If Lieberman were to caucus with the Republicans, they would still not take full control of the Senate, despite Vice President Dick Cheney's ability to break 50-50 ties. ... [Lieberman] could, however, bring Senate business to a screaming halt.

(my emphasis added)

... I don't see how this hurts Dems.

No?

I guess that gets back to my original question. Or, let's be fair, my original question as modified by what I've learned from this discussion: I was incorrect to characterize it as a question of the Democrats in the Senate losing control to the Republicans. It appears that it's instead a question of the Democrats losing control and the Senate coming to a grinding halt.

There's an important distinction there, but fundamentally the issue is the same: is it worth giving up the rest of their agenda?

The link that worked for me was

http://www.ipcc.ch/

... a "nuclear option" such as the one you propose ...

What nuclear option do I propose, anywhere?

I get that Reid's committee assignments are fixed. Glenn posted a link a way back to an excellent article on Kos that made that clear. So the Republicans cannot take control of Senate business through defection.

However so far as I can see from Rule VIII (thanks for the cite, by the way), and from everything else that everyone has posted, that doesn't change the fact that all of the routine parliamentary procedure — including all that stuff about the "calendar", meaning the schedule of what gets voted for when, if at all — isn't subject to debate or filibuster and boils down to majority vote. Right?

And yeah, the Vice President doesn't frequently sit in on Senate sessions, because it's not usually an issue. But damn straight, VPs juggle their schedules all the time to stay in DC to be available during close votes.

The scenario of committees in one party's hands and the floor in the other's sounds like near-gridlock — or what the Congressional Quarterly calls a "screaming halt" to Senate business.

Why you find it so hard to accept this, however you might object to it, is totally beyond me.

You and Glenn Greenwald have both cited excellent articles which unfortunately explicitly state the opposite of what you say they state. How can I make this any clearer?

The Kos article cited by Greenwald says — I kid you not, go check it out — that the last time a Senate majority flipped the previous majority party got to keep committee assignments by virtue of existing resolution, and got to keep control of the floor because the leader of the minority-turned-majority chose to let them.

And the most recent citation you posted says, in black and white (I bolded it to make it a little more so), that Lieberman's defection would bring the Senate to a "screaming halt" (presuming, I guess, that the GOP leadership didn't want to let the Democrats keep going, as Lyndon Johnson did in reverse in 1953 — not likely to my mind, but sure, maybe).

So what part of that says to you that Lieberman's defection would have no impact? You are, literally, pasting something that explicitly says that Lieberman can screw the Democrats and then saying beneath it, "See? No way can he screw the Democrats, what is your problem?"

Disarmed they may be, but it won't take these guys long to find another club to start swinging around. If the current business exists in the public mind a year from now it will be as one of a number of foundation stones of a larger discrediting of the myth of Republican competence in foreign policy and national security — a foundation which the Democrats must continue to lay aggressively if it's going to hold any weight next November.

The part where he raps

You ain't chunky

But junk-in-the-trunk-y

has me still laughing long after I watched the clip.

Must be a slow day.

Absent any more useful polling data, the simplest explanation that fits the observed results is that Obama and Edwards are doing better, not that Clinton herself is slipping.

Clinton has been leading the race due to a fairly aggressive, systematic campaign strategy. The two men have caught on and become more competitive as a result. Obama in particular has been stumping pretty hard — maybe the latest polls are the inevitable result of that.

At this point in the game, with so much money in the bank, any of the candidates could end up the nominee. There's still enough time for Dodd or Kucinich or whoever to be struck by some inspiration, transform their campaign, and come out of nowhere to dominate the late primary.

All we can really say now is what the bar is for being a contender, in terms of how well you have to have your act together — and as things stand the front runners have pegged it pretty high and are raising it from there. That's good — it's going to take a tight, aggressive, well-organized campaign to beat the Republicans in 2008, and there's no sense in nominating someone who hasn't met that requirement.