What's Next for Joe Lieberman, and Why It Matters

Newsweek's Howard Fineman on Keith Olbermann:

[Obama's]  going to leave it up to a vote I think.  What my sources tell me is that there's likely to be a vote next Tuesday. The Senate Democrats will caucus when they come back for the lame duck session.  They'll all go into a room, Joe Lieberman will make his case for maintaining his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee, then there will be a secret ballot vote.

Obama's opinion is sort of on record via Harry Reid, and we'll see how it goes. 

Interestingly, people like Dick Durbin who is the first Democrat in the Senate -- the first Senator, and from Illinois, to support Barack Obama -- is really loaded for bear about Lieberman, he wants to kick Lieberman off that Chairmanship. Chuck Schumer, the head of the Campaign Committee likewise.

So it could be a very close vote, and it'll be left to the secret ballot of the Senators. You've got Evan Bayh and you've got Chris Dodd who are supporting Lieberman, but there are a lot of other people who are still angry at him for the very comments you were talking about just a little while ago.

One point I think needs to be made.  This isn't about Joe Lieberman maintaining membership in a country club as a matter of feel-good "bipartisanship."  There's actually a job that needs doing here, and when Chris Dodd and Evan Bayh say that they want Lieberman to retain his chairmanship, they are saying that the extraordinary waste, graft, greed and cronyism that have built the Department of Homeland Security to a bloated, ineffectual taxpayer-funded behemoth under Joe Lieberman is just fine.

Here's Naomi Klein from the Shock Docrine: