Sadly, they'll have to woo and coax him any time there's a threat of a filibuster. It would give him power.

I say, it's not worth the price.

Lieberman should be hung out to dry, regardless. He is less than useless, a distraction, and a mole in worm's clothing.

Here's my concern: If they get to 60, this will be because they have won in some conservative states with Democratic but conservative candidates.

If the Republicans want to filibuster, say, a Supreme Court nominee because the nominee is pro-Choice, they may get some help from the conservative Democrats.

So even if we barely squeak out 60, and even if we figure out the whole Lieberman thing, I think we're still going to see a buttload of obstruction, unless the Dems go nuclear, which they may have to. If it's a choice between old Senate Rules and the plight of Americans, it will be an easy move to make.

Wait, what? Landrieu is totally safe. Rassmussen had her up 13 in late September.

At the moment NC and OR are the best shots outside the Big Five. MN is next. You're looking at sweeping those and getting one out of MS, GA, and KY. Very tall order.

"...what will the party do with Lieberman?"

Honor him as the last honest democrat.

A better question would be what's Leiberman going to do with the Dems. If they win big he is SOL and he should be.

Leiberman should stripped of any leadership positions and left to twist in the wind. He's eventually going to have to face voters again and he can't win without Democrats. Either he'll have to start kissing up to Dems or risk losing his seat. Simple as that.

If the count of sixty Democrats includes Lieberman, it isn't really sixty. Lieberman won't vote to close Republican filibusters anyway.

Throw the bum out.

"...what will the party do with Lieberman?"

Honor him as the last honest democrat.
Posted by: Al on October 9, 2008 at 4:19 PM | PERMALINK
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Al, Thanks for providing the Joke of the Day. And, please, don't stop taking your meds. Hope you get well soon.

what will the party do with Lieberman?

Kick his sorry lily-white ass to the CURB! His own state doesn't want him anymore, the fascists have used him up pretty well, and frankly, HE AIN'T WORTH IT.

I'd rather go with a 55, 56 or 57 seat majority and let the fascist thugs threaten to filibuster - let them! Let them go on record against S-CHIP and tax breaks for the middle class! In two short years we'll be 60+, still no Lieberman, and the bones of the Republican Party on display in the museum next to the trilobytes where they damn sure as hell belong.

whether 58 or 59, or 59+Lieberman, the country will be in a state that can't tolerate massive fillibusters. What can be justified in a 51/49 Senate in OK times is nigh criminal in a 59/41 Senate during bad times.

And this is where the margin of electoral votes makes a big difference as well.

I am so disturbed by the angry outbursts in the McCain crowd--they all screamed out accusations of the media giving Obama a pass (to which Palin also said she wants answers to questions--what a joke--SHE wants answers?!). They also screamed out anger at what is becoming "Socialism". To which McCain said nothing.
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And what the hell is going on with the voter blocking?

What GuyFromOhio said.

If the Dems let Lieberman affect anything, then all of this has been a scam. And it ain't a scam.

We progressives will bury anyone who wants to keep Lieberman in the fold, he's sold us out too many times.

I haven't looked at the list, but if the Dems pick up 7-9 seats, wouldn't it be in Obama's self interest to find a moderate Repub or two who are up for re-election in 2010 and make a deal or two? With where the economy is apparently going (hell) you'd think that there would be a couple of guys who are more interested in getting re-elected than in being called Republican.

simple, completely ignore him. and load up any filibustered bill with pork for Connecticut or things near and dear to his heart, and have a cloture vote. make him vote against a job training program in Hartford, or a new school in New London to support the republicans. give his next opponent nothing but ammunition. Either he votes with the Party, or he votes against his state. over and over. make the Republicans speak against him as well. force him into the cold, where he has to fight daily for access, power, anything. boot him from every committee, make the Republicans give him one of the minority spots. his staffers don't get committee jobs, aren't welcome in Democratic offices for lobbying. Any organization outside his home state that welcomes him or honors him or gives him money is blacklisted. for at least a year, until he has proven his willingness to make amends, he doesn't exist.

He has made his bed, now make him lie in it.

sorry, Joe. I didn't care about running against Lamont, fine, you did what you had to do. but speaking for McCain at night in the convention? you made your choice. bad decision.

If we manage to take the 7 most likely states Schumer names, that leaves us with 3 more races we need to win to reach the magic number (I don't include Lieberman as a member of the Dem caucus after January 4). Landrieu looks pretty safe (she has an easy 13 point spread, and is trending up). I put NC in the likely column, and I also think Noriega in TX is competitive enough to consider as a 12th pickup opportunity (he was only -7 in the latest poll, which was conducted over a week ago). There's just not enough evidence of movement in ME for Collins to be considered vulnerable at this point.

All this means we need to win 2 of the four long-shot races (KY, MS, GA, & TX). The odds are long, but not insurmountable.

Joe can go head up the Likud Party with Netanyahu since he loves to saber rattle so much. I am sure he'll find a rapt audience in the settlements.

A minority of us are exuberant about 60.

Many would call Joe Lieberman a Benedict Arnold but compared to Lieberman Benedict Arnold was an honorable turncoat. A better example of Joe's brand of disloyalty is General James Wilkinson who sold his soul to the Spanish and worked, for over twenty years, against the interest of the nation.

Joe Lieberman must not be allowed to go on playing his little game. He must be punished.

It depends. Someone will have to explain what getting to 60 means. Is there some strategic advantage 60 has at the beginning of the Congress in terms of setting the rules? If so, then you need Joe if he is the 60th vote.

Is it just a matter of getting to 60 in cloture votes on individual bills? In that case, some compromise is going to happen anyway to get the more conservative Dems on board so it shouldn't be too hard to pull a few Republicans along for the ride each time. They don't want to be seen as obstructionist in a time of national crisis, at least a few of them won't, and the last person I would try to bring over is Joe. Let him rot.

Lieberman should be dumped the minute we have 51 real Democrats in the Senate.

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if after demolishing his "good name", McCain decides to retire. Could be another Dem there.

FiveThirtyEight calculates the probabbility of getting 60 including Lieberman and Sanders is about 26%.

61 is about 15%, and 62 is about 9%.

Possible, but not likely.

Send Joe LieBerman to Boca Raton?

Winning Kentucky, and giving the odious McConnell the boot, would be sweet indeed.

But then who would tell Reid what to do?

I'm with Jon. Personally, I think we pick up 3 Senate seats, 5 at the outside. But as far as I'm concerned, picking up any is enough to bump worthless Joe.

It isn't just his Brokeback mountain thing with St. John. He really has been a terrible committee chair.

Lieberman has much to atone for.

But he ehould still be booted from the party.

I think this is somewhat overrated.

First, 60 votes is not a "lockbox," where you have cloture guaranteed for two years. It's on a vote-by-vote basis.

If they get to 58, counting Joementum, and, rather than boot him from the caucus, just strip some seat assignments from him, Maine's Snowe and Collins will vote for cloture on a fair amount of social issues. So, too, will Rust Belt Republicans up for re-election in 2010, if any.

That said, per Steve's question, if Reid is both smart and vengeful, he'll just strip some seat assignments from Joementum, and let him decide what to do next as far as party affiliation.

Tell him to go play in traffic?

Donbux -- Noriega has yet to catch fire here in Tejas. (First TV debate with Cornyn, with sponsor, the Houston PBS station, including the Libertarian candidate but not the Green one, for the sole reason that the Libs have an official party ballot line.)

That said, Noriega campaigned too long, from the start, on his military record, and when things other than Iraq started becoming important, he had more catch-up to do.

Make him a useful idiot for his remaining four years. Get his stuff together if he wants any control over anything that happens in the Senate. Otherwise, have fun serving out your term in the minority with your buddies.

I think the possible 60 is being oversold to both left and right as a ploy to keep the money flowing. Guys from the National Right to Work Committee were at my office this morning trying to talk my boss into a 4k contribution (very small company btw) on the premise that the Democrats were just about to take over the Senate and unionize all the volunteer firefighters in the whole world. They send them out in pairs, like evangelists, and he's 80, an avid Fox watcher, and stuck in time at about 1978, so he's pretty well primed for any "scary" sounding thing the wingers have to offer. As the token sane person in the outfit, I had to break it to him that 61 seats in the Senate for the Dems really wasn't going to happen (unfortunately).

That being said, it's true that watching a few of their wackier colleagues go down in flames may do wonders for the powers of concentration of the Susan Collinses of the world.

Screw Lieberman.

The Republicans will be in some disarray after a beatdown like +7 to +9. His vote can be peeled off from someone else afraifd to be too tied to the GOP. It will also give cover to the Snowes, etc to come across on issues.

Joe should be persona non grata.

We don't need a 60+ majority. My understanding is that 60 votes are needed only to stop a filibuster short. Without it, THEY STILL NEED TO TALK. If they care about something so much, let them actually filibuster for days. This "courtesy" of honoring the mere threat of a filibuster should no longer be extended if it is being abused by the minority party.

As others have pointed out, this would empower Lieberman.

A further point: a veto-proof majority does not necessarily benefit the republic. It just means the Democrats, provided they are united, have the capability of pushing through any fool thing President Obama signs into law, including lousy bills.

I think we let Lieberman stay as long as he wants to stay.

But we reassign him to entirely domestic and inconsequential committees and subcommittees. Kumquat Trade Promotion. That Tag On The Mattress Subcommittee. Make it abundantly clear to Holy Joe that he will never, ever, ever be placed on a committee having anything to do with Isreal, not even tangentially (given Isreal's fruit exports, maybe he shouldn't be on the Kumquat one).

He will never be allowed to even slow down briefly outside the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee rooms.

I say that the ultimate vicious revenge is to make him make it obvious why he's leaving the Democrats. Since it long ago become apallingly obvious that Connecticut interested him not.

Break him like a twig. Bowers has convincingly argued that we really want to get to either OVER 60, or just under to force republicans to vote and then we can point to Snowe (Collins? whoever is not taking on Tom Allen...) and say if SHE voted right you'd get the program you wanted for the majority.

So it puts insane pressure on supposed moderates.

They should consider Lieberman a Republican for all intents and purposes. He is more damaging as a turncoat campaigner than as a proper independent caucusing with the other side, as he should be.

If Nader really wanted to make a difference, he could have taken Lieberman's seat years ago.

"A further point: a veto-proof majority does not necessarily benefit the republic. It just means the Democrats, provided they are united, have the capability of pushing through any fool thing President Obama signs into law, including lousy bills.

Posted by: Algernon"

(1) veto proof is 2/3, or 67 of a full quorum, not 60.

(2) veto proof means the president's decision doesn't matter, so it would be any fool thing that congress passes, even over Obama's objections.

If Al Gore had produced a record like Bush's over the last eight years, I'm guessing the Republicans would get 350 House seats, 72 Senate seats, and maybe run the table in presidential electoral votes.

This is one sick country. Even after all this damage, this crushing economic finale that is wreaking havoc on us all, but especially on seniors, Obama will be hard pressed to eke out a victory. Amazing. Simply amazing how far we have drifted to the right.

And Obama probably would have lost if the markets hadn't crashed a few weeks before the election. And he still might lose. Palin got a new hairdo, and that should help. It really is sexier.

If, and only if, Lieberman leaving his seat would result in a Democrat replacing him, give him a position in the new administration. Make him ambassador to Israel or Secretary of something other than State or Defense. Then at the end of the first term, when his Senate seat would be up anyway, politely usher him out.

I get the urge to stick it to Joe. I can't stand the guy. I voted third party in 2000 because I couldn't bring myself to vote for a ticket Lieberman was on. I just think it might be more productive if you can find a way to get him out of the Senate, get a real Dem in his place and appear conciliatory and magnanimous in victory.

Actually, Mary Landrieu is practically a sure thing. She's got a double digit lead against a real putz. National GOP has stopped dumping him money.

Actually, Mary Landrieu is practically a sure thing. She's got a double digit lead against a real putz. National GOP has stopped dumping him money.

It would be better to be at 57 and hand LIEberman out to dry than to be at 60 and try to hold on to him.

Sadly LIEberman is my senator. In front of the voting polls there were lots of Dems supporting Joe - I wonder how they feel now.

One of the bitterest pills to swallow over the past two years has been Senator Joe from Jerusalem being in the catbird seat. Another two years of his holding anything he wants hostage would make my head explode, if the Dems pick up nine seats and he makes the 60th vote. My guess is, under those circumstances, the Senate leadership will once again kiss his ass. It makes me crazy.

Throw the bum into the Potamac and point him towards Israel. It's a long swim, but his buddies will keep him afloat.

Lieberman is going to switch parties. Period.

They should give nothing to Lieberman. Can he be trusted to vote with the Democrats on key issues even if he caucuses with them? Absolutely not.

Strip all his leadership, if he wants to stay in the caucus fine, but he gets nothing. No deal can be made with him. If he wants to continue to vote with the obstructionists bent on destroying the country, he can go Cheney himself.

That said, I don't think we're going to get 60 with or without him. But we may get enough that the Republicans aren't quite so willing to block everything.

Olympia Snowe (the one not running this year in Maine)is a better Dem than Joe LIE (he'll never be *my* "loved man") and she's, officially, a Repub. Even Collins (the one who *is* running -- and likely to keep her seat) would be easier to deal/compromise with on a lot of issues. There might be a couple of other Repubs remaining, who're still borderline sane/responsible and who'd be worth the effort of reaching across the aisle to. Dems might just have to pick and choose between the issues that are a must and those where they could bend a bit, that's all.

But Joe LIE has to be marginalized, at least by us. No cushy committee seats. No friendly lunches with the Dems. Cold shoulder all around. He's more than earned it.

PS Virginia isn't going to be an "easy pickup". It's going to be "with a finger up the butt pickup" (to use a crude Polish phrase. I think the -- more acceptable in polite society -- English phrase is "with a hand tied behind your back"). Throughout Warner's (Mark) run, there's never been a poll which didn't show him winning (against Gillmore), at about 2:1 ratio. And I see that even in my own (red)neck of woods; even people who are leery of Obama have Warner signs in their front yards, sometimes next to the McCain/Palin ones. I have yet to see a *single* Gillmore sign anywhere. I'm beginning to think that he never produced any.

You need one. It doesn't have to be smokin' Joe.

Frankly, one party rule bugs me anyway.
If not one Republican agrees to a law (and it's not because of DeLay type party solidarity for its own sake), then it's probably a law in need of improvement.

Unlike THEM, we shouldn't need to ram stuff down their throats. We should be able to be the adults here.

I'm skeptical about the Dems' chances of getting to 60, at least this year, but if they do gain nine seats in November, what will the party do with Lieberman?

As others have noted, Lieberman doesn't matter. 60 votes for cloture on a particular bill matters, not a 60-vote caucus. The key number for the caucus is 51 -- enough to elect leadership and dictate committee chairs. 60 seats in one party only matters insofar as those represent reliable votes, but while Lieberman is not now (if ever he was) a reliable vote on any of the issues important to Democrats, whether or not he likes to still claim to be an "Independent Democrat" to add more weight to his attacks on Democrats and praise for Republicans, so he's of no particular value counting to 60. Among non-Democrats (excluding Sanders, who is a Socialist, and thus unlikely to oppose the Democrats from the right the way Lieberman and the Republicans will tend to), Lieberman may be one of the easier pickups to get to 60 votes for cloture on some bills (he still, considered against Republicans, is far from the most hostile opposition Senator to most individual Democratic legislative priorities in general), but on many bills, he probably won't be the easiest non-Sanders, non-Democrat to pick up, either.

One final note:

Dems need to get all the Senate seats they can this time around, period.

If the economy, as many predict, winds up going WORSE into the tank next year (7.5 percent unemployment is already being predicted), the midterm elections will KILL Congressional Dems of both houses. I expect Senate Dems to lose 2/3 as many seats in 2010 as they gain this time around, and to lose the House outright.

That's my Intrade for the 2010 elections.

I'd

Let's see:
Locks: VA, NM, NC, MN, AK (even if Stevens isn't convicted) OR, NH (and LA for Landrieu)

Probables CO, MI, GA

Possible KY, TX

As I've been saying 62-63 seats (counting *sigh* Lieberman, but he should be kicked out of the caucus, as people have pointed out, filibuster votes aren't party-line)

A lot of you are forgetting that the strength of Obama and the registratuion gains will help down ticket people, particularly in GA. If McCain continues to sink and Palin implodes -- as I expect tomorrow -- people aren't going to come out just to vote for Senator in most states. He'll have negative coattails.

I'll bet 60, and will take 62 with odds. (I'm cautious with betting)

If the economy, as many predict, winds up going WORSE into the tank next year (7.5 percent unemployment is already being predicted), . . . Posted by: SocraticGadfly

We'll probably have 7.5% unemployment by the end of the year. We're likely to see double-digit unemployment before this is over. The situation now is much worse than it was in the early '80s.

The auto industry is sure to shed 20-40,000 workers (the "Big Three" plus related suppliers) and the banks that have been absorbed haven't yet begun to shed employees. Housing contractors are going bankrupt across the country. Boeing is on strike and may see, at this rate, a lot of 787 orders postponed or canceled, which would mean lay-offs here and abroad. There will be no seasonal uptick for retail this Christmas.

I'd rather they either managed to pull up to 59, or to 61. Either case means that Lieberman gets hung out to dry. If they only just get 60, then I, for one, will be disappointed. They'll be far to tempted to let the honorable Droopy Dog from CT rule the roost, and it's pretty obvious at this point that one can't rely on Reid to show any spine.