They can’t make a paper bag big enough…

...to quell all of the hyperventilating that was going on in the leftosphere yesterday about Lieberman. I’ve loathed Jowly Joe longer than just about any blogger out there (going way back to his days as AG in Connecticut) and if I can suck it up so can everyone else. Obama was pretty clear about how he was going to govern and yet too many normally wise folks seem to think we elected Amy Goodman or David Sirota to be president.

News flash: we didn’t.

And if you want to know how I feel about yesterday (aside from, admittedly, wanting to briefly headbutt Lieberman to a bloody pulp after watching this), I fall somewhere between Steve M. and, believe it or not, Melissa McEwan. We’ve got much bigger fish to fry than that petulant bottom-feeding bristleworm. He ain’t worth the outrage and, as Betty noted here earlier, “martyrdom is something Holy Joe thrives on.” I fully trust that Obama gets that and that he’ll game Lieberman just like he did so many other alleged political geniuses on his way to the White House. Call me naive if you want (go ahead, I dare you ... the name’s Kevin), but that’s where I currently stand.

MORE: I was just emailing with poputonian, who hopefully will weigh in on this matter later today, and brought up the point that there wasn’t one viable Democratic candidate this year who wouldn’t have done the same thing. Go ahead, look. The only two who would have gone for Lieberman’s throat are Kucinich and Gravel. And, well…

RELATED: The last sentence of this killed. I needed that. You probably do, too.

Posted by Kevin K. on 11/19/08 at 08:25 AM • Permalink

BTW, if anyone wants to disagree with me on this, honestly, be my guest. Fire away. I could be 100% wrong.  Only time will tell.

My feelings exactly, Kevin.  For all of the hardcore whining about potential cabinet people and now Lieberman, many people obviously were not paying attention to anything Obama has been saying for 2 years.  The hand-wringing and threats to pull support for Obama on Firedoglake yesterday were disturbing.  Talk about projection.

I would have liked nothing better than to see Lieberwhore publicly humiliated and drummed out of the party, but I’ll work (even from here in NJ) to see that he’s not re-elected.  I have a feeling the work won’t be that hard.

OK, I’m game, Kevin.

I’ll probably just re-state the obvious as I don’t think it’s a deep issue (but I’m here to learn as well as laugh).

I’m as angry as anyone about Lieberman, but since it’s a while till he’s up for re-election, I think the current strategy cuts Lieberman’s legs out from under him.

After his thrills at the GOP Convention and on the trail (and backing the losing horse, but that’s just stupid miscalculation), he probably relished the prospect of being the centre of attention and made a martyr, as Betty pointed out, and a possible rallying point for - who knows what he had in mind?

Now he’s on a short leash and has to run a key committee where the prima donna act won’t go down at all well.

Not ideal, but the alternative would have been a major distraction when there’s not much else for the media to focus on with Obama except the trickle of appointees, a few holdovers from the campaign (recycling these seems to be all the RW has at the moment, along with their hypocritical boggling at the number of ex-Clintonite appointees - such a dangerous socialist, don’cha know) and his measured statements on policies and issues from the position of President Elect.

It’s “no drama”. It worked OK during the election.

I can understand people’s frustration with seeing that no-good, traitorous, pompous skunk getting a pass. It makes my blood boil too.

But getting results is what’s really important. If mollifying that lying, unctuous weasel is the price we have to pay to get decent health care, reverse Bush’s executive power grab, construct a sane foreign policy, etc., it’ll be worth it in the end.

Some folks are saying that Lieberman will be an obstacle to Obama’s agenda rather than an asset because he’s an Iraq hawk, etc. I say they give the perfidous cretin way too much credit by ascribing principles to him. It’s all about Lieberman, as his remarks during the hearing proved beyond doubt:

“He spoke earnestly of the pain he felt when he was rejected by the Democratic Party in his re-election and in turn, the rejection he felt from many in the caucus who campaigned against him after decades and decades of friendship,” the lawmaker said. “And that put him in a very different place approaching the 2008 election and John McCain was the only candidate for president who asked for his support.”

[Link via Whiskey Fire, which has an excellent post up on this topic.]

See, the voters and senate colleagues hurt Holy Joe’s fee-wings. So he had no choice but to smirk alongside McCain and Palin as they called Obama a socialist. He had no choice but to earnestly proclaim that a Dem majority would endanger America and imply that the scary Muslim hordes would dance on the 9/11 graves were Obama elected.

None of this is news to any of us, and I’m sure it’s not news to Obama either. Lieberman is a smarmy douchebag who is infinitely manipulable. So if he can be manipulated in such a way as to change this country for the better, so be it. Sure, we’d rather see his balls swinging from the peak of the Rotunda, but we can put our feelings aside for the greater good in a way Lieberman is apparently incapable of, and so can Obama. This is a good thing.

I get the need to keep him in the caucus, but for him to retain the chair on Homeland Security is a bit much to swallow. That committee is going to be key over the next few years, and Joe’s chairmanship to this point could be best characterized as negligent.

Thank you for saying this—and not just because you defended me. 

Right-wingers have made clear for years that they hate Democrats and liberals more than they hate bin Laden or child rapists or anyone else on the planet; regrettably, this is our side’s version of that kind of thinking.  Policy changes are secondary to payback.

I’ll bail on Obama if his policies suck, but on this I’m holding fire—and if the netroots industry (as I’ve started to think of Hamsher, Greenwald, etc., much as I respect them) doesn’t like it, tough shit.

Betty Cracker was right about Holy Joe; there’s nothing I would like more than bouncing his behind down every single one of the Capitol steps, and he would be counting each one with unalloyed delight as nourishment to his carefully tended resentment.

Obama’s sang-froid is almost eerie; he’s clearly focussed on long-term goals and simply brushes off insults, as he famously did after the debate sketch in the great ABC flag-pin variety hour. What a gorgeous contrast to the bitching and moaning from the lil shmoe. Obama’s doing the most painful thing to Leiberman imaginable; forgiving him. My mother used to forgive her friends for being Republican all the time--it made them livid.

I still would like the lil shmoe keel-hauled lengthwise around the Admiral Nimitz. A girl can dream, can’t she?

A girl can dream, can’t she?

Yes. We. Can. My fondest hope is that Holy Joe wants to extend his interminable career and that the good people of Connecticut do the right thing next time and bounce his sorry ass. That’ll give him enough “hurt” to wallow in for the rest of his miserable life.

I just want to echo Steve M’s sentiments above: My support for Obama is not unconditional. He’s a politician, and he is going to disappoint us on some issues—possibly even very important ones. I wasn’t thrilled with the FISA compromise, for example. But I don’t see it as the wholesale betrayal some did, and that goes for this Lieberman business too. 

Ideological purity will get us nowhere. Or actually, it will get us somewhere: the howling political wilderness the wingnuts currently find themselves in. Been there, done that, have no desire to repeat the tour.

Contra the PUMAloons’ beliefs, most sensible Obama supporters don’t agree with every single policy he proposes and won’t excuse every mistake. When it’s time to squawk, we’ll squawk. But I’m going to give he guy the benefit of the doubt until he proves me wrong.

My hope is that he’ll be a better president than Bill Clinton, whom I supported through the wingnut blow-job witch hunt even though I found some of Clinton’s policies downright appalling.

I’ll bail on Obama if his policies suck, but on this I’m holding fire—and if the netroots industry (as I’ve started to think of Hamsher, Greenwald, etc., much as I respect them) doesn’t like it, tough shit.

The problem with the “netroots” is that since its formation during the Bush years, it’s been in a state of perpetual outrage and now that the Dems more or less run the show, the “movement” has nowhere to direct it.  I fully expected this to happen, but no quite this early.

I think another problem is that while they could claim ownership over the thoroughly tepid Lamont (sorry, he just wasn’t a great candidate), the netroots movement as a whole is probably frustrated that Obama doesn’t feel like he’s wholly accountable to them, so they lash out even harder when he “does them wrong.” Hell, they got Chuck Todd to talk about them on MSNBC this morning, so maybe all of this wailing and gnashing of teeth will work. My problem is that I’m not convinced the netrooters are the ones I want calling the shots at the moment, especially when their decisions seem to be fueled by way too much rage.

I’ll stop now before I potentially piss off half the prog/lib bloggers out there…

The problem with the “netroots” is that since its formation during the Bush years, it’s been in a state of perpetual outrage and now that the Dems more or less run the show, the “movement” has nowhere to direct it.  I fully expected this to happen, but no quite this early.

^ I think another problem is that there’s a certain sect of the netroots that believes “They have to listen to us!”.  And while LeftBlogistan is far and away more effective at effecting some kinds of change than the wingnutosphere, we’re still a very small, albeit loud, percentage of the population.

“I am blogger, hear me roar!” might make us feel good, but its effect fades pretty quickly once you venture outside the Green Zone.

That said, I hope the Clowns That Be put some serious screws on Lieberman, so he knows his place.  I’m not terribly hopeful.

I don’t see any harm in having highly vocal groups to the left of Obama. It could give him more room for maneuver if he wants it - “See, he can’t be that radical as he’s pissing this bunch off.”

But of course, if he deliberately did things to piss ‘em off to achieve the same effect, that would be different! I think he’s got other more pressing things on his mind at the moment.

I let my petulance show yesterday, I did, I did.

As I noted at steve’s place, all I wanted was some accountability and this seeme to me to be easy pickin’s. As others have noted, however, Obama has some idea of what he’s doing and I damn sure can’t claim his wisdom or smarts. He’s displayed his political acumen over and over again in ways most of us have never seen before. Still, I just wanted to gloat a little bit.