Just to agree with the blogsphere writ large, I think is is outrageous that Lieberman has been able to retain his chairmanship. If we are a party at all then loyalty must be prized. In this sense, I’m not a pragmatist. I would give up 60, let him go to republicans and explain that to his constituents. Loyalty is the only currency I care about. We don’t need him and he should be tossed out. I don’t care if he rendered service to the caucus for a lifetime, when you stab the party’s candidate in the back you don’t get a chairmanship.

I find it highly unlikely that Liebs will be reelected, which means that he has 4 years to find a new job. Let him angrily caucus with the GOP. At least he has friends there. He’s spewing bs now. He says that keeping him is in Obama’s spirit of bipartisanship. But if he has never said a kind word about Obama and now just wants his job, is he someone to keep?

I might agree with Nate Silver that Obama is likely to blame, but when he says:

So how you feel about Lieberman should ultimately hinge on how you feel about Obama, and how you feel about Obama should ultimately hinge on your opinion about whether he is liable to put that political capital to good use. If you believe Dean’s implication that Obama is going to use that political capital to pass both significant climate change reform and significant health care reform within the first two years of his presidency, you probably ought to give him the benefit of the doubt. If, on the other hand, you see Obama as someone more concerned with the accumulation of power toward ambiguous, uncertain, or incorrect ends, this is liable to be the first of a long line of displeasing decisions, and you had better get used to pushing back against the White House.

I disagree. I disagree with Obama on Lieberman because I think that allowing flagrant disloyalty to go unpunished is a dangerous precedent to set. I think you send a message, maybe for a generation of senators, that you can’t do what he did and then stay in the caucus you attack. Might it have been a distraction, sure? But would distraction have scuttled the Obama ship or does my opposition to Obama on this point mean that I will disagree with how Obama uses his political capital generally? No.