Look, I'm as excited as anybody. I mean,
damn: Harry Reid, Majority Leader. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House. How cool is that? But (you knew that was coming)
here's the fly in the ointment:
Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, rejected by his party and spurned by many of his Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill, could return to a narrowly divided Senate in January more powerful than ever after his stunning victory in this week's congressional midterm elections.
"He becomes the most powerful person in the Senate; he controls the uncertainty," said American University political scientist Allen Lichtman. "The Republicans will offer him everything they can to get him; the Democrats will offer everything they can to keep him."
The article goes on to point out what I mentioned in a
comment: that Karl Rove and other Repubs are busy polishing Joe's knob in the hopes that he'll go full Elephant or caucus with the Republicans. If he goes to the Dark Side, we're back at 50/50, and Darth Cheney gets to break the tie.
So what should we do? Do we give Joe everything he wants? I say no: Democrats won around the country by keeping their dignity and speaking the truth. A little reconciliation is OK, but I'm not sure, honestly, whether it's worth entering a bidding war for the ego of a man so vain he named his independent party "Connecticut for Lieberman."
So my message to Harry Reid is this: don't capitulate! Don't kiss Joe's ass! I'd risk the majority rather than lie down. It's time to take a cue from the Rude Pundit:
And the new Congress needs to be cautious about preaching caution. We'll discuss impeachment when the Senate is secure, but remember that the Republicans are going to treat the Democrats like Visigoths entering Rome. But remember: Rome fell. Don't hold back from demonizing the Republicans now. When Clinton won, the right was all about a scorched earth policy towards whatever the new administration wanted to do: stop everything. So instead, use that anger against President and make the Republicans take a stand: are they with you or with a deliriously unpopular George W. Bush (and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Karl Rove)? In order to get things back to check and balance, at least for a while, treat the presidency like the President treated the Congress. Then we can all make nicey-nice.