. Or maybe he is but is too stubborn to concede their direction.

He'll still show up on the Sunday news shows to whine about his former Democratic colleagues. But these days, hardly anybody's listening except Brit Hume.

[bluestateguy]

4. The goal for 2008 is a Lieberman proof majority

Which will require a net pickup of 2 seats. Then Lieberman can be ASKED to please just get it over with, have your bloviating press conference and join the Republicans already. We need 2 seats though because if Lieberman leaves then that makes it a 51-49 chamber again, and some other DLC clod can pull this same Sword of Damocles shit again.

[Skip Intro]

5. Democrats say "why would you want someone who screwed his own party over?" Repukes say:

"Why would you want someone who screwed his own party over?"




lieberman is many things wrong with politics and government today

[dsc]

6. Justice Stevens is 85

and Liberman gives us the ability to keep judicial nominees off the floor of the Senate.