Lieberman kept the chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security committee. There's been much hair-pulling and blouse-rendering from the left blog-o-sphere, and somehow the gesture is supposed to show us we're irrelevant, etc & co. It may be.
Or, maybe Howard Dean's right, if a candidate runs and triumphs on a message of "unity" and bipartisanship, it may be bad form to start the new era with a "purge," as Dean put it.
Whatever. I never really saw the Lieberman vote as a referendum on the progressive base in the first place. Heck, it only came to a vote because Lieberman was "disloyal" to Obama and Democratic Senate candidates, not because of his myriad crimes against his former party, US foreign policy, the electorate, and the concept of reason.
Bottom line: the reason Senate Democrats should have denied Joe his committee chair was to take investigative power over the Obama administration out of his hands. This was the opportunity for the Senate to act in its own best interests. The Senate Democrats fumbled.
Maybe ol' Joe won't abuse his committee chair. Who knows? But if he does...well...we warned you, didn't we?
Senator Joe Lieberman's fate as chair of the Homeland Security Committee and quite possibly his future role with the Democratic party will soon be decided by a secret vote by the seven-member Democratic Caucus, largely for his crime of endorsing John McCain and speaking on his behalf at the Republican National Convention -- or maybe, knowing the Senate, it was because supported Norm Coleman and Susan Collin's re-election bids.
Unfortunately the Senate Democrats are not considering making Lieberman an apostate because of his unhinged hawkishness and unwavering support of George Bush's fantastic adventure in Iraq. Nor for his habit of using the Rovian attacks on the patriotism and loyalty of Americans who questioned the war. Nor for his contempt of the party and its supporters during the 2006 election.
And I, too, could probably forgive Joe Lieberman of all those unpleasantries -- his acts, after all, have had some consequence to his reputation and political future. If he were to face re-election today, he's probably lose, and soundly.
But what I can't forgive -- and what the Democratic Caucus should consider -- is how ol' Joe has used, or not used his committee in the past, and what him holding onto it might mean. This is Lieberman's "crime":
This seems to be routinely overlooked, but take a moment to consider what the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs actually does: it's the committee principally responsible for oversight of the executive branch. It's an accountability committee, charged with investigating the conduct of the White House and the president's administration.
As chairman of this committee for the last two years, Lieberman decided not to pursue any accusations of wrongdoing against the Bush administration. Lieberman's House counterpart -- Rep. Henry Waxman's Oversight Committee -- was a vigilant watchdog, holding hearings, issuing subpoenas, and launching multiple investigations. Lieberman preferred to let his committee do no real work at all. It was arguably the most pathetic display of this Congress.
And yet, now Lieberman acts as if keeping this chairmanship is the single most important part of his public life. Why would he be so desperate to keep the gavel of a committee he hasn't used? I'll let you in on a secret: he wants to start using the power of this committee against Obama.
The last thing we need is another presidency, like Clinton's, marred by Congressional partisan "investigations" into meaningless, trivial, or false accusations. Not to say Lieberman means to use this power, but certainly it's his only means to influence a government that has no more use for him.
I don't care if Joe Lieberman stays or leaves the Democratic party. But, if the Senate Democrats have any political sense, they'll take Joe's committee and give it to someone who'll use in the best interests of the country, not to illuminate his own fading star. Still, that's not a given, considering the Senate's subservience to loyalty and seniority. They might just give Lieberman the committee because he's been around so long.
Update: MtSentinel in the comments reminded me that the "nuclear option" was threatened only for judicial nominations... So there is no such option available to the Senate Democrats to pressure the GOP to abandon its scorched-earth policy...
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Remember all the brouhaha about the AMT patch? Congressional Democrats wanted to increase taxes on hedge fund managers to offset the patch; Congressional Republican not only balked at the increase, but wanted to lay an additional four tax cuts on top of the patch - so a compromise was reached in the Senate: just the patch, no offsets, no tax cuts.
In fact, the Senate Republicans are so accustomed to blocking measures that when the Democrats finally agreed last week to their demands on a bill to repair the alternative minimum tax, the Republicans still objected, briefly blocking the version of the bill that they wanted before scrambling to approve it later.
For the Democrats, it was a perfect example of why they have taken to calling the G.O.P. the "grand obstructionist party." The Democrats send out daily tallies of the number of Republican filibusters, which the Democrats say will set a record.
I opposed the "nuclear option" - ridding the Senate of the filibuster - when Republicans proposed it: but that was before the GOP used it as a hyper partisan attack tool designed to drive down Congressional approval ratings. When Senators start using the filibuster to block bills they already agreed to, we've got a problem.
In any case, Harry Reid should at least threaten to go nuclear. That should get some Republicans' attention, and allow Congress to resume its business of passing legislation.
