Sorry I haven't been around recently. I had a bit of a family emergency to attend to and it's taken a bit of time to get back into things.

Worthless Senate Leadership

As you may already know, yseterday the Senate Democratic caucus met to decide the fate of Joe Lieberman (CFL-CT). Specifically at issue was whether Lieberman would get to retain his spot as Chairman of the powerful Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Many in the party's base have been calling for him to lose that gavel for two reasons.

The first reason is that Lieberman spent the Presidential campaign campaigning for Senator John McCain (R-AZ), including speaking at the Republican Convention and promoting many of the more vicious attacks made against President-elect Obama (Lieberman also campaigned for some Republican Senate candidates). In doing so, Lieberman betrayed both the party to which he ostensibly owes his allegiance (as a member of the Democratic caucus), and his constituents to whom he promised during his reelection campaign that he would support the Democratic nominee in 2008.

The second reason though, is probably more damning. Joe Lieberman is simply terrible at his job. Since Democrats gained the majority in both chambers of Congress, Lieberman's counterpart in the House, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA30), has carried out a number of investigations into the affairs of the Bush administration and issued many subpoenas to receive testimony from administration officials on a wide variety of topics (some of which I've covered here). Lieberman, on the other hand, has done..... nothing. At least, nothing of note that I can recall. Surely between the betrayal of his party and his utter incompetence then, the Democratic caucus would strip him of that gavel?

If you think that, you clearly haven't been paying attention to the Senate Democrats over the past couple of years. By a vote of 42-13, Lieberman will keep his gavel. As "punishment" for his actions, the Senate Democrats stripped him of a subcommittee chairmanship in a meaningless and inconsequential gesture. The ballot was secret, but so far we know that Senators Sanders (I-VCT) and Leahy (D-VT), and Senator-elect Merkley (D-OR) were against Lieberman keeping his chairmanship, and Senators Clinton (D-NY), Kerry (D-MA), Durbin (D-IL), Udall (D-NM), Cardin (D-MD), and Reid (D-NV) supported him keeping it.

In letting Lieberman get away scot free, Senate Democrats have shown that there are no consequences for betraying the party, and that they are completely unwilling to do anything to remedy poor performance by a committee chair. While all but 13 of them share blame for this, chiefly at fault is Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is supposed to be the one maintaining order in the caucus. I've expressed my disapproval of Reid's performance as Majority Leader before, and this latest offense only serves to confirm that low opinion. Harry Reid is worthless as Senate Majority Leader, and he will hopefully be primaried in 2010 so that he can maybe be replaced with someone competent.

-David Kleppinger, Morons.org Political Analyst