Real Peoples Politics

Leading House and Senate Democrats are championing the right of unions to take away the secret ballot from their employees. Ironically, the same leadership is encouraging House and Senate members to use a secret ballot on Tuesday to vote on whether or not to strip Senator Joe Lieberman of his chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Not hypocritical at all.

To do this to any Senate member is to subject them to unnecessary humiliation; to do this to a more senior member of the Senate, who has been a member for nearly 20 years, is just odd. More importantly, this sets a troubling precedent. Does this mean that from now on, whenever a member breaks from party orthodoxy, they will be subject to public humiliation? Does this mean that whenever a member has the urge to follow their conscience, rather than their party, they will be punished? And what if the Dems do not win the 60th Senate seat they so covet? It would be delicious if they do come up short, and Lieberman accepts the Republican offer to come caucus for the other side (by his own admission, nowadays Lieberman has a great deal in common with Senate Republicans, and probably could do a lot of good for them, essentially as both an Independent and recovering liberal.) At the end of the day, as Senator Lieberman showed the public, it is the voters who elect a representative, not the Senate; as such, individual senators have a responsibility vote in the best interests of both their specific constituents and the nation at large … sometimes the latter will need to trump the former. If Senator Lieberman is stripped of his committee chairmanship, it will be a triumph for sectionalism and a sad day for honest representation.

The office of Senator Harry Reid was contacted multiple times for comment, and no word was returned. The senator and his staff were given ample time and opportunity to defend Reid’s actions, and chose not to. Senator Harry Reid is already a bad sport who is talking to few reporters, in what can only be understood as a lame attempt to justify what he must know is simply petty and immature behavior. The behavior is so outrageous, that even the highly partisan and Dodd is reportedly against the punitive action against Senator Lieberman. If even Dodd is against it, something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Perhaps Dodd is worried that he is at risk, too, as his fat-cat ways have already been admonished as part of the reason the economy is now in trouble. Perhaps Dodd is worried that if Lieberman is today’s scapegoat, he will be tomorrow’s.

And in a time when the Democrats are shuffling around to “find” votes in exceptionally tight Senate races, it would seem that the leadership could ill afford to basically embarrass and turn away one of their own who has been a member of their voting block for 19 years. For what reason is Senator Chris Dodd, a fellow Connecticut senator, suddenly and quietly supporting Lieberman? This is the very same Dodd who not long ago, threw his support behind Ned Lamont, as Lamont was handed the Connecticut nomination to run as the Democratic Senate candidate. Lieberman handily traunced Lamont, to the benefit of Connecticut voters. Also to their benefit, the CN voters are more loyal than any other Democratic friends Lieberman once had in the Senate. Let’s see if we can’t connect the dots in this illogical mess, in the next installment. In the meantime, best of luck to Senator Lieberman in the secret vote tomorrow. Let’s hope that conscience trumps pettiness and that enough of the senators will realize that if they vote to humiliate the one decent senator who has followed his conscience, even though sometimes it has been at his own expense, (Lieberman agreed to count absentee military ballots in the 2000 election, even though it probably came at his expense, and in 2004 he voted to back a nation in war, rather than be the empty standard-bearer), they could be next. What kind of message does this send both to the Senate and to the public? If you follow your conscience, you will undoubtedly suffer? I highly doubt that the Framers had such a message in mind when they established this country.

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