How wily Joe Lieberman wends his way between McCain's GOP and Obama's Democrats

Meanwhile, back at the congressional ranch:

The Democratic boys are grumbling about their former partner and 2000 vice presidential candidate, Joe Lieberman, whom they opposed and defeated in the Connecticut party primary in 2006 because he supported President Bush's Iraq war, even though a whole bunch of other Dems did too.

But then the wily old Lieberman got re-elected there anyway as an independent (with some silent Republican help) and it turned out Harry Reid really needed him to hold the slimmest of Democratic majorities (and his leader's job) on Capitol Hill.

So they let Joe caucus with them (which means they have lunch and make tons of plans, most of which never go anywhere) even though Joe still supports the Iraq war and, in fact, supports a Republican for the presidency. His former fellow Democrats can put up with that basically because they have to.

But then Lieberman agrees to speak at the Republican National Convention last week, which might be all right as long as he just praises the Republican Sen. John McCain and doesn't go too far, as in criticizing a fellow Democratic caucus member, Barack Obama, who really wants to live in the White House, even though he doesn't have a family dog yet.

But old Joe does knock new Barack. Hard. He says the ...

... very ambitious freshman from Illinois, who voted "Present" so many times in the state legislature, really, really hasn't done much at all and sure hasn't reached across the aisle like his campaign's bipartisan claims, even when Oprah isn't around.

Also in St. Paul, Joe tells 20,000 Republicans (which is a lot of golf clubs, if you think about it) and maybe 35 million TV viewers that, "Sen. Obama is a gifted and eloquent young man who can do great things for our country in the years ahead.

"But eloquence is no substitute for a record."

Ouch!

And then Lieberman says good things about the new GOP vice presidential nominee, the female governor from Alaska, who's never even been to a Georgetown cocktail party. (See Lieberman video below.)

She could make some real trouble for Democrats in many states on Nov. 4 because the previous week Obama was determined to reject a qualified female vice presidential candidate for his Democratic ticket. (And we all know who she is.)

So what are those former fellow Democrats gonna do about this rebel they created in the first place? Because, after all, they still need him real bad or else the Senate will be 50-50 and Barack's evil cousin Dick Cheney will be breaking the ties with thoroughly non-Democratic votes for the next few months?

All of which old Joe knows.

So what Harry Reid comes up with is a rebuke. Ooh, scary stuff. A Reid Rebuke, which basically means you get last lunch choice between roast beef or egg salad. Caucus rebukes have about as much clout as all those congressional ethics rules.

And the fearless leader of that slim majority also postpones further disciplinary action until November, which means he's waiting to see how many Senate seats Democrats gain on Nov. 4. They're pretty much already counting on four to eight, which might surprise citizens who haven't voted yet. But that's the way Congress thinks.

Such gains would mean the Democrats wouldn't have to care if wily old Joe walked over to the Republican side.

But wait one minute. As the Washington Post points out, wily old Joe's very own political action committee has been very active handing out sizeable chunks of dough to former fellow Democrats just like lobbyists -- $5,000 here, another $5,000 there. A whopping $145,000 to the committee trying to elect new Democratic senators.

And another $5,000 in July to help retire the campaign debt of someone known as Joe Biden, Obama's vice presidential running mate and, quite possibly, the Senate's presiding officer as VP of a new Democratic administration come January.

Now, how would it look among the guys for such an appreciative old friend to approve retribution against good old Joe Lieberman, even if the new administration was elected to bring really real change to Washington's terribly awful ways?

There is one other possible scenario: What if, by some amazing fluke as weird as the Republicans naming a woman to their presidential ticket, the GOP ekes out a White House win?

Good old Joe would be in a great position to get pretty much any job he wanted as part of a new bipartisan administration run by another old pal who's sometimes in trouble with his party too, the senator from Arizona.

The beauty of that deal from the new administration's point of view is that old Joe's Senate replacement would be named by the governor of Connecticut, who as a Republican might reliably tend toward naming a Republican, which would reduce the Democrats' Senate caucus.

The good news for Harry Reid is, the Nevadan would then have an extra egg salad sandwich each week.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Photo credits: Associated Press (top); Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times (bottom).

Comments

[dennis]

push that rat under the bus democrats

[maz hess]

Libermans calculation is that the democratic majority in the senate will never be so big that they will be able to live without him. That is right. But what he doesn't see is that Obama doesn't think in time periods of years. Obama thinks in decades. That means when the time will have come for Lieberman to get reelected his life as he knows will be over for good.

[Frank]

Right on Joe and John! Sans a viable third party, we need both sides of the aisle cleaned. In that our Congress has lower ratings than the President speaks volumes as to current situation. Kick them out and get some people in there that want to work for the people, and not themselves, their egos, and egg sandwiches.

[Cryos]

It's pretty amusing. Liebermann votes liberal except for a few issues like the Iraq war yet democrats skewer him because he isn't lock step voting. There is the real spirit of democrat "bipartisanship."

Even Obama running on this false platform of "bipartisanship and unity" votes with the democrat party line 96%+ of the time. McCain has voted republican party line I believe 88.3% of the time and this makes McCain "the same as Bush"?

What does this make Obama?

[Heather]

So this is an example of liberal tolerance? Didn't the great Obama say he wanted people who disagreed with him?

I guess those were "just wrods!"

[madskrilla]

What Mr Malcolm forgot to tell his readers is that Sen. Lieberman didn't exactly caucus with the Democrats out of the goodness of his heart -- he got the very powerful Chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and of an Armed Services subcommittee from the Democrats he has now come to despise so much. So it was a nice marriage of convenience for these last 21 months, since the Republicans got that famous Congressional "thumpin'".

Another thing that Mr Malcolm forgot to tell his readers is that Sen. Lieberman couldn't possibly be selected as VP by McCain -- he would have cost them a lot of those vital, extreme right wing votes (anti-abortion single issue voters -- Lieberman is, at least in theory, pro choice -- and Evangelical voters -- he is obviously not a Christian). The "Passsion of the Christ" voters would also not have liked his slot as a VP -- Al Gore disregarded conventional wisdom, and selected Lieberman as VP. McCain didn't.

McCain can win but the Senate is not winnable for the Republicans -- you know, the party who hasn't named their two-term President during the convention -- Lieberman's Senate career is going nowhere fast -- his only real hope is a McCain win in November, so that he'll be rewarded with the job he wants (Defense?). It was a marriage of convenience, not really meant to last more than two years. It's politics.

A former press aide to the Bush campaign such as Mr. Malcolm shouldn't really be surprised by political marriages of convenience.

Oh, and by the way, any talk of a "bipartisan" McCain administration is moot, and Mr Malcolm must know this. Not after this campaign, the accusations of treason, of "otherness", the lies, etc. It will be Bush's third term, plain and simple. Not very bipartisan, really. They'll have Lieberman because he called Obama unpatriotic and didn't even deny Obama could be a Marxist, that'll be the beginning and the end of their bipartisanship. It'll be "Bush administration + Lieberman = McCain administration".