A Senate aide reports to the Sleuth: "I was in my car on Constitution Avenue in front of the National Gallery waiting for the light to change when I noticed that lo and behold who but Joe Lieberman himself was in the car sitting next to me. He was being driven by a young male staffer and was furiously scrolling through his blackberry. When the light turned green, they pulled ahead of me and I saw a McCain 2008 sticker on the rear bumper, half scratched off!"
Was Lieberman incompetently and cowardly trying to destroy the evidence of his support for McCain? Well, his aides claim that the half-removal was caused instead by an anonymous bumper scraper:
But a source knowledgeable about the fate of Lieberman's bumper sticker assures us Senator Lieberman had nothing to do with its removal. In fact, no one (person) scratched it off the car, he insists.
The McCain bumper sticker, according to the Lieberman source, was "merely scraped by another car" that accidently backed into Lieberman's vehicle.
So, Lieberman's McCain bumper sticker was only half-removed by someone who will forever remain anonymous. Sound like anything else that is about to happen today?
I hope that my earlier optimism is correct, but at this point too many sources seem to be reporting that Lieberman will lose his sub-committee chairmanship instead of his full chairmanship. The goal of our campaign was for him to lose his full committee chairmanship, but keep a subcommittee of some sort. I should have expected this, since we are dealing with the Senate Democratic caucus. Threats of joining with Republicans have once again led to a compromise that overwhelmingly favors conservatives.
Don't expect a fighting Democratic Senate over the next two years. If a group of conservative Democrats threatens to support a Republican filibuster unless their demands are met, then those demands will probably be met. Of course, I will be more than happy to be wrong. Hopefully, that will start at 9:30 a.m. (eastern) today, when the Democratic caucus meets to vote behind closed doors.
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