The irony, of course, is that Lieberman helped the Bush administration avoid any sort of accountability. Lieberman’s been chairman of Homeland Security and Government Oversight or whatever the heck it’s called for two years, not that you could tell, because he never bothered to investigate anything. (Compare his record to Henry Waxman’s.) Now you expect Lieberman to keep Obama accountable? How on earth can we expect anything Lieberman does in his government oversight role under an Obama administration to be taken at face value? If Lieberman gets it in his head to investigate the Obama administration, is there anyone on the planet except possibly Matt Drudge or Rush Limbaugh who’ll seriously believe that such an investigation is in good faith, given Lieberman’s complete disinterest in doing the same to Bush?
Lieberman’s chairmanship is a joke from the word go, good for nothing but the possibility of sturm and drang and interfering with an Obama White House. It’s not about accountability any more than it’s about bipartisanship. It’s about Joe Lieberman not wanting to give up his toys.
I’ve got some modest familiarity with being on the receiving end of discovery, and it can be a royal pain in the patoot. So I’m aware that, if wielded too casually, subpoena power can bring an organization to a near-standstill for no good reason. Doesn’t matter if Obama’s got nothing to hide - a White House is going to have a fair assortment of confidential documents floating around, and you can’t just open 'em all up, so you’ve got to have people go through them.
I suggest reading Eve’s rant about Joe to get an idea of what kind of a “progressive” fellow he was way back in 2000.
Do you remember that episode of The Simpsons where Burns sells the plant to the Germans? Burns then winds up buying the plant back and rehiring Homer? When Smithers asks him why, Burns responds with
Obama’s proven that he’s the kind of guy who’ll find your weakpoint and go for it very efficiently.
Me neither. Had he been booted out it would have been, “This just shows Obama’s unwillingness to work with those who hold different points of view. This isn’t ‘change’ but the same old Washington politics Obama said he would end.”
Both Reid and Obama were kind of damned if they do, damned if they don’t. So he holds his leadership role. There’s nothing saying they couldn’t go other routes.
Here’s a thought: Say Obama decides to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security, parcel out its pieces to other, already existing agencies, as a way to reform government and make it work better. Would that then make it possible to dissolve the committee on homeland security that Lieberman chairs? Thus, as it were, pulling his chair out from under him?
I, for one, am glad to see that Barack Obama has decided not to make meaningless gestures a priority in his administration. What would be the point in kicking Leiberman out of the Democratic caucus? He’ll still be a Senator and he’ll still be casting votes.
I’m also glad to see that Obama recognizes that he’s President of the United States and not Chief Enforcer for the Democratic Party. He’s apparently willing to accept the reality that some people don’t agree with him on some issues and still act like he’s the leader for all Americans and not just his “base”. Aren’t some of you people who are complaining about Obama refusing to lead an ideological purge the same people who were complaining about Bush doing it?
Expelling him from the caucus was never under serious consideration. The question was whether he would remain chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which position he has shown he does not deserve.
Sigh. Bush removed career bureaucrats, who were nonpartisan, and replaced them with people who had gone through Liberty University, an explicitly right-wing school of questionable qualifications. Lieberman actively campaigned against Obama, and for two Senate Republicans up for reelection with credible candidates (granted that Allen would have gotten his butt kicked anyway, but if he’d run a credible campaign he could have won. The same is not exactly true for Larry Larocco in Idaho, for example), and did virtually nothing with his chairmanship, after promising to investigate the Bush administration’s handling of Katrina. Two entirely different situations.
Did you read my post at all? Replacing explicitly, statutory nonpartisan staff with people loyal to your party is completely different from chastising a elected member of your party* who campaigned against your party’s candidate for President.
*I know Joe isn’t a Democrat, but I think in this specific case the distinction isn’t worth pursuing.
For the last eight years, everytime somebody pointed out the hypocrisy of the Bush administration doing something they had condemned the Clinton administration for doing, the Bush partisans would invent some meaningless and trivial distinction between what Clinton had done and what Bush was doing and therefore declare that what they were doing was completely different. That’s how I’m seeing this. Punishing Leiberman (who you acknowledge didn’t run as a Democrat) for not showing sufficient loyalty to the Democratic Party would just be a blatant partisan power trip - just like imposing an ideological test on Justice Department officials was.
But I’m not just talking about Joe Leiberman. And I hadn’t brought up the Justice Department officials at all. What I’m talking about is a majority party acting like they own the government and the country and treating the minority party like they’re trespassers who broke in to their house. Barack Obama is apparently smart enough to realize the United States is more than just the Democratic Party and his job is more than just advancing his party’s interests. Hopefully, Obama will be a President for all Americans - Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.
Bullshit. If they throw their support behind a different candidate, and he wins anyway running as an independent, they can’t turn around and start acting like he’s one of them now they want to berate him for not towing the party line.
I understand the anger and why you need to keep people in line. I really do. But I swear to God, if the Democrats had lost ONE VOTE because they were too butt-hurt to keep Lieberman around, I’d have been pissed.
Given that he caucused with the Democrats after he was reelected and calls himself an independent Democrat, I think he should be willing to accept what the party gives him.
Oh, come on. Disciplining someone who claims to belong to your party and actively campaigns against your party’s nominees is not the same thing as replacing civil servants with your own stooges!
Joe Lieberman is not part of the minority party! A party is entitled to do what it likes to its own members! Nobody was saying the Senate should censure Lieberman, we just wanted them to strip him of a chairmanship he never used, that should go to a more deserving Democrat! Seriously, what about this do you not get?
I voted for Obama and I’d see this as petty revenge. Joe Leiberman and 58,000,000 other Americans voted for John McCain - how do you think they’re going to see this? The United States is a democracy and it’s legal to vote here. It’s not a crime to vote for the other guy and people shouldn’t be punished for it. Leiberman did nothing wrong because he prefered McCain to Obama. What part of this do you not get?
It’s not a crime in Texas to be a member of the Washington Redskins, and it’s not a crime in the D.C. area to be on the Dallas Cowboys. But either way, if someone who claims to be on one team keeps on playing as if he’s lining up on the other side, then he should expect to eventually not be invited back into his original huddle.
The point is that we’re no longer playing. We won the big game and we’ve got the ring on our finger. Stop trying to score points against the other team.
The election is over. It’s no longer Republicans vs Democrats. It’s Americans vs problems that need to be fixed.
Remember when the first thing the Bush administration did was launch an investigation against the Clinton staffers for vandalizing typewriters? Instead of running the country, they were playing petty games and still trying to beat the “other side”. We should be better than that.
No, we’ve won enough games to move up to Division I-A.
Now’s when the games that count begin. On stimulus/infrastructure, on global warming, on univeral health care.
Who gives a fuck about that? I just don’t want a guy wielding a Dem gavel who’s been playing for the GOP, and who might well decide to play the same sorts of games against Obama that the Gingrich crowd did against Clinton.
My point exactly. But it’s not like the GOP’s been pitching in against those problems, these past few years. And neither has Holy Joe. Not everyone in politics believes those problems exist, or regards them as being problems, or wants to address them.
The reason we wanted the Dems to control Congress by a hefty margin, and the White House too, is so we’d have a functioning majority that would actually address problems.
I don’t believe Lieberman is part of the crowd that wants to address and fix problems. I believe he’s part of the crowd across the aisle that is willing to fight the efforts to do so, in order to make themselves look better. Only difference is, unlike the gang across the aisle, he’s got a committee chair. He’s got subpoena power.
We are. This has nothing to do with nonsense like that.