[UPDATE: Greg Sargent has more on what a snake Lieberman really is.]
You may have heard of the recent encounter between Barack Obama and Joe Lieberman, in which the new leader of the Dem party let the former Democrat know that he was not pleased with the the “personal attacks and his half-hearted denials of the false rumors that Obama is a Muslim.”
Now the snake in the grass is fighting back, telling Mark Halperin of The Page that “If the Obama campaign thinks they are going to intimidate Joe Lieberman with these sleazy tactics then they are sorely mistaken.”
I agree with Josh Marshall:
…Lieberman’s days in the Democratic caucus, or more specifically, his days with a committee chairmanship courtesy of the Democratic caucus are numbered in months.
My assumption is that after the November election, regardless of the outcome of the presidential campaign, Joe will be stripped of his chairmanship. (This seems even more certain to me if Obama wins the general, but I suspect it will happen regardless.) Whether he’ll actually be expelled from the caucus I don’t know and probably doesn’t really matter. Once he’s stripped of the benefits he gains from it, presumably he’ll leave himself and become an actual non-caucusing independent or, more likely, start caucusing with the Republicans.
What that tells me is that Lieberman has no incentive not to make the maximum amount of trouble over the next five months both for his senate colleagues and for Sen. Obama.
Listen, Dems, we tried to tell you to support Ned Lamont. We almost got Creepy Joe out of the Senate for you, and you wouldn’t listen to us.
What’s even slimier than Joe is the fact that the Right is using this episode to add to their “Obama is anti-semitic” smear: “How smart is it of the Obama camp to antagonize a revered figure in the Jewish community?”
Shameless. And you know the righties won’t let go of this. They’ll be fabricating “evidence” of Obama’s alleged anti-semitism until the election.
Update: See also Jane Hamsher, “Lieberman Whines After Obama Kicks His Ass.”
Update: Have you heard about the “veep vetter” controversy? One of the members of Obama’s vice presidential search team is being linked to mortgage industry lobbyists because he took a loan from a mortgage company whose lobbyists contributed to the Clinton campaign, and Obama had criticized the Clinton campaign for taking the lobbyists’ contributions, and somehow this make Obama a bad person. I haven’t had time to check all the details out myself, but unless there is something about this story nobody is telling me, I concur with Mark Adams’s opinion:
Now just for the record, the head of Obama’s VP selection team didn’t hand out fraudulent loans or anything, right? He wasn’t a lobbyist for Countrywide, was he, or one of it’s executives?
He was an extremely good credit risk who took out some loans with the company, and paid them back. So WTF?
Lieberman, revered? Man, oh man. I had dinner with some of my hyper-Zionist friends — she was born in Israel and he wishes he was — and after a conversation about how no one can really escape identity politics fully in which they discussed how earth-shattering a moment it was to hear Gore selecting him as his running mate, even THEY roll their eyes at his name now.
Lieberman is a High Holiday Jew…only shows up to Temple when it’s time for redemption.
Need a minion? Can’t find him.
The sad thing, or should I say tragic, is he was once a great champion for those who were kept down.
He will reap what he sows…no doubt
This CT Dem did supported/voted for Ned Lamont as did many of my friends. Many Republicans went over to Lieberman because they had such a lame candidate. This constant miserable behavior of Joe’s just makes it even worse. I can’t wait for him to get politically neutered this fall.
He is this year’s Zell Miller.
Snakes are unfairly maligned. Leiberman is not.
I sort of think it speaks volumes about Liberman’s character that he begged for and got Obama’s endorsement in the race against Lamont and now he tries to trash Obama because Obama complained about the personal attacks. i mean it is one thing for the guy to do what he thinks is best for Israel and even to support McCain for that reason, but to complain about a guy on a personal level who helped him out when he asked gives snakes a bad name.
Next up: it will be revealed that some of the people working for the Obama campaign not only walk on two legs, but they also BREATHE AIR! As I’m sure you know, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, terrorist mastermind, ALSO walks on two legs, and, breathes air every chance he gets, (when not being waterboarded by intelligence operatives working to keep our country safe.)
How can we trust Obama to keep us safe, if we can’t trust him to vett his campaign staff better than that?????
Senator snake, and senator “yet”.
One has lost all. The other is trying to gain. One looks to his enemy for comfort. One looks to the unknown for understanding. One senator is a safe bet for corporate freedom. One aint safe yet.
http://www.senate.gov/
Really, Maha. I had a pet snake once. They’re quite interesting and sympathetic creatures. I think you owe them all an apology.
becky — you are right that I am being unfair to snakes. That is a particularly handsome snake, in fact, although I don’t know what species it is. I think it might be some kind of cobra.
I’m just glad that Obama has the tenacity to lean into Joe Lieberman and tell him to “back off.” It is a handsome snake.