For the record, I think that booting Joe Lieberman from the Dem caucus would be an eminently reasonable thing to do. The idea that political parties have some sort of obligation to keep renegades on the party rolls is a surpassingly strange one. If you had a company, and one of your employees was not only moonlighting for the competition, but was publicly attacking your brand and saying that there was, I don't know, lead in your products--well, that person would be fired. I don't see how this situation is any different.
But the idea that Joe Lieberman would be able to stay on, to let bygones be bygones, seems weak. And for Harry Reid to put it to a caucus vote seems surpassingly weak. It is the action of a man who is terminally afraid of seeming aggressive, a man whose instinct is not to punish people for fear of looking vindictive, while not realizing that Republicans are watching this whole thing play out. They are seeing that Reid is a truly pathetic figure who is willing to be stepped upon so as to look magnanimous in the face of victory. A confident and assertive leader would have taken Lieberman aside and said, "You're losing your gavel. Those are the breaks. If you want to switch sides and spend four years in a depleted majority before losing reelection, then be my guest." Either that or just say, let bygones be bygones. But this dilly-dally shit just doesn't work. Not so much. The Democrats need to dump Reid, the sooner the better. Either Chris Dodd or Chuck Schumer would be better in general--don't know how they stand on this issue on particular, but the Democrats will have reasonably strong leadership in the House and the White House come January 20 of next year. There's got to be a Democrat somewhere who isn't willing to be treated like a punk.
