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What To Do With Lieberman?

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Publius tries to make a case to keep him quasi-inside the tent. I do share his basic premise — achieving legislative ends is more important than feeling good about punishing someone for its own sake — so his conclusion is not as unreasonable as I might prefer.

I do think he’s omitting a couple of a factors that have to be considered. First, it’s important to remember that committees, and especially committee chairs, are also important gatekeepers and veto points, and having a member of the Wanker Caucus in the wrong place can do a lot of damage (cf. Feinstein at Judiciary.) Second, we have to remember that his vote record can be misleading. One some issues — such as Alito and the bankruptcy bill — he’s cast a meaningless correct vote on the merits while voting with the Republicans on the cloture vote that actually mattered. Since the challenge under a Democratic administration will be more getting to 60 votes on cloture than 50 on the up-or-down, this isn’t very reassuring about the power of party leverage. And finally, it’s also important to remember that he’s potentially constrained in some areas by a blue-state constituency; he doesn’t necessarily have the same freedom of action that a Zell Miller does.

Given these things, if Lieberman were planning on running for re-election I think the balance of factors would dictate kicking him out. However, that’s probably not something that can be counted on. I forget where I saw a commenter suggest this, but the idea I like is to offer Lieberman a deal: vote “yes” on every cloture vote and you can keep your committee slots. If you join a Republican filibuster once, you’re stripped of everything and you can move into a broom closet with no air conditioning. Alas, I suspect what will happen is that Lieberman will keep his positions and Reid won’t get much out of it…

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