He did so with a little help from a (perhaps former) friend: President Elect Barack Obama, who went to the mat for Lieberman, making it clear behind the scenes that he didn’t want to start off his White House term with Democrats stripping Lieberman of his committee chairmanship or making Lieberman so upset that he’d bolt to caucus with the Republicans.
Progressive Democrats will be and are livid. But Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid argues that Lieberman is there when it counted on Democratic issues, and Lieberman vows its “the beginning of a new chapter.” Watch their comments after the meeting and make your own judgment:
FOOTNOTE: Obama met McCain yesterday and it would have obliterated that meeting and its symbolism if Lieberman was to have been politically disciplined. There are good arguments on both sides for what should have been done — but the one certainty is: this defuses Lieberman, what he said about Obama during the campaign and his fate as a news story…so Obama can move on. If he indeed plans to reach out to rivals and foes, Lieberman’s campaign behavior would put him in that category.
November 18th, 2008 By JAZZ SHAW, Assistant Editor
Let’s take a quick poll here and have a show of hands if you didn’t see this one coming. CNN is reporting that Joe Lieberman looks to be a “shoe-in” to keep his chairman’s seat on Homeland Security and stay in the Democratic Caucus, while being “punished” by losing some less prestigious position. Predictably, his opponents in the Democratic base who are still boiling mad over his endorsement of John McCain and attacks on Barack Obama, are up in arms.
Um, what idiot would think that taking away a subcommittee from Lieberman would be seen as a “stinging rebuke”? In whose DC-Beltway-addled mind is that even remotely punishment?
Let Lieberman keep that subcommittee. No one gives a shit about it. The only thing that matters, the only thing that Lieberman wants, and the only thing we don’t want him to have — is the chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee.
If this is the “starting point”, and given the Senate Democrats’ history of capitulations, expect Lieberman to come out of that meeting as majority leader.
KOS is hardly the only one. Of course, the main point which made this so predictable is that the majority of these critics are bloggers, pundits and talking heads who are partisan, ideological purists. Harry Reid, on the other hand, has a job which makes him a pragmatist by definition. If you select a majority leader who is a purist, he’s very likely to be a minority leader within an election cycle or two. The Senate races are still playing out, but it looks like the Democrats will seize Ted Stevens’ seat in Alaska and Al Franken may still find a path to victory if he can pry open the trunks of a few more Chevy Impalas. The Georgia seat, however, is a pipe dream and the Dems will come up at least one seat short of a bullet proof majority. He can get by with the support of a few hungry RINOs (which assumes the loss of a couple blue dogs here and there) but it will still be razor thin. He needs Lieberman more than Lieberman needs him.
So Joe will give the appearance of eating a small portion of crow (”whew! That was close. They almost kicked me out!”) but he’ll go back to business as usual. Lieberman will wander off the ranch at times, particularly on foreign policy issues where he wants to play the hawk. But on the critical domestic issues - particularly SCOTUS appointments - he’ll toe the company line. There’s high drama playing out in the blogosphere and the media, but it’s looking like nothing more than business as usual on the Hill.
November 12th, 2008 By MICHAEL STICKINGS, Assistant Editor
As the presidential campaign was nearing its end, as the Republicans were getting more and more desperate amid prospects of doom, the McCain-Palin fear- and smear-mongering focused not just on Obama’s “socialism” but on how horrible so-called “one-party rule” would be for the country. McCain himself put it this way: “We’re getting a glimpse of what one-party rule would look like under Obama, Pelosi, and Reid. Apparently it starts with lowering our defenses and raising our taxes.”
Two things:
1) A new CNN poll finds that “59 percent of those questioned said Democratic control of both the executive and legislative branches will be good for the country, compared with 38 percent saying such one-party control will be bad.” In other words, the American people are, contra McCain, fine with one-party rule, as long as the one party is the Democratic Party.
2) What does “one-party rule” even mean? In a parliamentary system, where the party with the most seats in the legislature is usually the one that forms the government, a party with a majority of seats can indeed rule as one. It forms the government, formally linking the executive and legislative branches, and, for the most party, can control its caucus. As members of the party require the party’s, and the party leader’s support, there are only very rarely any defections from the party line. There may be so-called “free” votes, where members are free to vote as they please, but, on major legislative items, such as the budget, or other so-called “confidence” matters (where a vote against the government means a lack of confidence in the government, generally forcing it to step down or call an election), there is strict party-line voting.
Although most of the contests of Election 2008 have been resolved, there are a few contests still outstanding, most notably a set of three US Senate races that could decide both whether the Democrats will hit 60 seats and what happens to Joe Lieberman in January. While I am hardly an expert, I thought I’d offer a quick overview of where the races stand and what should happen in the end.
The contests will be listed in alphabetical order, just to avoid any partisan bias.
Obama passed on her as vice president but can still put Hillary Clinton on the team by backing her for Senate Majority Leader.
In that role, Harry Reid has been ineffectual in rallying Democrats to curtail Bush’s excesses or even effectively articulate an opposition view. Now, with a Senate reshuffling that includes the stepping-down of Robert Byrd and the throwing-out of Joe Lieberman, “change” could be served by bringing Clinton to the forefront.
With a clear electoral mandate and wide margin in Congress, before reaching out to Republicans as he has promised to do, the President-Elect can solidify his own ranks by recruiting the faction of his own party he narrowly defeated to win the nomination.
By naming Rahm Emanuel chief of staff, Obama has shown he was no qualms about relying on former Clinton loyalists. Choosing the former First Lady as a legislative partner would be a logical next step.
During the primaries, there were insistent rumors that Reid himself was offering his position to Sen. Clinton as an inducement to concede the nomination.
In this desperate week of fighting to hold onto Washington power, the GOP is playing its last card–to arouse voter fear of what one-party rule would do to the country, of what the “Socialism” of Barack Obama would mean if supported by filibuster-proof majorities that would give Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid a free hand.
By implicitly acknowledging the defeat of their White House ticket, Republicans could make the argument in an attempt to save such endangered Senate seats as those of Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina, Saxby Chambliss in Georgia and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky.
Since Americans have an innate mistrust of concentrated power, the notion could gain traction for voters with short memories.
September 26th, 2008 By MICHAEL STICKINGS, Assistant Editor
The coverage of McCain’s desperate stunt earlier tonight on Anderson Cooper was just atrocious. Although the word “stunt” was used, the overall tone was positive. McCain is risking everything, it seems, to suspend his campaign, a huge “gamble” that is well worth taking. There was no mention of what he actually contributed to the proceedings, if anything, and much of the segment showed McCain walking determinedly through the Capitol, playing to the cameras by trying to look like a leader on a mission, refusing to take questions, flanked by pals Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham. And all we learned from Dana Bash is that McCain’s position is not to have a position — which may or may not be true.
After a break, it was time for Obama, but the focus wasn’t really on Obama, it was on contrasting Obama and McCain, with yet more time given to positive coverage of McCain’s stunt/gamble. Candy Crowley referred to Obama as “cool” and “above the fray,” but she did so implying that such coolness may not be a positive trait at this time (or any time). So while McCain was the leader, Obama was his usual detached self — or so we were being led to believe. Obama was not shown walking determinedly, just hanging about. And then it was all about how Obama and the Democrats are attacking McCain, as if somehow it is Obama who is playing politics during this crisis, not McCain.
(Lousy, lousy coverage. A terrible job by CNN. Anderson Cooper should be ashamed of himself.)
As a follow-up to some deeply cynical speculation about the 94 Dems who 180′d on FISA, I’d like to add that some Democrats in Congress can apparently still find their spines. That’s cheering, right?
Senator Harry Reid is supportive of efforts to strip the retro-active immunity from the new FISA bill. This won’t keep it from shredding the fourth amendment, but it’s a step in the right direction. Senators Russ Feingold and Chris Dodd have promised to do all they can to block it, including a filibuster. They released a statement explaining their opposition to the current bill. Via HuffPost:
This is a deeply flawed bill, which does nothing more than offer retroactive immunity by another name. We strongly urge our colleagues to reject this so-called ‘compromise’ legislation and oppose any efforts to consider this bill in its current form. We will oppose efforts to end debate on this bill as long as it provides retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies that may have participated in the President’s warrantless wiretapping program, and as long as it fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans.
Columnist Robert Novak reports that presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Senator John McCain already has a favorite who he’d love to pick for Vice President: Connecticut Independent-Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman:
Sources close to Sen. John McCain say the Republican presidential candidate likes the idea of Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman, re-elected from Connecticut as an independent in 2006, or former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge for vice president - if he could get away with it. The political consensus is that McCain couldn’t get away with either, and he knows it.
Lieberman, one of McCain’s closest Senate friends, vigorously supports him for president and sometimes joins him on the campaign trail. However, Lieberman opposes Republican policy on nearly everything except Iraq, where he has backed the war effort.
First, yours truly owes a big fat “You were right” to The Moderate Voice’s co-blogger Michael Silverstein, a former editor for Bloomberg News who writes brilliant prose and poetic commentary for TMV. In emails for the past several months – including last week — Silverstein has predicted that McCain would want Lieberman and would even pick him. Last week I emailed him and basically said “no way.”
And so now it comes out via Novak — an old-school conservative columnist who has excellent sources (I met Novak years ago when I was a student at Colgate University, when I was visiting Washington D.C. and he was very nice to me and a fellow student) — that McCain is pining away for Lieberman to be on the ticket.
It still seems highly unlikely for several reasons:
1. As Novak notes, some Republicans would have to choke down their disagreements with Lieberman on a host of issues just to have the satisfaction of seeing Lieberman run with McCain and bash his old party. In these days of litmus tests, where McCain is still walking a tightrope and trying to revive the 2000 “Maverick” McCain while staying loyal enough to President George Bush so he doesn’t lose his party base, it would be a huge risk. He could lose some Republican votes.
2. Lieberman is not totally loved by non-anti-war Democrats. There are some who greatly resent his alliance with the Republicans.
3. Lieberman is absolute anathema to the Democrats’ progressive wing, and his presence on the ticket would ensure they would vote in the election in huge numbers just to get back at Lieberman. The “netroots”
4. It is not a “given” that Lieberman will help McCain get the support of needed independent “swing” voters and moderates. These groups aren’t monolithic and a segment of them are strongly anti-war and could vote for Obama if Lieberman is on the ticket.
The UPSIDE is that by putting Lieberman on the ticket McCain could argue he has a bipartisan ticket. But that wouldn’t work except for Republican voters because many Democrats and independents now consider Lieberman substantially in the GOP camp, even though he really isn’t when it comes to many issues important to Democrats.
Putting Lieberman on the ticket would not exactly be as bipartisan as running with Harry Reid….
Could it still happen? Perhaps. But it is unlikely as Novak reports — particularly because Lieberman can be of enormous use to McCain in his efforts to attract angry supporters of Senator Hillary Clinton and Jewish voters.
Have three of the Democratic party’s top leaders named Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Howard Dean decided they’ve had enough and want to make sure that with Democratic Senator Barack Obama now the Democrats’ presumptive Presidential nominee the still-looming — and potentially divisive — campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton is definitively short-circuited once and for all?
It certainly looks that way. There were two big bits of news last night:
1. Obama now has the winning numbers to be the Democratic party’s nominee and his win is symbolic in terms of ethnicity and an epic shift in Democratic party control from the Clintons to a newer group of Democrats.
2. Hillary Clinton’s speech last night that was cheered by supporters but criticized by many as graceless was peppered with continued hints that Obama’s win was not quite legitimate. Clinton had her chance to be a unifier — and passed on it. Which means that if Clinton doesn’t get the nomination, her supporters will feel it was stolen from her.
So now the big news the day after is that amid continued and accelerating indications that the Clinton camp is attempting to pressure Obama to offer her the Veepstakes, Pelosi, Reid and Dean are telling superdelegates to make up their minds by Friday on who they support.
With the final primary concluded barely hours before, top Democratic Party leaders in Washington early this morning ratcheted up the pressure to force all remaining uncommitted superdelegates to make their choice of candidate known by Friday — and thus end the now hopeless, one-time frontrunning campaign of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.
The joint statement was obviously pre-planned and timed for issue shortly after Clinton refused to concede the presidential nomination’s victory to Barack Obama, who’s gained sufficient delegates to clinch the party’s nomination. Read the rest of this entry »
ABC’s Jake Trapper, in a post on his blog almost written in dismay, notes how former President Bill Clinton is on now the hustings in rural West Virginia delivering a tough message that’s essentially divide-and-rule politics — the same he has delivered throughout much of the political season.
Trapper’s intro to the quotes nails the situation that is making the Clintons a political team that seemingly has decided to continue unabated to work to polarize their own party in order to generate poll turnout and then (presumably) plans to get in power and try to govern a unified country. Bill Clinton’s present campaigning and comments will likely seized upon as “proof” those who insist the Clintons (without proof) that the Clintons are really trying to lay the groundwork for a 2012 run, after a bruised Obama (largely bruised by the Clintons) flops at the polls.
Bill Clinton has the right to say whatever he wants, of course. But he’s a smart man. Brilliant, even.
He can do the math. He must know that it’s quite improbable that his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., will be the Democratic presidential nominee.
So what purpose does it serve for him to barnstorm a state like West Virginia and tell rural voters that Obama and his elitist political/media cabal allies are mocking Appalachia?
He’s using the kind of language Democrats typically use against Republicans — as in, stuff you say when you don’t want voters to vote for the other guy under any circumstance.
Let’s take a quick poll here and have a show of hands if you didn’t see this one coming. 
