Sayonara Joe

It looks like the Senate drive for 60 votes is going to come down to the wire, with Jim Martin in Georgia being the crucial swing vote. Nate at 538 says his support is being undercounted, and the other crucial factor is that a race ending with nobody reaching 50% in Georgia would go to a runoff. With a Libertarian candidate in the race, that's a definite possibility. So we could see Martin vs. Saxby Chambliss in December with 60 votes on the line. Wow.

Now 60 votes is not a talisman. It breaks a filibuster in theory, but on a vote-by-vote basis you're going to gain Republicans and lose Democrats. Mary Landrieu is not a reliable vote on energy. Max Baucus is not a reliable vote on investment spending. Ben Nelson is not a reliable vote on much of anything. Alternatively, Olympia Snowe is gettable. Susan Collins can be gettable at times. Arlen Specter can be gettable. And there are a whole bunch of Senators who will be threatened in 2010 who will have to vote in a more moderate fashion.

Which is to say that all the focus on whether Joe Lieberman will be the crucial swing vote in a Democratic Senate, because he'd have the power to end filibusters all by himself, is misplaced. There is nothing that Democrats actually need to do to keep him happy. And having him running a government oversight committee when he campaigned against the Democratic nominee for President is unacceptable. Senate Democrats are putting out hints that it's unacceptable to them, too.

Democratic leaders are discussing a major reshuffling of Senate committee chairmanships, according to multiple sources, and the proposed changes include ousting Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) from his coveted chairmanship.

Lieberman, a former Democrat who supports Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for president, is likely to lose his gavel on the Homeland Security Committee he has chaired since January 2007, say the sources who see him being replaced by Sen. Daniel Akaka (Hawaii), the committee’s third-ranking Democrat.

Lieberman spokesman Marshall Witmann dismissed the speculation, saying Lieberman “is focused on doing all he can to elect John McCain as president rather than post-election Washington politics.”

One Democratic source said Lieberman is not likely to lose his position in the Democratic caucus, even if the party picks up several seats in next week’s election. While Democrats could approach or exceed the filibuster-proof threshold of 60 votes, they may still need Lieberman’s vote often.

“There’s no sense in cutting off our nose to spite our face,” one source said.

I think talk about expelling him from the caucus is kind of weird. He's an independent and he gets to make the decision about who to caucus with. He can do whatever he wants. But seniority and chairmanships is something that the Democrats have control over. And he shouldn't have any of them.

But don't be taken in by this idea that he holds the filibuster in his hands. He doesn't. Democrats can ask for his vote, but they don't have to bend over backwards to please him.