The conventional wisdom seems to be that Democrats will retain control of the Senate in 2010, with somewhere between 52 and 55 seats, depending on who you listen to.
Meanwhile, Joe Lieberman continues to caucus with Democrats and holds an important committee chairmanship. He has also refused to rule out supporting a Republican in the race to replace Senator Dodd, and was an impediment to passing the health care bill proposal to allow early buy in to Medicare (a position he previously endorsed).
If Dems maintain control of the Senate but lose seats, will they continue this uneasy alliance with Joe Lieberman?
I’m no fan of Lieberman but I don’t see much benefit in trying to push him out. That just weakens the Democratic majority and margin of votes. By in large, Lieberman is a fairly safe Democratic vote. And even in the times he made himself a pain in the ass by leveraging his position, kicking him out would have only resulted in 59 health care votes on Christmas Eve.
Has he done anything with his committee chairmanship that went against the Democratic agenda?
Yeah, the Senate still requires enough pragmatism that they’ll work with him when they need it. Since they’re down to 59 seats, he’s no longer any kind of tiebreaker who they have to accommodate. If they lose a few more seats he’ll still be to the left of most of the newbies on most issues.
Except on trifles like the war and health care. But when it comes to renaming post offices, he’s right there!
He won’t get anything formal done to him, but Brown’s election made him irrelevant, and irrelevant he’ll stay. Remember that health care, watered down as it is, only passed after the Dem caucus went down to 59 votes - after they stopped having to try to cater to that egotist.
It passed the Senate with 60 votes. Every Republican voted against it. It would have failed if Liebermann had caucused with the GOP at the beginning of the current Congress.
It was annoying watching him try and extract his pound of flesh during the Healthcare debate, but at the end of the day chasing him off, while viscerally satisfying, would’ve meant no Healthcare Reform, keeping him in the party meant that we got Healthcare Reform.
He’ll be up for re-election in 2012. That’s the time to get rid of him and replace him with a more reliable Dem vote. Until then having him hold his current seat as a nominal Dem is far better for getting Dem priorities through Congress then driving him into the GOP would be.
I’d think the Republicans are setting an excellent example of what happens to a party that insists on ideological purity. Do the Democrats really want to give up on being a big-tent party, too?
Agreed. I don’t think there’s any chance of Connecticut re-electing him, and we can put up with him for two more years.
Except the caucus isn’t much more than a label, either. What really counts is the way he votes, and there’s not much to recommend him to Democrats, there. Especially not coming from a fairly liberal state: If we had someone comparable to Lieberman from Utah or Oklahoma, it might make sense to coddle him, but from Connecticut, he’s replaceable.
Well, yes, that’s why I implied pushing him out would be giving up on being a big-tent party.
I’m sure the Democrats will run someone to the left of Lieberman, but that failed once already. It might not fail next time, and then there’ll be no problem. But until then, it benefits the Democratic Party to have a bigger caucus in the Senate. Trying to push him out of it simply makes the Democrats look as narrow-minded as Republicans.
He’s pro-choice, pro-union, pro-gay rights (including on adoptions) and pretty much a textbook Democrat on a lot of issues… but annoying and sanctimonious as hell. His embrace of Dubya, endorsement of McCain and his criticism of Obama in '08 still stick in my craw. I agree he’s likely to get the boot by Conn. voters in '12 (or “choose” to retire). He was elected last time with only a plurality, and his approval rating in Conn. was a pretty pathetic 25%, last I saw. Good riddance, but not soon enough.
Remember that only his ego games, leading to a very public reversal of position, caused us not to have an early Medicare buy-in in the health care bill. We do not have a public option, even that half-hearted one, solely because he put his own desire to be stroked ahead of the public interest he once claimed to represent.
I don’t think so. There’s a difference between (a) being a big-tent party that can welcome people it has a lot of differences with, but that share the same basic principles, and (b) having your tent be so big that you welcome people who are opposed to your party’s major long-term goals, or are opposed to your party’s candidates for office.
In 2006, Lieberman ran for Senator against the Democratic Party’s nominee for that office.
In 2008, Lieberman supported the McCain/Palin ticket against the Democratic ticket.
In 2010, he hasn’t ruled out supporting Linda McMahon in the CT Senate race.
This guy’s fundamentally not on our side. If the Dems begin January with a number of Senators that isn’t particularly close to either 50 or 60, they should tell him he doesn’t get his committee chairmanship* anymore, but he’s welcome to caucus with the Dems if he wants to. And if he wants to walk, let him.
*BTW, it wasn’t that he did anything with his Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs chairmanship, but that he did nothing with it. This would have been the proper committee to investigate a host of Bush-era abuses from the Katrina response to the fun and games at the U.S. Minerals Management Service. Instead, he pretty much sat on his hands, neither leading nor following, nor getting out of the way.
The whole concept of “big tent” was described by (I think) LBJ as “Better having them inside the tent pissing out than having them outside the tent pissing in.” Unfortunately, Lieberman is generally more “Inside the tent pissing in”.
I don’t think anyone here is saying that they love the guy. There’s just little benefit to running him out of the caucus and an obvious downside to a hostile senator who didn’t need to be hostile.
Had he caucused with the GOP after the 2008 elelction because Reid booted him in the rear, I sincerely doubt he’d have been a GOP vote for health care.
I love the fact that, on this board, there’s a constant echo of the sentiments that the Republican party needs to embrace its centrist candidates, and expand its mindset to make it less monolithic; yet, on the other hand, when a Democratic pol is centrist, it’s a sign that that pol is * not on our side *.
Does this suggest that the general feeling amongst leftists (the majority of the politically minded members of the SDMB, if I may be so bold) would prefer an open, big-tent version of the Republican party, and a very close minded, monolithic, Democratic party?
That they’ll even let nonmembers caucus with them?