The Dems will let Turncoat Joe keep his chairmanships despite his active anti-Dem campaigning AND his utter failure to use said chairmanship for anything useful during Bush’s presidency.
So, Senate Dems will be allowing Lieberman to keep his plum spot despite the fact that he has been deeply awful in that role, and despite the fact that he endorsed efforts by the GOP to imply that Obama is in league with terrorists, suggested that Obama endangered our troops, and said Obama hasn’t always put the country first.
Worse, Reid is echoing an argument he knows is false: That this is only about retribution. Reid and his fellow Senators have made the political decision to leave Lieberman in a job that he was a disaster at, rather than make the good governmental decision to remove him for the good of the country.
That it was apparently Obama’s decision makes me only slightly less annoyed.
Disappointed though I am, it may be a shrewd move. Here’s why:
Ted Stevens just lost his senate seat to his challenger, Anchorage mayor Mark Begich. That brings the total to 58 Ds (assuming the D governors of Delaware and Illinois appoint Ds to fill two obvious vacancies), 40 Rs and 2 D-leaning Independents. That, in theory, gets you to the filibuster-proof majority.
That said, one must consider the possibility that JL, who is now a turncoat, will always a turncoat, so you can’t really count on him to be that 60th vote given his track record. Then again, he may flee right back into the fold given the fact that the Rs are on such a losing course. With JL questionable, it is good that there are still one or two uncalled, close races where a Republican could lose his seat to a Democrat (GA and MN). That may, though I doubt it, lead to actually having 60 Ds in the 111th.
Finally, assuming the D caucus kicked JL to the curb (which I would’ve loved to see), it would immediately inhibit OHB’s message of changing politics in DC because the Rs would jump on it as his first big partisan act. In their view, it would cement their view that he is someone who is all talk and no change. No matter how much JL deserved to be ousted for poor performance, perception IS reality, especially in DC. No one would buy that they were ousting him because he was bad at that chairmanship because no one really raised that as an issue before. At least, if they did, it certainly didn’t gain enough traction for it to be widely accepted now even if it is the truth – which I believe it to be.
Turns out my Wiki article about the seniority of Senators in the 111th listed both candidates in races that have not been called; i.e., it listed Jim Martin and Al Franken as D Senators but also listed Saxby Chambliss and Norm Coleman as R Senators. So, my math is wrong because I was just counted Ds. The new math is 56 Ds if the obvious vacancies are filled with Ds. Two Independents who lean left makes it 58.
Are you basing this on the Wikipedia article on the 2008 Senate election? That one suggests 58+2 is possible if Franken and Martin both win.
Nope, I was going by a wiki article titled: “Seniority in the United States Senate.”