Full Caucus Voting on Lieberman’s Fate
By Ned Resnikoff - Nov 11th, 2008 at 5:46 pmNot surprisingly, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) clearly doesn’t want to do anything that would make Democrat-turned-Independent Joe Lieberman (I-CT) defect to the GOP, but there’s a lot of pressure to take some sort of punitive action. So in classic Reid fashion, he punts the responsibility to the whole caucus.
How the caucus would vote is still up in the air, with Ben Nelson (D-NE) for letting Lieberman keep his chairmanship, Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) against, and heavies like Hillary Clinton (D-NY) choosing not to weigh in yet. President-elect Barack Obama is staying neutral — wisely, since as Greenwald points out, stepping in would be a gross violation of separation of powers — but it looks like he wants Lieberman to stay in the caucus, and Lieberman’s been threatening to split if his precious chairmanship is threatened.
As you might have guessed, I’m certainly no fan of Lieberman (I was a communications intern for his challenger, Ned Lamont, in the 2006 Senate race), but I could care less whether he stays in the caucus. The important thing, as I’ve mentioned before, is that Lieberman has been an atrocious chairman . If replacing him with someone who’s actually competent makes him split the party once and for all, so be it.
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