Why the dems should show Lieberman the door!
Filed Under Domestic Politics, In the News, Jeremy, Politics
So Joe is at it again! Still acting as a hold-out when it comes to the Senate’s health reform bill. While several view this as Lieberman being…well, a jerk…he is acting EXACTLY as he should. Consider the fact that he gets to “hang” with the democrats (including being counted as a democrat for committee purposes), however they have absolutely no sway over him because he is, by definition, an independent. What do I mean by “sway?” One of the primary benefits of aligning one’s self with a party is the use of their political machinery. While ideology and ideology-recognition (i.e. people think they know something about you because of your party affiliation) are important, running a successful national campaign requires rather expensive talents that can be rather easily shared across candidates. One could try to employ this talent by themselves forcing them to have to outbid the national parties, or they could join a party with whom they mostly agree and get it for “free.”
If a junior senator attempted to pull the same thing Lieberman is pulling, the party leaders would “invite” that senator into a nice conference room and “explain” to him/her that failure to fall in line may just result in a re-assignment to a not-so-interesting committee (is there a committee on bathroom tissue color?) in addition to someone else receiving the party’s “blessing” during the next primary. Mr. Lieberman can get away with his shenanigans because he does not rely on the party for ANYTHING and he has shown he can win in the poles without them. Taken with the fact that the democrats do not have their 60 vote majority without him, this leaves Joe is a very good bargaining position (didn’t Mel Brooks have a line like “It’s good to be the decisive voter!”). It is this position that allows Mr. Lieberman to express his desires and expect to get them or at least a VERY nice “parting gift.”
My suggestion is rather than trying to bargain with Mr. Lieberman, the democrats should just dump him and that this may actually help the democrats in the long run. This would open up a whole new group of possible pivotal voters among the various republicans in the Senate that the leadership could negotiate with (consider any member of the “gang of three” for example) and takes away Lieberman’s ability to view himself, quite correctly, as “the one.” But wait, you say, this would mean that the democrats loose their 60 vote majority! SO? They have one in theory only anyway. Joe Lieberman has been a democrat his entire career in the Senate and people expect him to vote a certain way; this is NOT going to change if Mr. Lieberman wants to keep his seat. So “officially” dumping him is not going to result in a massive shift in his votes; he will still vote with the democrats most of the time or his supports will walk away. What it does do is help the democrats in the 2010 election because the republicans can no longer run on the idea that they must “bust” the democrats’ 60 vote majority. The democrats are going to loose some seats in 2010 unless we see an amazing economic comeback the likes no one has ever seen (the debt is paid, in full, and unemployment is zero – and yes, I know that is impossible). So why not start damage control now? Dump Lieberman from the caucus, strip him of his committee chairmanships (he has two and as the senior ‘democrat’ it would be hard to strip him of these without dumping him) and take away from the republicans at least one bullet to use against you in 2010. I suspect this would humble the Senator quite quickly, or at least cause him to loose some of his significance in the press, and open up Reid’s set of potential 60th vote.
J
Comments
3 Responses to “Why the dems should show Lieberman the door!”
So the Democratic party is really NOT a big tent party?
Dave K:
It depends; the party is whatever gets them the most votes…and that goes for any party (except maybe the tea-baggers/tea party groups….I am not certain they even know what they are doing).
I’m not sure that a proper working definition of “big tent party” would include welcoming anybody in the door with zero regard to their political persuasion. It does mean that there is a certain leniency in beliefs that has led to a 60-seat majority that contains within it quite a lot of variance. The question is, is Leiberman acting far enough outside the tolerable level of variance?
So, the short answer to your question is, especially since the Dems haven’t chosen to oust him, yes, the Democratic Party very clearly is a big tent party.