Dr. J.’s Short Shot No. 7: Which Way Ya Gonna Go, Joe?

In the run-up to the election, Joe Lieberman was assuring Connecticut voters that [delete the first “he”] if elected he would continue to vote with the Democratic caucus in the Senate. He was elected, as you all know. (Why don’t I say “re-elected,” some might ask? Because it wasn’t Joe Lieberman, Democrat, who was elected, it was Joe Lieberman, former Democrat who was elected. He received about 70% of the Republican vote in Connecticut. If he had not gotten all of those Republican votes, the true Democratic candidate Ned Lamont would have won in a walk.) [Delete “further”] For his campaign, Lieberman received lots of Republican money and had senior Republican political consultants on his staff.

On October 17, 2006 elsewhere I published a short note speculating that were he to get back to the Senate, Lieberman might vote to caucus with the Republicans. Nevertheless, on the day after the election, appearing on the show of his “dear friend” Sean Hannity (!!!), Lieberman said unequivocally that he would caucus with the Democrats, while shooting darts at all the Democrats who had “deserted” him (“stabbed him in the back” [by supporting the elected nominee of their own party, of course] was the term Hannity used, without any demurrer from Lieberman). “I won’t ever forget what happened,” Lieberman said. But he also said, “I gave my word before the election [that he would caucus with the Dems.], and I will stick with it.”  In the new Senate his vote will be critical to how it is organized. If he votes with the Dems., it will be 51-49 and they will organize. If he votes with Repubs., it will be 50-50. The question of who would organize it in that case would be complex, very complex, but in any tie votes on legislation, Cheney would have the tie-breaker. (It is unclear if he would have the tie-breaker on organizing the Senate. At the very least there would be co-Majority leaders and the Committee chair positions would be spilt.) But now, all of a sudden, Lieberman’s not so sure which way he will go. On “Meet the Press” on Nov. 12, he announced that his party label would not be “D” but rather “ID:” Independent Democrat. Further he stated that he would now not rule out voting with the Republicans on the matter of organizing the Senate, although he was still “leaning” to the Democrats.

The question now becomes to whom, precisely, did he give his word on the matter of with whom he would be caucusing, were he to be going back to the Senate: the voters of Connecticut or the Republican power-brokers who put him back in office? Stay tuned, folks. Harry Reid may not be the Majority Leader after all, and the Dems. may not indeed have all of those juicy Committee Chairs. (Wouldn’t the Georgites in particular like not to have Pat Leahy running Judiciary, as they continue their assault on Constitutional Democracy.) “Say it ain’t so, Joe,” originally applied to the baseball great Shoeless Joe Jackson after the revelation of the “Chicago Black Sox” baseball betting scandal of 1919, may come to have a new meaning.

This article was originally published on BuzzFlash on Mon, 11/13/2006 – 3:28pm, at

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/jonas/027Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) a weekly Contributing Author for The Political Junkies (www.thepoliticaljunkies.net), the Contributing Editor for The Planetary Movement, and a Columnist for BuzzFlash.