The issue, as you of course know, is whether he ought to be a committee chair. apparently, the entire Democratic caucus will vote on that. The question is whether if he is stripped of that, he will choose to remain in the caucus.

I have less of a problem with him simply remaining in the caucus, as I think any majority party needs to take a larger view of dissent from within its ranks if it hopes to remain a majority party.

But chairmanships are coveted and earned, and Lieberman simply does not deserve one. I can understand why Obama wants to avoid this particular fight, and I won't go stomping off in a huff over it, but I can't agree with it either.

I'm not sure I understand why Obama would want to use up any of his collected goodwill with progressives over this putz either.

Then again, he got elected president, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

or he threatens to jump.  That is the dilemma.  He should NOT be in that position, as it has oversight over much of the government.  Move him elsewhere, but he should not have subpoena power over the new administration.

Then unless he wants to jump on his own, who the hell cares.

Let's be serlous.  Everyone talks about the magic 60.  For that to come into effect

1) we would have to win AK, MN and the GA runoff - and the latter isin my opinion more than a bit of a reach

2) it assumes all the Dems would vote to break filibusters - on some issues not all Dems would be reliable

3) it also presumes that moderate Republicans would vote to uphold filibuster.  I can easily see the twom ME women and occasionally Specter breaking with their party to support cloture.

4) the American people have made it clear they want Obama to succeed.  Being obstreperous would blow back big time on Repubs, and Repub senators up for election in 2010 may well not want to go there.

I do not think Lieberman should be allowed to keep that chairmanship

that's me.

I agree with you. Lieberman MUST not be allowed to keep the Homeland Security chair.

From a very young age we all were told that there are consequences for our actions.  If there are no consequences for Liberman actively campaigning against the Democratic nominee, what message would we be sending him?  I think his ultimatum is all the more reason to remove him from his position.  It takes a lot of arrogance and nerve for Liberman to demand things from the Democratic Party after what he did.  Anyone with even the smallest amount of humility would not demand anything if they were in Liberman's position.

So what if Liberman leaves the party (completely) and starts caucusing with the Republicans?  He will be part of the minority party, his constituents will be livid (over 60 percent of them voted for Obama), and he will be defeated in 2012.  As of now, we have 56 Democratic votes to help push Obama's agenda through (we could get a couple more if things change in MN or AK).  We would need four more votes to end a filibuster.  We could get three from moderates like Snowe, Collins, and Spector.  The fourth one could come from someone like Lugar or blue state Republican like Coleman (if he survives) or Gregg who may vote with the Dems on critical issues to avoid upsetting their voters back home.  Yes things would be easier with Liberman, but we should not let him dictate what happens.

Harry Reid, take control of the Senate and stop letting Liberman tell you what to do.

It says that he will really try to bring everyone on board to solve the problems that we have in the future.

I hope that Lieberman will realize the great break he is being given and will respond in kind.

We got to focus on the issues to solve our problems now. Health Care reform must be passed in the first two years. And Lieberman can be counted for this.

I think you are dreaming.  He is supposed to represent the people of Connecticut.  His threat to take his toys and leave should be challenged and not tolerated.  Connecticut chose him over a real democrat.  Why should he or they be given that much power. LIEberman stopped being my favorite martian a long while ago.

Remember he stomped for Palin too.  Please........

I agree with the comments that say he should not be allowed to retain his chairmanship, but he shouldn't be kicked out of the caucus.

My problem with him isn't that he chose to support McCain.  If he had made his decision after the primaries and decided McCain for him was the better of the 2 men, then so be it.  But, he didn't do that.  He supported McCain before the Dem primaries were even finished, which to me just gives the big F U to the democrats, and for that he deserves to be stripped of any leadership roll in the party.  

But for a candidate who ran on a "let's build bi-partisan coalitions" platform, who then picked the most hyper-partisan Democrat in the House (which I love, by the way), this is an olive branch to show his goodwill toward someone who should be an enemy. If Rahm is advising Obama to do this, which I assume he must be, then there's an ultimate good to be obtained, since Rahm is about the least politically forgiving person you could dredge up.

Rahm is DLC.  

for Lieberman's conduct in this election cycle.
It cannot go unanswered, it would set an unacceptable precedent.
I'm with teacherken. He must be stripped of the chairmanship.

I sincerely appreciate your commments herein and have experienced many of the same feelings and conflicting thoughts and ideas about Joe Lieberman, recalling how much I once admired and strongly supported him and Al Gore in 2000.  Things have changed substantially since then and, quite understandably, if nothing else, such discussions about Joe Lieberman certainly elicit strong emotions and no lack of comments and opinions, and these are usually constructive and insightful.

When I brought all this up to a local rabbi friend of mine yesterday, she was well aware of Obama's pronouncement about Lieberman and proud of our President-elect for it.  She and I have had some rather intense discussions about Lieberman in the recent past, but this time we were on the same page.  Perhaps that is the purpose of Obama's words.  

Regardless, this has been a most revealing exercise and a true learning experience for me, and I hope that others here on RK have benefited from our discourse as well.

Finally, I have no doubt that future Obama decisions will test us once again, so I guess we'll all just need to be patient, and stay tuned...

Thanks again!

Steve

I disagree with keeping Lieberman in the party. As someone else said, there must be consequences for actions. Allowing Lieberman to stay in the party says that there are no consequences - for leaving the party in the first place, for supporting the Republican candidates. This is politics as usual.

And no different from what I expected.

Rachel Maddow was right on tonight.  Lieberman won't vote with the democrats anyway, not on the war, not on torture.  He didn't want bush investigated for his Katrina blunder.  Just how much will he support the agenda.  He could even get in the way.  He stated after the election that he fears what will happen.  He needs to go to the corner.

I said this in commenting on another article, but I'll repeat it here--I think Obama could do himself an the Senate caucus a favor by offering Lieberman an administration job that would fit his ego, but where he can't do much damage. Get him out of the Senate now, and get a reliable Democrat in there in his place. My first thought was Secretary of Homeland Security, which gets him out of foreign policy, but I'm sure there are other posts that would work, too. Put him in a position where he serves at the pleasure of the President and he has to toe the line.

Keep Lieberman "...inside the tent..." as Lyndon Johnson might have said.

Thanks!

Steve