Evan Bayh Argues For Lieberman...And An Apology

Senator Bayh is one of Joe Lieberman's biggest fans in the Senate and he defended his chairmanship well on Rachel Maddow's show yesterday. He acknowledged that what Joe did on the campaign trail was wrong but that a disgruntled Lieberman would be worse for us than if he were stripped of his committee.



Unfortunately there are many problems with this. For starters, it would be incredibly hard to strip Lieberman of his Chairmanship mid-term than it would be right now when everything is being doled out. Secondly, his record as Chair of the Committee for Homeland Security and Government Affairs is abysmal. He was basically helping Bush by not conducting any oversight whatsover. Endorsing and campaigning for Lieberman was just the icing on the cake. He can support whomever he wants for President (though that was disgusting on many levels) but if you cannot do your job as a Senator, then a Democratic majority has the right and duty to give Lieberman absolutely nothing. Let him be disgruntled. The man already votes against his party and the whole sixty Senator plateau has already been discredited because Senators can cross party lines for various legislation.

Nice try to save your friend Senator Bayh, but Lieberman still needs to be stripped of the Chairmanship. He's proven himself unworthy too many times. If he wants to redeem himself, an apology is a good start, but words mean nothing without action, so let's watch and see how he votes in the 111th session before giving him anything of importance.