by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math
I agree wholeheartedly with Mark Schmitt. Whatever you think of Joe Lieberman today, he served Connecticut well for most of his career. And if you're one of those (like me) who would like to bring America back to the point where two reality-based parties found bipartisan compromise (though by forcing Republicans to shift left, not for Democrats to keep tacking right), you have to give Lieberman a lot of respect for his work there, especially on issues like global warming. And so it's important that a public servant who always tried to make politics an honorable profession, who spent most of his career trying to raise the level of discourse, not lower it, find a graceful way out of his independent campaign, as befits his character (and yes, I inserted the last phrase just to set the record for most appositives in a single sentence). If Democrats controlled Congress or the White House, he'd be appointed to a Cabinet position or a bipartisan commission to evaluate the future course in Iraq. Absent such possibilities, perhaps the Ford Foundation, the Brookings Institution, or some other non-profit/think tank could use a new high-profile hire.
Update: I guess I didn't make the obvious point. The more pressing reason for Lieberman to withdraw is to stop making it harder for Democrats to take back the Senate. If that's your goal, you may have to hand Lieberman a nice "lifeboat" rather than try to push him from the race, a strategy I think might just redouble his resolve and cause him to drift further to the right.
