If the Democrats hold their leads in Montana and Virginia, that will give them a 51-49 lead and theoretical control of the Senate. Or so CNN tells me.
But isn’t that overlooking Joe Lieberman? Sure, he says he will caucus with the Democrats. But will he vote with them?
It seems to me that Lieberman has positioned himself as the most important person in the Chamber. If he votes with Democrats on party-line issues, the Democrats win. But if he votes with the Republicans, the result is a tie, Dick Cheney breaks the tie, and the Republicans win. As goes Joe, so goes the Senate, in other words.
What are the implications, given Lieberman’s voting history? Will the Democrats be able to enjoy the fruits of their “victory,” or will Joe continue to thwart and frustrate the party to which he professes loyalty?
And on a related matter: are there any Republicans who might be persuaded to switch parties, so as to give the Democrats a Joe-proof majority?
There are several Democrats who are more conservative than Lieberman-- including the newly elected Casey. You guys need to get over your hard on for JL-- he’s a solid Democrat. Start worring about the real conservative Democrats, becuse JL is a moderate.
Sure, Lieberman is fairly liberal, but he’s not a Democrat (they kicked him out of the party, remember?). He’d be smart to hold out and see which party offers him the most in exchange for caucusing with them. He can do pretty well for himself and for Connecticut if he does.
There are several Republican Senators that might vote with Democrats frequently. Especially with Bush being a Lame Duck. The two that come to mind immediately are Sue Collins and Olympia Snowe from Maine. I just learned about them recently in this thread: Could it be that Republican politicians have awakened?
Lieberman owes no one anything at this point. No one on the left ought to owe him much, either, and I think he should have been punished for his idiocy re. the Iraq war. But the political reality is he’s now the wildcard in what will be a very evenly-divided Senate, no matter what happens to those last two seats. I think the next six years are going to be one giant bipartisan grovelfest before Lieberman’s desk, and he’s got to be loving it. He may as well get a big haunkin’ ring so people can kiss it. Indeed, Lieberman will be in a unique position of power.
Lieberman is what, in days gone by, would have been called a moderate Republican. He is not a right winger. I don’t see him as having Dubya’s back. I don’t worry about him.
Cite that they kicked him out of the party? I’m pretty sure that they can’t do that. Lieberman is a solidly liberal Democrat, with the obvious exception of his Iraq war stance. And I have no reason to think that’ll change.
Well, he lost the Dem. primary, so I suppose that could be construed as the party giving him the boot. The fact is the national party reps for the most part went to bat for him prior to the primary result, and then resolved to support Lamont when he became the party nominee. Lieberman rode the Dem. coattails as long as he could, but the fact is Lieberman is now not the Democratic party’s man, and owes more in the final stretch to the Republicans, who quite shrewdly backed his campaign with faces and money, knowing full well the nominal Republican candidate hadn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell’s boiler-room of winning.
This makes Lieberman essentially a free agent in more than name. Like I said, he now owes the Dems nothing.
I really don’t understand where the OP is coming from. Can you list those pieces of legislation in which Lieberman was the only Democrat voting with the Republicans? He tends sometimes to vote contary to the other NE Democrats, but I can’t think of any significant piece of legislation or confirmation vote in which he was pivotal. For instance, the much maligned Alito got a confirmation vote from 4 Democrats (Byrd, Conrad, Johnson, and Nelson), but Lieberman was not among them. He, like some independent minded Pubs and other Democrats, does tend to vote his conscience instead of blindly voting the party line, but that gives him a 90% record of voting with the majority of Democrats. I don’t see any reason to think that is going to change.
Joe wasn’t evicted from the Democratic party, he was beaten in a primary. It’s not like the DNC drafted Ned to take him out or anything; in fact, Lieberman had pretty good support before losing the primary.
He might bear grudges against some individual Democrats for harsh things they said when he decided to run as an independent, but that wasn’t any kind of unanimous Dem condemnation either.
Meanwhile, Zell Miller he ain’t. He will probably be a power-broker in the centrist zone (along with folks like Ben Nelson, Susan Collins, & Mary Landrieu), but he has no reason to side with seriously conservative Republicans in any Senatorial power struggle — ideologically, that’s not where he’s at.
Really? You don’t see why Lieberman might think he no longer needs the Democratic Party?
You don’t see that in the past he might have bitten his tongue and voted with the Democrats out of party loyalty, and that he might no longer feel such obligation?
I think we’re about to see just how much of a free agent Joe can be.
I think he votes mostly his conscience, and I don’t think that will change. If the Dems demote him (ie, don’t recognize his seniority wrt committee asignments), he might try to play hardball in a few instances, but he isn’t going to vote for/against something just to get back at the Dems if he feels strongly about that peice of legislation. Do you have any evidence that he’s vindictive by nature? He wants to be a Democrat, and the best thing the Dems could do is take him back into the party.
Thing is, there are very few straight party-line votes in the Senate. It isn’t like the house, where you can be punished severly by the party leaders if you go off the reservation. Lieberman sometimes votes differently than the majority of the other Democratic senators, but not overwhelmingly so.
So even if the Senate is split 50-50, it doesn’t put Lieberman in an overwhelmingly powerful position, because on most issues you aren’t going to get a 50-50 vote anyway.
Keep in mind folks, that Lieberman would not have won re-election if he had run as a Republican. If he’s seen as switching sides, the voters will kick him out for good next time around. The idea that he’s going to be some stealth Repulblican just doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny.
Have people been asleep the past couple years? The Senate has been much more partisan lately than at almost any other time. Have we missed all the hew and cry over rubber-stamping, and “what happened to our most deliberative body”, etc.? The comfortable R majority has simply made the odd swinger rather moot in the grander scheme. No more. The Senate is now going to be some Cheney tiebreakers, and more often one-or-two fence-sitters getting bombarded with attention to sway their opinion. And this idea that Senators, including Lieberman, are somehow immune to the stresses of party loyalty, especially during the last few years, is a load of rubbish. That pressure is off Lieberman now, which makes him perhaps the most interesting Senator to watch for the next six years.
I posted this in thethread about independent candidates, but it belongs here:
Lieberman is in a very powerful position – he won’t be “allowed” to caucus with the Democrats, they’ll beg him to caucus with them. He can dictate his own terms. He is in the most powerful political bargaining position ever, and the stakes are huge.
If (when) the Dems take VA & MT (I’m not going to get into the recount situation here), they have 50 members, and the Republicans have 49. If Lieberman sides with the Republicans, then the evil Cheney is the tiebreaker. Lieberman is in the “catbird seat”, able to demand whatever he likes.
If the Republicans offer Lieberman enough power – perhaps a cabinet postion like Secretary of State, or a lifelong appointment such as Supreme Court justice, etc., he may well jump. Connecticut has a Republican governor, so Lieberman’s replacement will be Republican. I’d expect the Republican candidate Schlesinger, who got about 10% of the vote, to be her nomination.
Never underestimate the machinations of an evil empire.
Also, where did this idea that Lieberman is some staunch liberal come from? Did some Republican baloney somehow sink in during the 2000 campaign? Check out what analysts were saying about him six years ago, for crying out loud, when Iraq was just a twinkle in the neocons’ eye…here