Can you say, FISA? How soon the blogger bullies of the “progressive left” forget that they are, in the eyes of real politicians, completely expendable. While they like to pretend they, and they alone, are responsible for every Democratic victory since Ned Lamont, the truth is, not. Unlike PUMAs, they keep being surprized at the realization that Democratic “party unity” is the same sort of public relations sales pitch tool as “hope and change,” and that nobody really in charge actually expects anybody to buy that crap, let alone to be held to it as a principle. Maybe now that Joe Lieberman will be allowed to keep his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, as president-elect Barack Obama hoped, (Lieberman was his mentor) they will finally get the message that they simply exist to suck up as they’re told.
Howard Dean gets it. Nobody invested as much of himself and his reputation into getting Barack Obama elected as Dean did, putting his position as chairman of the DeaNC, his Democracy for America, and his 50 state strategy at Camp O’s complete disposal. DFA lobbied hard against FISA, at one point even asking Senator Obama directly to vote against it on their website. Of course, I can’t find that page now, but I remember it well. At any rate, it seems Dean has learned his “Obama is a fair-weather friend” lesson well. From the Huffington Post:
“My point of view is that Barack won,” Dean said. “He can afford to be magnanimous. And if we happen to win both recounts and Georgia, Joe is the 60th vote. And the truth is — and I certainly don’t have to defend Joe Lieberman because, you know, we have an interesting history — but the fact is, he does vote 90 percent of the time with the Democrats. And no, he shouldn’t have said all those things. But why not clean the slate? Why not start all over again? Why not allow him to vote with us on the 90 percent of the stuff? He will be a good vote on climate change — and this matters. He may be a good vote on election reform, which I hope we will get to. So, you know, he may end up – though it is a little against the odds — he may end up being the vote that allows us to conduct business when Mitch McConnell decides we shouldn’t.”
Greg Sargent over on TPM sounds a bit snippy in his description of a conversation he had with Dean:
Howard Dean says that he’s “fine” with the Senate’s decision not to kick Joe Lieberman off the Homeland Security committee and suggested that the Senate had acted in accordance with what Barack Obama wanted.
In a phone interview with me just after the vote concluded, I asked Dean if he thought the Senate should keep Lieberman. He said that the Senate had acted “in the spirit of unification, which is what the President-elect wanted.”
“He called the shots, and that’s fine,” Dean said, in an apparent reference to the tone Obama has tried to set in Washington as he prepares to take power.
Dean also said he understood the natural human desire for “revenge,” a description that will dismay many of Dean’s allies in the liberal blogosphere, who maintain (as do I) that this wasn’t solely about retribution.
Greg and all the other pissed off bloggers don’t understand the lesson Dean has learned so well; Barack Obama doesn’t give a spit what you think, want, or care about. Not only that, Dean knows that as far as Obama’s concerned, anybody who thinks they might be uniquely useful might as well be Kleenex tissue or toilet paper; use it once and throw it away. As Hillary Clinton also learned, you either hop aboard the Obama Express and hold on for dear life, or you stand on the platform and watch the train pass you by. Your choice. But then, TPM knew that, too. Or, should have.
