Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Lieberman Lost Joe Goffman Today, Will Senatorial Power Follow Soon After?

The day Joe Lieberman came back to Washington after galvanting in Minneapolis, his top D.C. staffer resigned his position, effective the end of the month. No one knows for sure why Joe Goffman decided to quit his plum job, whether it was for the good of his soul or something else. He did say he has nothing to start in the immediate future, so I'd like to hope that Goffman couldn't take working for a traitor anymore. Now what I'm really waiting to see is Lieberman losing the most important thing to him, his power and seniority in the Senate.

I might just get my wish
:

Aides to Senate Democratic leaders say Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman will be ousted as chairman of the Homeland Security Committee as payback for his Obama-bashing GOP convention speech — but only if the Democrats add four or five more seats to their slim Senate majority in November.

The Democrats’ anger with Lieberman has reached the boiling point, but it’s not yet clear whether his Senate colleagues are peeved enough to boot the party’s 2000 vice presidential nominee from the Democratic Caucus entirely.[...]

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid “had no intention” of disciplining Lieberman for merely backing John McCain, a Democrat close to the Nevadan said. But Reid became incensed, the Democrat said, by Lieberman’s attack on Barack Obama’s fitness to serve as commander in chief.

While Reid has publicly adopted a wait-and-see attitude on his longtime friend from Connecticut, he has told associates that Lieberman will lose his post “if we hit 55 or 56” seats, a gain of four or five freshmen in November, the person added.


What that tells me is that we must work hard to elect more and better Democrats to the Senate in less than two months from now. People like Andrew Rice in Oklahoma, Mark Udall in Colorado, Tom Allen in Maine, Al Franken in Minnesota and Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire among others. This is a great year to not only increase our lead in the Senate but to make it that Harry Reid (or whomever the Senate Leader is in January) will be more than comfortable when they eject Lieberman from the caucus and the remaining tie he has to the Democratic party.