How long will the honeymoon last? How long will the far left of the Democratic Party continue to support President-elect Obama? My prediction? Not much longer— look for the hard-liners to start sniping soon and fall apart within months.
Today, that most liberal of hard-left blogs, the dailykos.com, started faulting Obama for sticking up for Democratic defector Joe Lieberman:
Surprising, and very much welcome.
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), a close ally of Sen. Joe Lieberman, said the Connecticut Independent should pay a price for his campaign attacks against President-elect Barack Obama.
"There need to be consequences, and they cannot be insignificant," Carper said in a Monday interview with The Hill.
Carper, a fellow centrist who was Delaware campaign chairman for Lieberman's failed bid for president in 2004, said he and many other Senate Democrats are disappointed and even angered by their colleague's sometimes-inflammatory rhetoric during this year's presidential campaign.
A month or more ago, a high-level Congressional staffer told me Lieberman would not be barred from the Democratic caucus, nor would he lose his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee. The penalty, instead, for campaigning for Sen. John McCain during the election, would be stacking the committee with more members and more subcommittee chairmen, (as Roosevelt stacked the Supreme Court) so that Lieberman's power would be diluted in a way that would not be immediately apparent to the general public.
That won't satisfy the hard-left, which wants Lieberman booted out of the party or stripped of his powers. Personally, I don't have a dog/ideology in this fight, but find it fascinating to watch as the extremists self-destruct. Pat Buchanan once told me Republicans were great at eating their young. Democrats possess the same skills.
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mightone4u of VA 12:01PM November 19, 2008
bobo of CA 10:31PM November 18, 2008
Heather of 6:24PM November 18, 2008