Dear Kossacks, these are just my own thoughts, but please hear me out, I think that it is highly likely that Lieberman will be purged as soon as possible after the Nov. election, that is, Lieberman will be purged very shortly after the new 2009 Senate reorganizes in January.
When I say "purge", I don't just mean that Lieberman will lose his current Dem committee chairmanship as some sort of punishment for his supporting McCain against Obama.
No, by purge, I mean that Lieberman will be entirely thrown out of the Senate Dem caucus, and not for vindictive punishment-type reasons, but for purely politically pragmatic & strategic reasons.
Now, here is why I think that:
In a nutshell, Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi cannot and I believe will not tolerate having a GOP mole within the Dem caucus who attends our private senate Dem caucus meetings and who then runs to report to the GOP about the secret plans of the Dems learned via these Dem caucus meetings; thus, very shortly after the new 2009 Senate reorganizes in January, Joe Lieberman will be entirely thrown out of the Senate Dem caucus, period, specifically for the purpose of denying Joe Lieberman access to the private Senate Dem caucus meetings.
Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi have mighty & ambitious & important plans for putting this country back on the right track, and no way are they going to jeopardize those plans by revealing their hands in advance to the GOP via Lieberman, who is now beyond a doubt a GOP mole; Lieberman's support for McCain and Lieberman's attendance at the GOP convention proved Lieberman's mole-ness and Lieberman's reckless mavericky untrustworthiness beyond a doubt.
I can easily visualize Obama and Pelosi behind-the-scenes compelling Harry Reid to throw Lieberman entirely out of the Senate Dem caucus, not to vindictively punish Lieberman mind you, but to pragmatically & strategically protect the confidentiality of the plans and the intentions of the new Obama presidency and the new Congressional Dem caucus going forward.
Think about it; after all the mega cash spent and all the hard work that Obama and everyone else did to get Obama elected and increase our Dem majorities in the House and in the Senate so we can save our country, can you visualize the Chicago-street-smart Obama jeopardizing all of that by magnanimously thinking, "Hey, let's give Joe Lieberman a break and let him remain in our caucus, and maybe, just maybe, he will fly straight".
Hardly. Obama is not that stupid, and neither is Harry Reid. They both know that Lieberman is a rat and a mole and an opportunistic Quisling sleaze who cannot be trusted. I believe that Harry Reid painfully put up with Joe Lieberman's Quisling "bipartisan" horseshit ONLY because Harry Reid needed that precious fifty-first Dem caucus vote that Lieberman provided him.
Of course, that 2007 calculus of Reid's will be obsolete after the Nov. election, when we win a bunch of new Dem Senate seats, and I strongly suspect that the day after the election, Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi will promptly begin to formulate plans to thoroughly tighten up and clean up the entire Congressional Dem ship, and as a piece of said cleanup, Lieberman the rat mole will be quickly thrown out of the Senate Dem caucus soon after the new 2009 Senate convenes.
To reiterate, I believe that Lieberman will be entirely thrown out of the Senate Dem caucus as soon as possible in Jan. 2009, not for the purpose of vindictively punishing Joe for his sins, but for the strategic & pragmatic purpose of shutting down the secret GOP mole hole that Joe Lieberman represents, said shutdown best achieved by completely denying Joe Lieberman access to any private senate Dem caucus meetings, which in turn is best accomplished by simply throwing Lieberman entirely out of the Senate Dem caucus.
Heh heh, Joe Lieberman, in all of his classic trademark grandiose self-important alternate universe delusional thinking, thinks that after this election he will still have a role to play as a "bipartisan" bridge across the aisle, but in all likelihood, soon after the election Joe Lieberman will instead be a bridge to nowhere.
What say you?