Tuesday, November 11, 2008

President Clinton Proclaims: Let Joe Stay!

As reported by Josh Marshall in Talking Points Memo:
A high-level senate Democratic source tells me former President Clinton is making calls on Sen. Lieberman's behalf.

I can also confirm, on the same basis, what Huffington Post has already reported, that President-elect Obama is signaling to Senate leadership and other party officials that he wants Sen. Lieberman to be in the Democratic caucus in the 111th Congress.

That doesn't mean he doesn't want him punished in some way. I have the sense -- though this is more speculation on my part -- that he's agnostic on that question. But he wants him in the caucus -- which would seem to give Lieberman some real leverage.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

No one gives a damn what Clinton wants. Joe has to go. The sooner the better.

Let Joe Stay said...

"No one gives a damn what Clinton wants." - Jean

No one? He was a rather successful president. I think at least some people care what he has to say. Moreover, I think his opinion carries a lot of weight, especially considering how Sen. Lieberman blasted President Clinton on the floor of the Senate during the Lewinsky scandal. If Clinton can get over that and support Lieberman, I think the rest of the Democratic Party can as well.

Connecticut Man1 said...

Never mind the fact that the HuffPo corrected their original report:

"Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo writes that Bill Clinton has also been "making calls on Sen. Lieberman's behalf," something that the Huffington Post later heard from another Hill source.

But Matt McKenna, a spokesman for the former president, vehemently denies the report.

"It's completely false," he says."


Might just be spin coming out of the desperate Lieberman/Neoconservative/warmongers camp as they try to keep a hand on some lever of power...

Unknown said...

Hello high minded supporters of joe: What I want to know, and perhaps you can tell me, is: what's joe done with this committee he so wants to keep? Dude's got a track record. Let us all hear it.

Let Joe Stay said...

"[W]hat's joe done with this committee he so wants to keep? " -Zarf.

Great point. I'll hopefully have a post up shortly. Thanks for the suggestion.

J said...

As Jane Hamsher has put it in the Nation "No-bid contracts kept from public scrutiny in the name of "national security" have built a department of unprecedented waste and theft, all rubber stamped and protected from Senate investigation by Joe Lieberman's chairmanship." (http://www.thenation.com/blogs/passingthrough/382698)

The question is not whether Lieberman should be allowed to caucus with the Democrats--he certainly will be. The question is whether he deserves the chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Can anyone argue that he does?