think progress makes this great catch from the new york times, notice my bold;

The New York Times reported that “some Senate Democrats and aides say it is unthinkable to let Mr. Lieberman head a committee that will conduct oversight of the Obama administration,” given his ad hominem attacks on Obama during the campaign. An anonymous Lieberman aide said losing the chairmanship would be “unacceptable.”

that needs to be pointed out to the obama camp, they have to be nutz allowing lieberman on a chair that oversees his administration

I couldn’t care if Kneepads Joe stays in the Dems’ Caucus. The Caucus should care, unless it just wants to e-mail the GOP’ers their confidential info or wait for Mr. Bi-partisan, pants-down Joe to tell them all.

Reid, and more so Obama, would be a fool to let Joe remain chair of any committee, let alone the chair of the Senate committee overseeing how well the Heimat Sicherheitsdienst operates and spends our money. Billions and billions, much of it, like Rumsfeld/Gates’ DoD and Paulson’s Treasury, outsourced suppliers (many of them heavy GOP’er supporters, too boot).

I expect Obama to make his own mistakes, not to perpetuate George Bush’s or allow Harry Reid to perpetuate his.

holy crap I’m reading that they are going to vote on this. I just can’t see how we get a vote to kick him out from these weenies – most don’t have the nuts to do it to each other.

hell, let registered Dems vote on it!

There is still substantial material at that website known as TNH concerning Lieberman’s string of follies, although somewhat of historical interest, from the primary thru the actual election which Lieberman last won. I recall DemFromCT’s poll-based musings August 2006, around the time when the Lamont ascendancy returned; ultimately it took a Rove RNC infusion of cash to Lieberman’s campaign to prevent a Lamont victory. Sara has suggested ways to revist that organizing appropriately, if Lamont is interested, though this contributes only peripherally to the difficult decisions Reid has had to mull. Admittedly, there is bicameral calculus now with the condition of the recounts and similar fiascoes. To reference the OT post from JTMinIA, mudflats and 538 have joined both BradBlog and the ebullient Shannyn Moore’s AK radiojournalism site examining the implausibility of the AK three stage publication of results and burgeoning absentee vote putting that election’s outcome in doubt from a statistical impossibility point of view. BradF reminds that in 2006 the only way one part of the state was revealed to have an average voter turnout >100% in many precincts was by the court based discovery process. In the recent election, uniformly the incremental results showed precisely the same portion for Stevens at each sampling moment 1/3, 2/3, near-complete, as a prior thread’s contributor mentioned. I hope Norwegian bachelor farmers turn out in the plaza until Franken’s recount is completed fairly, too. I would expect the Stevens machine to find any discovery at such a delicate time discomfiting; similarly, some of the McConnell tactics likely needfully incorporate Lieberman’s cloture vote and nomination blocking assistance to the Republican minority, though Lieberman probably need not make any promises for what are his sure obstructive plans, barring some soul searching. One of the efforts Barack Obama seems to be making is addressing Lieberman’s longterm foreign policy interests through configuring the new administration in ways to provide the sorts of guarantees Lieberman as vice presidential candidate in the Democratic party sought. If Kerry has part in the new executive branch, that alone might ameliorate Lieberman’s mood at a difficult time for a southern New England old guard which may need to muster less vigilance if the international stage is more well tempered beginning in 2009.

Joe will be 70 in 2012. I wonder whether he’ll want to run again in 2012. The only reason he was able to win in 2006 was because the republicans basically disowned their own candidate in favor of Joe.

Will they do that again in 2012? If not Joe’s only chance of being re-elected is to become a republican.

Well, the way I read the last couple days vis a vis Joe is that Reid would not have been public about his little meeting telling Joe the lay of the land if he did not have the votes to oust Joe from his Committee Chairmanship already in his vest pocket. Reid is, after all, the Leader, and in the Senate Leadership depends on giving your word and sticking with it. So right now the game should be — tell Democratic Senators to follow their own leader. And while it may be news to Bayh, Indiana did go for Obama and the weight of the win came from Lake County. He may not have made his calculations yet about his state’s changed environment. He may not realize that Lieberman’s Obama bashing is not all that popular among his own electorate.

Reid enhances his own strength as a leader by carrying forward this pretty obvious bit of necessary party discipline. Look — we have both ends of Penn Avenue now, and a huge agenda of stuff to get done, and we should have very little interest in independent prima donnas out there dancing to their own tunes. Disciplining Joe is essentially lesson one in establishing the leader’s necessary power. Reid needs to make clear that while everyone will be heard and their points considered, Majority Position means moving as a majority party group. Yes, on some things it is best to construct bi-partisian coalitions — but that is not how a hard won majority acts given all the money and sweat equity party people have in winning in 06 and 08. And Joe was working for the other side on all this — so he is disqualified.

At some juncture — perhaps not this one — we need to make a strong case that Joe’s “moralism” is fake. If he is stripped of that veil, which he throws over everything where he finds disagreement, we reduce him to what he really is. He always puts on the face of nearly crying over the pathetic human condition — but it is fake. We need to find just the right situation for making that case.

I think even without the chairmanship, he will try to stay in the Democratic Caucus, largely for quite practical reasons. I doubt if his staff seriously wants to become real republican hill staffers. They don’t have lots of cache these days, and there are very few jobs on K-Street for them. For Former Democratic Hill Staffers, NPR is reporting starting salary at half a million. Joe has to consider his staff in this, at least for the six months to a year that it will take for them to land peachy jobs off the Hill.

The more I think about Joe’s position — he made a bid on a key job and power in a McCain Administration, and the bid failed — I am thinking he may look around for an offer outside the Senate, and resign and let the Republican Governor appoint his replacement. It would hurt the Dem’s (except we could have a special election in 2010) and with the proper job, Joe could get Rich. He would not have to chair an inconsequential committee, sit in the back row in the Senate, do penance for disloyalty. Maybe Fox News needs a new Chief Executive? Something like that…