More on Joe Lieberman

I have plenty of animus in storage for Lieberman. The worst thing about him, to me, is that he uses bipartisanship as a cover for rank political opportunism. His sanctimony is grating, and more importantly, deeply dishonest. I thought Evan Bayh made some good points on Rachel Maddow tonight. The strongest case against Lieberman is that you can not have a guy who claimed that the President-elect is for defeat in Iraq have subpoena power. Furthermore, there is a long-term question of discipline. If Joe simply gets off scott-free, what's to prevent other senators from doing whatever they want in the future? Moreover, anytime you penalize a caucus member you risk losing a vote, are you supposed to be held hostage to that?

Bayh's answer is that if Joe is unneccesarily obstinate or appears to be pursuing a vendetta with Obama, they can remove him. Frankly, I don't see Lieberman doing that. I don't agree that Lieberman was motivated by a particular hatred of Obama. I think he was generally pissed at the Dems for backing Lamont (the right decision) and maybe he resented Obama's swift ascent given the utter failure of Lieberman's own campaign. I don't know. I'm not in his head. I think they probably should take his chairmanship, because you have to have some sort of precedent, some sort of standards. But I don't think they will, mostly because they need all the votes they can get. Anyway, check out Bayh in the video below.