How hard or unlikely would it be for the caucus to take stronger action than the leadership proposes? Anyone familiar with the workings?

Knew it. Traitor joe will keep his chairmanship. Drama over, let's move on to solving the cratering economy, our horrible international status, getting the f*ck out of iraq, getting bin laden, trying to help stabilize pakistan, dealing with iran, etc., etc., etc. In the grand scheme of things traitor joe is a non-issue.

In this case, Leadership does not mean Harry Reid. It more likely refers to Dick Durbin, who is certainly speaking for Barack Obama. That may sway the day!

Sux.

Hey, at least I know my senators have my back...

Well, America has a new President, but the Senate Democrats remain a disgrace; special interests still rule, and it is selfishness. What does Lieberman have to do to get kicked out of the caucus? The Republicans don't have a big tent for him to fit in. If he keeps his Chairmanship, and continues to do absolutely nothing as he has done before, his smirk and smile will be an insult to all taxpayers.

Time to work to vote out ALL incumbents and start over with people who have a backbone.

Yeah. I had a feeling that it would probably play out this way. Senators would come up with some meaningless punishment just so they can pretend for the benefit of casual observers that they aren't a bunch spineless losers getting slapped around despite the fact that they have all the leverage. Who could suspect otherwise having watched recent Dem behavior.

So lets hope it doesn't turn out as it seems it will but I think the thing to do going forward is resolve ourselves to the fact that Democratic Senators, at least this group, just don't have toughness in them. They just don't have any desire to stand up for their own dignity or enforce loyalty or discipline. We have to find other ways to win and luckily, we have the numbers this political go around. Lets try to make the best of it.

I'll believe it when the voting is done (tomorrow) - until then this is strictly from Rumorville.

Senate Dems are cuckolds to insider CW.

Every bit of progress made in the Obama presidency will come despite the Senate, not because of it. Our country is verily f%cked in large part because half of our legislature is a freaking social club full of moronic d-bags.

Let Lieberman keep EPW. It's an insult to anybody who ever gave a crap about this one way or the other to pretend stripping EPW is anything more than lipstick on a pig.

Christmas on a cracker are Senate Dems the weakest tea ever brewed.

So as punishment he doesn't have to chair a minor subcommittee? WTF? What exactly would he have to do to lose his committee chair? Slap Michelle? Shit on Obama's desk?

Bullshit. Pure Bullshit.

Fucking pussies.

Well, when all is said and done, Lieberman may keep his precious homeland security chairmanship but at the cost of being reviled by the members of the caucus. So Gollum Liberman can keep his precious for a few more years.

Rule V allows for jurisdictional, changes in the committees. While he may have the chair of the committee, the responsibility of the committee may be reassigned.

Now you see why Obama resigned from this group of losers.

First Lieberman and now Hillary, who's next Howard Wolfenson.

Where's David Axelrod and the Change campaign team at, the Clintonistas are taking over.

All signs point to Obama having a center-right presidency.

Defense budgets will continue their climb. Four years from now we will have more troops in Afghanistan than there are now. Obama is following the Bill Clinton playbook of snubbing the Dem base and running a GOP-Lite presidency.

Look for Obama to cleverly waffle on torture, giving himself deniability while giving a wink and a nod to the CIA and their minions.

[insert unprintable comment here]

Reid, Dodd, Bayh, Salazar are all up for re-election in 2010 and have come out in support of Lieberman. Schumer and Leahy are up for re-election as well, as is Lincoln, Boxer, Inouye, Feingold, Murray, Wyden, and Mikulski.

Look, y'all know that behind closed door most of these people are friends and are not the rabid idealogues they are made out to be. Obama knows that Lieberman, Clinton and McCain all share important things in common with him. Binging them in will placate their constituency and allow him to move on his general agenda.

Man, good thing Obama won the election. Imagine trying to end the war in Iraq with just this herd of pussies?

don't use a lovely word like pussy to describe this thread, please.....

Interestingly I'm feeling a bit better about Obama just as you all are feeling worse. We must be close to compromise...or critical mass.

Absolute spineless BULLSHIT!!!

If they can't even stand up to Holy Joe, now, after the fantastic election results, I've lost any hope whatsoever that they'll fight for anything.

These are cave-in Democrats. There is simply no other way to say it.

Apparently, Lieberman is blowing all the right people...

Bottom line -- Lieberman wins. We lose.

Is this the change that i voted for in 2008? These folks are bunch of idiots...they're fool and bunch of sissy.

Based on the reports i have been receiving left and right, Obama's administration is looking like a continuation of status quo. The news coming out of Chicago has been depressing since the election was over.

If all i get is continuation of clintonista, perhaps, it is time to be cynical about politics again.

i respectfully ask, "help me to understand why to care about this?"

I Have the PERFECT solution. Make Liebermann the first pet. He's qualified. He's an S.O.B., he won't shed, he IS partailly housebroken, he IS somewhat loyal as long as you keep him on a short leash...and he's in danger of annhilation if someone doesn't adopt him soon-oops, I forget,he's been neutered,too.

Why are these guys so fucking afraid of Joe Lieberman? I don't get it.

But I will not participate in any Democratic party activities, or donate money to the Democratic Party, so long as Lieberman has his gavel.

Any party that lacks the ability to enforce even minimal and elementary party discipline and loyalty, and awards with a committee chairmanship a man who openly worked to subvert the efforts of millions of loyal Democrats, and spread slanders as part of that effort, really cannot be trusted with my money.

AIPAC. General Dynamics. Merk. Lieberman's constituents own the Senate. That's why these senators afraid. The only way to change this is to make people like Reid more afraid of the public's wrath.

When I heard that Reid was going to a vote as opposed to dealing with the situation himself, I knew the fix was in.

I must say I feel completely validated in my decision, throughout the 2008 election season, to toss all those requests from the Democratic Party for donations of my hard-earned dollars* directly into the trash, and to donate (via Act Blue and other progressive bundlers) ONLY to individual candidates from the "Democratic wing" of the Democratic Party. Let's all agree to make non-"earmarked" donations to the Party a thing of the past -- even when it's Barack Obama and David Plouffe doing the asking.

*Did the appearance of the name "James Carville" in the return address ever inspire any of you out there to part with one thin dime? Just asking.

Can Reid make Lieberman his bitch by threatening to take away his chaireunichship if he doesn't pimp how Reid wants him too? I don't understand the mechanisms of the Senate power structure. However, If Reid can actually manipulate Joe's vote to the good side, then fine. Otherwise, Joe get's to hang with the GOP Jesus Squad. And trust me, as a convert to Judaism, I hate that. Joe, your're a dick and you brought this upon yourself.

If this is true then our congress is just full of a bunch of idiots and I really wish the vote was pubic so that I could know how my senators vote. Slapping him on the is stupidity.
I am so sick of the weak kneed leadership in congress. Sick of it.
Lieberman does not belong in a chairmanship position but he clearly knows how to play congress to get what he wants.
Just sickening.

I am no great fan of Joe Lieberman, but I think this is a smart - and surprisingly so - move by Senate Dems.

I worked in the Senate as a staffer for a few years. I don't think it is possible to overemphasize just how important each and every vote is in the Senate. The modern use of the filibuster - by both Republicans and Democrats - has effectively meant that 60 votes are necessary to pass anything meaningful. We don't have 60 votes now; we're close, but we don't have them. And in some ways, our expanded majority can cut against us in our effort to get 60 votes on a given measure, because individual Senators will feel more free to deviate from the party line than they would if, for example, we had a bare majority or a minority. And the flipside is true - Republicans will likely adopt a "circle the wagons" mentality in their effort to bottle everything up to deny Obama and the Dems as many accomplishments as possible. We did it fairly effectively between 2004 and 2006 and were able to run successfully, in part, by demonizing the R's as a "do-nothing Congress."

Which is why it's important to have as many Senators in your "default" column as possible. I'm not talking about issues where someone like Lieberman has strong opinions, like Iraq, where he will vote against us, or judges, where he may very well vote for us, regardless of what party he's in. I'm talking about the more mundane votes - cloture votes on budget and appropriations bills - that rarely make the newspaper other than a short mention that "a Democratic amendment to add $50 million in funding for _____ fell 3 votes short in a procedural vote." In votes like that, Senators will, more often than not, vote with their leadership. If Lieberman is with us, he'll probably vote with us. If he's with them, he'll probably vote with them. That's the reality. As much as it stings to give him what he wants, it would be far worse if valuable parts of the Democratic agenda fell by the wayside over what, at the end of the day, would be a largely symbolic victory if Lieberman were kicked out of the caucus.

Finally, from a policy perspective, little will be lost if Lieberman stays. Other committees can pick up the slack if, in fact, he fails to exercise certain oversight responsibilities (which will hopefully be less critical during an Obama administration than during the bush administration). Quite frankly, the only real losers are the Senators who would stand to gain a bump-up in their seniority levels. And that's not enough of a reason to drop one of the 60 critical votes we will need time and time again in the coming years.

Unbelievable. You'd think some other tenured Senator would want the Homeland Security Committee now that the getting is good. How could Lieberman leave this much blood in the water and not invite an internal challenge? Does anyone in the Senate know how to practice power politics? Does anyone have any ambition? If they can't advance their own interests any better than this, how can I expect them to advance mine? This is what's truly disturbing.

Reid deserves to lose his position for this utter capitulation.

Zell Lieberman has demanded his way and, it appears, he will get his way.

I suppose we have the Senate leadership we deserve.

The obvious question to me is...

HOW CRAPPY A JOB DOES JOE LIEBERMAN HAVE TO DO TO GET FIRED FROM HIS CHAIRMANSHIP?

Jeezus effin' Christ, the guy does no fucking oversight over the most ridiculous administration for two goddamn years, he backs the opposing party's candidate, is a fucking KEYNOTE SPEAKER at the opposing party's convention, and spends months on the campaign trail with the opposing candidate.

And the upshot of all this is, we're only going to kick him off a committee that no one gives two shits about - even Lieberman doesn't give a crap about it.

Unbe-fucking-lievable. This is what passes for accountability among Democrats in the fucking Senate.

Damn right I'm pissed. And no, this isn't a 'BRILLIANT MOVE' by Obama. This is a fucked-up lame-ass move by Senate Democrats, that's what it is.

And I guarantee you, this inability to carry out a deserved punishment is going to bite the Dems in the ass real hard in about 6 months.

Fucking Democrats. Lieberman should be Majority Leader. No one better represents who makes up the majority of Congressional Democrats.

Does it ever occur to his backers that Lieberman WAS OVERWHELMINGLY REJECTED BY DEMOCRATIC VOTERS in Connecticut, that he defeated Lamont in the general election only with massive financial support from Republicans? And THIS P.O.S., who owes his job to Republicans, who cannot win reelection without massive support from Republicans, is who should be in charge of a powerful oversight committee? Can there be ANY doubt that his Job 1 will be to hamstring Obama in order to win continued support from his funders and constituents?

Lieberman is a turncoat and I want him out. But I can understand the politics behind why President-Elect Obama would want him to stay.

Senate Dems are trying for a 60 seat filibuster majority. With Alaska, Georgia, and Minnesota still undecided, it's possible the Dems could end up 1 vote shy of the majority they crave. That's where Joe might come in useful.

If they take away his chairmanship, he will run to the Republicans and be gone forever. But if they let him keep his chairmanship, he can be apologizing and groveling for months, and the Dems can get a lot more out of him over time.

HERE'S A GOOD ARTICLE ON THE SITUATION:
http://okwassup.blogspot.com/2008/11/d-day-for-lieberman.html
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Since nobody seems to have mentioned this so far in this thread I will. Senator Lieberman did not just piss on his party's presidential nominee on behalf of a dear friend. He pissed on everything the party which nominated him for Vice President eight years ago stands for. No deal for his future votes is worth a damn because he cannot be trusted. Period.