Lieberman: Enough Already?
Mention Joe Lieberman’s name to a Democratic activist these days and you’ll probably hear some variation of the question: This is what we get for letting him keep his chairmanship? It was last November, you’ll remember, that Senate Democrats opted to hand Lieberman - who had just spent nearly a year championing John McCain’s White House bid and savaging Barack Obama - the Homeland Security Committee gavel for another two years.
Obama himself was instrumental in the decision; it was supposed to be a nice way for the president-elect to show that he was serious about bridging partisan and ideological divides. Senate math was another factor: With Lieberman in the fold, Democrats edged closer to the magic, filibuster-killing number of 60 (a number they finally attained with Arlen Specter’s party switch and the end of the Franken-Coleman madness in Minnesota).
And now, a year later, Chairman Lieberman is doing more than anyone else in the entire Senate to derail the public option - the only component of any of th