It looks like Senate Democrats have found a compromise on the issue of Joe Lieberman. The proposal that will be voted on today is that Lieberman loses a lesser subcommittee chairmanship but retains the more high-profile gig of Homeland Security Committee Chairman. My gut says that Lieberman should lose his position and basically be ostracized by his colleagues; what he did during the campaign was shameful, especially after Obama campaigned with him in his last dicey re-election. As Jon Chait points out, the situation is not without precedent, and the prior offenders lost their committees.
At the same time, though, I'm not inclined to lose a vote in the Senate -- either to the Republican caucus, or, if you think he wouldn't go that far, just to uncooperative pique. It's all very easy to get excited about revenge but at the end of the day I'm more excited passing progressive legislation, which needs to go through the Senate. Obviously the Senate Democratic majority has grown a good deal and sixty votes as a number doesn't matter as much as we like to think it does, but one more vote is one more vote. And I'm not sure his punishment would really have a lot of deterrent power -- are there many Democratic Senators who would undermine the party in the same way as Lieberman except for their worries of losing their seniority? In the end, the only purpose it serves is getting a little vengeance. Which is nice, but doesn't get us anywhere. So let's keep him in the caucus, give him a slap on the wrist ... and have the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee fund a primary challenger in 2012. That's the ol' Joementum!
-- Tim Fernholz
