Lieberman mentions the ‘remote possibility’ of switching parties

February 22, 2007

Shortly after the 2006 elections, discussing whether he’d bolt the party, Joe Lieberman told the NYT, “This is not so much to threaten anybody, but….” Shortly thereafter, on the possibility of bolting the party, Lieberman told Tim Russert, “I’m not ruling it out, but….”

Needless to say, this causes great consternation among Dems everywhere, not because Lieberman has become a trusted and reliable ally of the Senate Democratic caucus, but because his departure would put the GOP in control of the chamber, make Mitch McConnell the Senate Majority Leader, and give Dick Cheney the tie-breaking vote in the chamber.

Unfortunately, Lieberman is still talking about it.

The next issue of Time magazine … “Independent” Sen. Joe Lieberman receives a mini-profile titled “What Joe Wants.” Lieberman calls jumping to the Republican side, and tilting the Senate, “a remote possibility,” which means there’s at least a chance of that. Time seems to push Lieberman in this direction, as the article concludes: “Lieberman’s GOP flirtation has its risks — and a time limit….The longer he waits to capitalize on his moment, the greater the danger that he’ll be tagged as one of those politicians for whom having power is more important than using it.”

You don’t say.

One thing Lieberman can’t say is that Dems have been uncooperative. They made him a powerful committee chairman, despite merit. When Lieberman told Harry Reid he’d stop going to weekly Democratic caucus luncheons because he didn’t feel comfortable discussing Iraq there, Reid arranged it so that war-related discussions would be held at a different time.

And yet, the sword of Damocles continues to hang over head — and Lieberman made a point of telling Time he keeps in touch with Bush aide Stephen Hadley “every week or two.”

All of this, of course, follows closely on the heels of Joe Klein’s recent observation.

“This is just a guess, but it’s an educated and a reported guess. The Democrats in the Senate are getting really, really angry at Joe Lieberman, especially because he’s been accusing them of undermining the troops’ morale. And Joe Lieberman isn’t too happy with the Democrats, either. I think there’s going to be an explosion and perhaps a party switch pretty soon.”

I’m still skeptical, in part for the reasons David Weigel mentioned a couple of weeks ago.

If Lieberman becomes a Republican no one will care about him anymore. A pro-war liberal Democrat is a media curio and a useful guy to have on your side when you’re promoting a new resolution or a speech at AEI. A pro-war liberal Republican is… George Voinovich. Stay ornery, don’t switch parties, and people will care about you.

Besides, come 2008, Lieberman may want to switch back when Dems gain a few more seats, and by then, the burned bridge will be gone.

Update: Greg Sargent has more, including some great quotes from Lieberman about swearing to voters that he wouldn’t switch parties.

Second Update: From The Politico:

“I have no desire to change parties,” Lieberman said in a telephone interview. “If that ever happens, it is because I feel the majority of Democrats have gone in a direction that I don’t feel comfortable with.”

Asked whether that hasn’t already happened with Iraq, Lieberman said: “We will see how that plays out in the coming months,” specifically how the party approaches the issue of continued funding for the war.

Stay tuned.

Time for the Dems to do what the Repubs did and start actively recruiting defectors. I didn’t leave the Party, the Party left me can cut both ways.

  • It would not surprise me at all if Lieberman switched parties since he knows his perks will only extend until the Democratic lead in the Senate is increased in 2008 and he can finally be jettisoned like the poisonous baggage he is.

    The problem for Joe is that even if he switches now, what will it really gain him? He’s already a committee chairman and unlikely to rise any higher, so no gain there. And that will end in ’08 as well.

    It would also reveal him once and for all as a lying deceiver with no integrity or personal honor, only a self-indulgent craver of personal power.

    So I would hope he’ll continue to get his jollies from just playing coy with the threat of a jump and not follow through with it in the actual. But with someone like him you just never know.

  • I should have said “and unlikely to rise any higher as a Republican, so no gain there.”

    Just to be clear. 🙂

  • Find just one GOP member of the Senate who’ll agree to switch sides, and once it’s done, throw Darth Lieberman across the aisle like the maggot-infested piece of spoiled pork that he is. Let him discover just how “true” his ReThug friends are, once he no longer carries with him the glorious power of the swing-vote. Strip him of his committeeships, and offer him the opportunity to explain to the voters of Connecticut why he abandoned the principles he pledged himself to last fall, in order to get himself re-elected….

    Darth Lieberman—Dark Underling of the Reich….

  • Well, at *some* point Senate Democrats are going to have to choose between confronting George W. Bush on Iraq/Iran/warrantless wiretapping/etc. and “driving” Lieberman out of the party, though Joe’s been at the wheel of that particular car revving the engine for a while now.

    Or maybe they’ve *already* chosen – to enable a Bush-loving neocon to stay in their party because he’s their friend, and friends don’t screw friends, right? Funny how Lieberman never seems to worry about that.

    (and from what I understand of the Senate’s organizing resolution, Lieberman switching parties wouldn’t change chairs/control; someone diaried this at DailyKos a few weeks ago)

  • Stay ornery, don’t switch parties, and people will care about you.

    otherwise he will definately lose his committee chairmanship in addition to the loss of media attention.

    Haik,

    Who cares? Let him go.

    I care. George W Bush will not be able to ram through his insane judges as long as the Dems control the Judiciary committee. Investigations into intelligence abuses and war profiteering (at the very least money mismanagement) will continue and will see the light of day with Dems in charge. If Lieberman jumps to the GOP, all that changes. And we’ll get 2 more years of no oversight and no accountability.

  • Lieberman’s like a terrorist with a gun that’s loaded – with a single bullet. As long as he doesn’t use it, he can threaten everyone with everything – and everyone whom he’s threatening keeps thinking two things:

    1) I sure hope he doesn’t shoot anyone.

    2) If he does, I hope it’s someone else.

    That’s how Lieberman manages to blackmail the rest of the Democratic party.

    I’m just surprised any competent political party or politicians would fall for it, but then again, Joe Lieberman is their friend, and they can’t believe he’d just turn into an unrepentant anti-Democrat Bush-loving asshole… because he says, “The same dirty fucking hippies who turned on me could turn on you, too!” and too many other Democrats think, “Yeah, we’d rather side with one of our friends than with some wild-eyed liberal bloggers and *voters* – those people are scary and unpredictable!”

  • Isn’t LIEberman already a ReFug? You’ve got your shameless kissing of the president’s ass and the threats to take his ball and go home if people won’t play by his rules. And just think, this “maggot-infested piece of spoiled pork” is cozying up to the man who dashed his hopes of becoming our Veep in 2000. Yep. Political whoring makes three. He’s a ReThug all right. Of the McCain/Romney variety no less.

    Maybe he’ll bump into Gore in a dark alley and be subjected to an Inconvenient Truth about cinder blocks.

  • Look at the silver lining, however: even JoeLie must be realizing his slipping relevance. He trots this threat out every few weeks when he feels lonely and needs a reporter or one side or the other to pretend to be his friend. Every time he does this, its a sure sign he has come face to face with insignificance. His 15 minutes are up in 2008. It isn’t much longer now.

  • Chris,

    It sounds like Lieberman leaving would *not* flip the Senate, according to this 1/18 DailyKos diary

    for those of us who can’t access dailykos, can you summarize the argument?

  • Edo, here’s the skinny on that diary:

    There has been some confusion and uncertainty as to whether Joe Lieberman has the power to flip control of the Senate to the Republicans. I come bearing good news!! As of this past Friday (January 12), it appears that Lieberman is powerless to effect party control of the 110th Congress.

    This is due to the fact that the Senate passed a resolution on January 12 (S.Res. 27) that designates various Democrats by name as committee chairs and specifies the Democratic members of each committee. The Senate also passed a similar resolution (S. Res. 28) the same day that names various Republicans as the ranking minority members of each committee and specifies the Republican members of each committee. Based on these two resolutions, the membership of each standing committee in the Senate appears to be fixed for the duration of this Congress. Further, it includes one more Democratic member than it does Republican members in each case, thereby providing Democrats with control of the committee system and the flow of legislation in the Senate.

  • thanks doubtful.

    Can anyone shed light on whether or not this resolution can be superceeded by a new resolution putting Republican’ts in charge assuming a LIEberman flip?

  • Yet one more reason the 2008 election can’t come soon enough. A more solid majority, and Holy Joe can STFU.

    Shouldn’t we assume that the D leadership has already attempted to woo the likely moderate republicans across the aisle? Certainly everyone’s life would be easier without worrying about this sideshow.

  • We can’t assume anything . . . and maybe it’s a long process trying to woo them across the aisle. If I were Susan Collins, I’d pull a Jeffords– she’s got her own re-election crisis looming in 2008, and, adding the Bush burden to the independent nature of New England voters, I would say that becoming an Independent (who caucuses with the Dems, a la Jeffords and Sanders) will turn Collins’s re-election prospects from iffy to solid.

  • I have a lot of trouble believing Leiberman would actually do it. The sheer fact of the 2008 numbers mean that he’d almost certainly be put decisively in the minority (and the most reviled member thereof) in 2009.

    Of course, if impeachment hearings start up next year, who knows……..?

  • Edo- yes, it can be reversed, but the Democrats could make a LOOOOOONG fight about it… Remember back to 2001, when Jeffords jumped ship on the Republicans, giving the Democrats a 51-49 majority? The Republicans put up a lot of blather, and threatened to not allow a reorganization (too long to put into details, but, basically, once the Senate adopts rules for a session, reversing them is a tough deal). The Democrats won on that one, of course, because they had the legitimate threat of having a real majority.

    A Liebermann defection would make it a 50-50 split. Under this, the Democrats would have a much more solid reasoning to refuse to re-organize, since there would NOT be more sitting Republican than Democratic Senators…

    In addition (and too lazy to look up the details right now, but I think it was back in the 50s), there was at least one time period where a party switch in the Senate which flipped the majority did not result in the new majority gaining the chairmanships, so there is some precedence.

    End of the day point? Basically, if he does flip, expect this one to be drawn out based on public opinion polls… If the average American sees Liebermann as a traitor, and wants the Democrats to stay in charge, they have a good chance of accomplishing that… BUT, if the Reich-Wing media starts playing their piece, and if that gains traction, then look for a re-org.

  • Not that I’m all that supportive of Joe Lieberman and his shenanigans, but doesn’t this go to show how screamingly absurd our two party system of Democrats versus Republicans has become? Since the founding of our democracy, when did a legitimate politician have to toe the party line before he/she could represent a constituency in this country? Isn’t this what the founding fathers had in mind when they spoke of the dangers of the party system?

  • Lieberman likes to threaten because that gives him power, but another way of looking at this is would the Republicans take him? What I mean to say is despite his meetings with Hadley and his right-wing political views, Lieberman is more valuable to the Repubs as a mole than one of their own. Lieberman’s presence gives the impression of “bipartisanship” in debate when he sides with the righties and he’s a convenient foil for the TV news who can put him and another Repub on and say both sides are represented. Joe won’t tip the scales for the Repubs and I’m sure he passes along whatever Dem info he is privvy to. Why lose that?

  • What scales is he going to tip ?? Nothing is getting done, Reid can’t even get a non-binding resolution that has huge public support through on a Saturday. F him. Let the R’s fuck up even more, long term, losing Joe would be an asset.

    Joe ain’t going nowhere, unfortunately. He likes power and over on that side he is just another talking head with nothing to say, and he knows it. Plus can anyone say unelectable in 2008 ?

  • Lieberman said: “We will see how that plays out in the coming months.”

    A Friedman unit, Joe?

    This guy is a disgrace, and he belongs in the Party that has (and continues to) disgrace America.

  • Although I have not read this post, I still have a few things to say about it.
    Sen. Liberscum is not worthy of a serious post.
    Whether or not he bolts the Dems is irrelevant because, as has been shown in the past several weeks, the Senate is powerless against the filibuster & the veto.
    In fact, it is preferable that he bolt & put the tiebreaker in Big Dick’s lap.
    We want to see much more of Big Dick & bringing him in for some overtime votes sounds just fine to me.
    I shall comment no more about Joe Libersnot.

  • People keep saying that Iraq is the only item of disagreement between the Lie and the Dems. But it’s not. There’s the Katrina disgrace as well as some others. I can hardly wait till it’s time for us to flip him… a bird

  • I’m with olo – forget waiting for him to switch, push the matter:

    Broke promise on Katrina, Isn’t comfortable discussing Iraq – Sorry, no choice assignment for you, it needs to go to someone who gives a shit about America….

    Lose the senate? Who cares? Yes, they can do damage now, but we are already talking about decades to undo what has been done already. We still have the House to help run interference and I would not mind seeing plenty of Big Dick while Waxman spends the next 22 months shining bright lights in his nasty slimebucket world.

    What I want, is a 60 seat Senate in ’08, and I think that more rope to the Rethugs is probably a good way to get there.

    -jjf

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