I find the Lieberman melodrama fascinating. If I were Harry Reid, Lieberman would have been kicked out of the caucus by now. Why even bother with Lieberman anymore? It's not like you can trust him, and he had to figure that there was going to be some retribution for turning on his party's nominee. He hitched his star to John McCain, and it didn't take off.
Still, it's interesting that this is playing out in the media. Lieberman is trying to play the martyr and arouse sympathy among the public, but I have yet to see any evidence suggesting that too many people care about his fate. Basically, the prospect of public backlash is all he's got. And I highly doubt that he's going to leave the party in power by a sizable majority to become a GOP backbencher in a party that is unlikely to have much power for some time.
But I think it's worth noting just how poor a politician Joe Lieberman is. He supported the Republican candidate for President in a year where the fundamentals overwhelmingly favored the Democrats. Not only that, but he became one of McCain's biggest surrogates and dissemblers of GOP talking points, and McCain's first choice for vice president, all in a year where the Republicans had little chance to win. I guess he felt like he had no choice because he had little future in the Democratic Party, but just think of the alternative: imagine that Lieberman had endorsed Obama in, say, July 2007. He could have become one of Obama's top surrogates on many issues, especially if he hadn't hitched his wagon to Bush (WTF?!?!) starting in 2007. And, right now, he could be back in the good graces of Democrats and possibly be in line for a cabinet slot, instead of being in danger of losing his influence without anyone much seeming to care.
If this man is this politically tone deaf, how did he ever manage to get elected in the first place?
