The Democratic leadership in the Senate is about to decide whether Joe Lieberman will continue to hold committee chairmanships in the next Congress. You may remember that when Joe Lieberman was defeated in a free and fair primary election, he left the Democratic Party and ran against his former party's duly elected nominee as an "Independent." Since then he has campaigned aggressively for McCain and Palin and has participated in negative attacks against the Democratic nominee, President Elect Barack Hussein Obama.
Daily Kos has an editorial about Lieberman here. They also post a list of the Senators who will be making the decision about Lieberman.
Debbie Stabenow, Michigan - Chairwoman (202) 224-4822
Harry Reid, Nevada (202) 224-3542
John Kerry, Massachusetts (202) 224-2742
Daniel Inouye, Hawaii (202) 224-3934
Robert Byrd, West Virginia (202) 224-3954
Edward Kennedy, Massachusetts (202) 224-4543
Joe Biden, Delaware (202) 224-5042
Patrick Leahy, Vermont (202) 224-4242
Chris Dodd, Connecticut (202) 224-2823
Tom Harkin, Iowa (202) 224-3254
Max Baucus, Montana (202) 224-2651
Richard Durbin, Illinois (202) 224-2152
Kent Conrad, North Dakota (202) 224-2043
Carl Levin, Michigan (202) 224-6221
Herbert Kohl, Wisconsin (202) 224-5653
Barbara Boxer, California (202) 224-3553
Hillary Clinton, New York (202) 224-4451
Jeff Bingaman, New Mexico (202) 224-5521
Mark Pryor, Arkansas (202) 224-2353
I urge you all to contact your Senators and urge them to strip Senator Lieberman of committee chairmanships. If he wants to continue working with the Democratic caucus, fine. But he has betrayed the party's trust in two very high profile ways and he should not be rewarded by delegating more authority to him.
4 comments:
According to Sen. Lieberman's website, Lieberman is the Chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He is also a member (not a chair) of the Armed Services Committee, the Environment & Public Works Committee, and the Senate Small Business Committee.
Anyhow, while I was mad at him during the election, I feel more magnanimous now that we won. There needs to be some form of reckoning for supporting McCain, but I am not sure if stripping him of his chairmanship is the right way to go. I would like to keep him in the Democratic tent. A private pledge from Lieberman to Reid that he will always vote to break Republican filibusters, regardless of the issue, would be my price for retaining his chairmanship, seniority, and forgiving him for supporting McCain.
The problem with relying on a private promise is that Lieberman gave exactly such a promise that he would only say positive things about McCain and no negative things about Obama - he did not follow through on that promise.
Also you talk about the need for consequences for Lieberman's disloyalty but then you say he should not have his chairmanship stripped. What would you have happen?
I am particularly concerned that a Senator who supports the occasional use of torture and has voted with the Republicans on a range of civil liberties abuses connected to the Patriot Act would chair the committee connected to exactly that issue.
For me, the most important reason to elect Democrats in 2006 and 2008 was to restore constitutional government. Lieberman is on the wrong side of that issue. If he is to retain a chairmanship, it should be some committee where he actually AGREES with the Democratic caucus!
In a related vein...I believe that parties are GOOD things. I suspect Dr. S. believes that parties are usually bad or at best a necessary evil.
Parties coordinate legislative action and prevent a phenomenon called "Condorcet cycling" (the chronic instability of legislative outcomes).
Parties also provide information to voters about the legislative preferences of candidates. The clearer that information is, the easier it is for voters to hold legislators accountable. That's what happened to Republicans in 2006 and 2008, the "brand" of the Republican Party lost value among voters and they were punished for poor performance. Without a coherent party structure, that would not have been possible.
So Lieberman is a threat to the cohesiveness of the Democratic Party. He has a right to vote the way he wants. And if his constituents are happy with that, fine. But he does not have the right to be granted positions in the leadership of the Senate or the Democratic caucus within the Senate despite having voted against the Democrats on major issues involving the very committee he wants to chair.
If Lieberman were to be moved to the Small Business and Entrapaneurship Committee, I would not be that upset. But him staying on Homeland Security is unacceptable.
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