Remember back in October when things started to get really ugly? On October 8th, Andrea Mitchell interviewed Joe the Sanctimonious for MSNBC. She specificially asked him if he thought Palin needed to dial it back and cool down the rhetoric. He dismissed it as silliness and said everyone needed to dial it back, including the Democrats. Less than two weeks later this was how he demonstrated restraint ...
This is from the rallly at Florida International University less than two weeks later. Notice how Cindy and John McCain respond when the crowd starts booing. Now notice how Joe eggs them on. That is incitement and it is deadly serious.
This becomes even more outrageous in light of the Secret Service report that they saw a spike in death threats towards Obama in October. These were due in part to the heated rhetoric of the Republican rallies. In fact, it was after the Secret Service spoke to McCain's people that Palin was forced to tone down her rhetoric. Obviously, Joe didn't get the memo.
Palin's excuse is she is a novice or an idiot or both. Joe has no such excuse. He has been a vice presidential candidate. He has had Secret Service protection. He knows that death threats are serious problems. Less than a week after Gore picked him, he received one on the Howard Stern show. People were seriously freaked out at the time.
This is how it was reported after the caller was caught:
''So that Lieberman guy has gotta go. He is gonna take my bullet. He's going to take it.''
Mr. Lieberman is the first Jewish candidate to run on the presidential ticket for either of the two major political parties. Even so, Mr. Franco, who identified himself on the show as ''Nazarene,'' repeatedly made remarks like: ''I hate churchgoers. I hate them all,'' according to the complaint.
When Mr. Stern asked Mr. Franco whether he was actually threatening Senator Lieberman, Mr. Franco said, ''I'm telling you right now, you got the killer on the air.''
One can accuse Bush and Cheney of a lot of things, but inciting their crowds was not one of them. This behavior is unexcusable. The stakes are too high.
Hillary used to make a point about the difference between Democrats and Republicans when it came to discipline. She said "Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line." Well, this year we did both. Letting Lieberman in makes a mockery of all the talk about our new-found discipline. It would send a signal to our adversaries that we are weak. The senators may be but we're not. Unfortunately, confusing people to think otherwise is just going to make it harder to do the work we know needs to be done.
If the Democratic caucus permits this slimebag to hold any committee positions, they are also going to make President Obama's job all that much harder. Right now we have enough challenges. There is no reason to go looking for any more. I don't know about you but I sure as hell didn't bust my ass to make things more difficult.
Dodd's comment trying to tie this to Obama struck me as particularly odd. There is no reason Obama should even be involved in these discussions. Maybe congress has forgotten they are an independent co-equal branch of government. Personally, I think Lieberman should be banished by his peers. However, one comment in another diary by Codejack had an interesting suggestion.
Let him caucus with us, but he loses his chair,
and if he votes against us even once, we destroy him in 2012.
UPDATE: Here is the interview with Andrea Mitchell on this very topic. Listen to how Joe the Sanctimonious answers her concerns about "it getting ugly out there"... and then look at his subsequent public behavior. It's a shanda.
UPDATE II Action Item from the comments
Call the members of the Steering and Outreach
committee and let them know how you feel:
Debbie Stabenow, Michigan - Chair (202) 224-4822
Harry Reid, Nevada (202) 224-3542
John Kerry, Massachusetts (202) 224-2742
Daniel Inouye, Hawaii (202) 224-3934
Robert Byrd, West Virginia (202) 224-3954
Edward Kennedy, Massachusetts (202) 224-4543
Joe Biden, Delaware (202) 224-5042
Patrick Leahy, Vermont (202) 224-4242
Chris Dodd, Connecticut (202) 224-2823
Tom Harkin, Iowa (202) 224-3254
Max Baucus, Montana (202) 224-2651
Richard Durbin, Illinois (202) 224-2152
Kent Conrad, North Dakota (202) 224-2043
Carl Levin, Michigan (202) 224-6221
Herbert Kohl, Wisconsin (202) 224-5653
Barbara Boxer, California (202) 224-3553
Hillary Clinton, New York (202) 224-4451
Jeff Bingaman, New Mexico (202) 224-5521
Mark Pryor, Arkansas (202) 224-2353