Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Yesterday, October 16, 2006, Joe Lieberman, Republicrat of Connecticut, engaged in a televised debate with the Republican candidate, an obscure (and being made more obscure all the time by the national Republican Party) nobody named Alan Schlesinger, and the Democratic Candidate, Ned Lamont, for the Senate seat currently held by Lieberman (New York Times, 10-17-06). It should be noted that during the Democratic Primary campaign won by Lamont, the latter had pledged to support whichever Democrat won. Lieberman refused to do so. (Since he is not a Democrat, he was simply being honest after all.) In an interview with the Hartford Courant the previous Sunday, in response to a question about which party should be in control of Congress, Lieberman said: “Uh, I haven’t thought about that enough to give an answer.” Unfortunately, Lamont did not pursue that subject at the debate. He should have.
Lieberman is receiving major Republican money for his campaign and top-level Republican political consultants are on his staff. The Republicans are not doing this for nothing. My guess as to the deal, especially in the light of Lieberman’s Sunday comment? Should he be re-elected (a strong likelihood since he will get most of the Republican votes and some Democratic as well), he will pull a Jim Jeffords in reverse and declare himself as an Independent. He will then vote with the Republicans to organize the Senate. Since in the Senate ties are broken by the vote of the Vice-President, in order to take over that body, the Democrats will have to get 51 seats, without Lieberman. That, my friends, will reflect the “moral values” that Lieberman has been so fond of lecturing us all on for so many years.
