"Control of the Senate" means which party appoints the Majority Leader and which one controls the Senate floor. Even if Lieberman switched, that would still be the Democrats, which negates your original point.

Maybe your math is different from mine. I count 49 Democrats, 49 Republicans, 1 Socialist, 1 Lieberman, and 1 Cheney. The Republicans + Lieberman = 50 + Cheney = 51.

If anyone else is adding it up differently, I'd love to compare.

Lieberman is free now to vote with the GOP on every committee. How would his changing party affiliation affect the outcomes in any way? It wouldn't. He'd still be the same Joe Lieberman, voting the same way.

Let's suppose that Lieberman, like his suburban Connectictut constituents, finds a liberal stance on social issues agreeable but a hawkish stance on the Middle East absolutely obligatory. All things considered, a guy like Lieberman will go with an option where he can get minimum wage increases, small business support, public construction, and so on — provided he also gets his way on the One Big Issue.

I don't know Lieberman as well as some do, but that seems a straightforward, accurate characterization of how he votes and how he prioritizes his issues. Does this not sound like a situation Lieberman would choose, if he had the power to choose it?

More importantly, your reasoning means that Democrats must always think about how not to offend Joe Lieberamn with everything they do, which effectively makes Joe Lieberman the true majority party in the Senate.

That is exactly my point.

That's called governing by snivelling fear ...

You asked (perhaps rhetorically) for an argument in defense of the sniveling fear of the Democrats in the Senate. I've only tried my best to oblige.

... what are all the great things that would have been lost if Lieberman had switched?

Minimum wage increase, Mukasey instead of Olsen, no recess appointments, any debate at all over FISA, the fact that Joe Biden can credibly make demands for Senate investigation of the CIA ... the real question is not what these things are. There are a lot of them, though not as many as there should be. The real question is whether they'd happen without kissing Lieberman's ass on the war — and if they wouldn't, if the trade would have been worth it.

jackaroyd:

Lieberman, if he switches parties, doesn't take his committee appointments with him.

No, but he takes his warm butt over from one side of the aisle to the other. Who is the chair of Homeland Security if Lieberman is no longer counted with the Democratic caucus? And what happens to the committee's bills and resolutions when they reach the floor of a White House-controlled Senate?

bamage:

the Democrats, who would retain control of committee assignments and etc., would immediately replace him ...

The whole point of the Kos article to which Glenn Greenwald pointed is that committee membership is fixed by resolution into two camps — majority and minority, listed by name. Reid would have to pass another resolution, subject to Republican filibuster, to change them — not just reassign them the way he might have under other rules.

So what if you have a resolution naming a guy in the majority column, and he quits the majority? This is a sticky issue which the Kos article didn't address — everyone commenting on it just seemed to assume it was great news and a few sourpusses who had doubts got shouted down. (One poster at least had the good grace to say that she wanted to be skeptical, but she wanted even more for it to be true.)

kovie:

... the current senate was organized under a binding agreement under existing senate rules between Reid and McConnell in which the Dems would maintain control of the senate even if they lost their caucus majority ...

I haven't seen that. All I've been able to find is the discussion of committee assignments. The organizing Senate resolutions say nothing at all that I can see about ensuring a majority.

If I'm misreading something I would love to be educated otherwise. Maybe by stating that Lieberman is with the Democrats over in column A there's somehow an implied parliamentary stricture that prevents him from ever switching to column B, even if he declares himself KKK. Is that how it works? From what I've read, it must to be pretty darned implied if so because it's not explicit at all.

... your "nuclear option" rules change is a dead letter.

I'm not talking about rules changes. I'm talking about basic parliamentary procedure. Who controls the voting schedule? Who controls whether the Senate goes into recess or not? Who decides when and how the Senate meets? These are things that the simple majority controls, not subject (so far as I know) to holds or filibustering. And so far I don't see anything to suggest that the Democrats somehow get to keep their majority even if they lose it. The last time it came up — in 1953 — the GOP apparently kept its majority because Lyndon Johnson let them.

Any further posts by you that ... continue to assert or imply that Dems would no longer control the senate should he switch will have to be viewed as trollish by me and others here.

William Timbermann, you've asked before for examples of what I mean about liberals and master narratives. Here's one right here. (Glenn Greenwald's Chomsky clip is another great example.)

Apply the same "I don't want to hear it" attitude to the issues of real significance since 1980 (terrorism, globalism, economic and social justice, open government, etc) and you have what I see as exactly how the American liberal establishment got to where it is today.