boy, was i wrong

i think atrios @ eschaton put it best today:

today is a lovely day to eat some shit.

(actually, it wasn't all that lovely where i live; it was cold and gray.)

yesterday i put together a tentative headcount on the lieberman vote, documenting as best i could the available evidence for each eligible voter's leanings. who would support the resolution? who had gone on record for joe? who had supported him in the past? long diary short: i couldn't put together more than 7 potential votes in joe's favor.

well, we can't be right all the time, but rarely am i this wrong. i'd misread just about everything.

but instead of trying to chase down all the possible explanations after the fact for why which senator voted the way he or she did, i'm singularly puzzled by just one question: what cards does joe have? i've yet to hear a completely satisfactory explanation for the vote. perhaps the bitter truth is that the explanation isn't satisfactory to anybody but joe.

like many, jonathan singer at mydd seems to believe that it was obama's nod to the senate helped swing the day for joe:

yet lieberman could make obama's life more difficult as an angry gadfly (a tom coburn, as it were) than he would as chairman of the homeland security committee — particularly if he owed his chairmanship to obama, which he does. under this rationale, obama will have an easier go in forwarding his legislative agenda in the senate with lieberman beholden to him than lieberman weaker, but mad at him.

the only problem i have with this explanation (not that i think it's necessarily wrong) is that, as we all know, lieberman's biggest crimes are deceit and disloyalty. as benjamin disraeli once remarked of a political opponent:

he is a systematic liar and a beggarly cheat; a swindler and a poltroon. he has committed every crime that does not require courage.

after all, didn't lieberman already owe obama his senate seat?

a top official on joe lieberman's 2006 senate reelection campaign tells me that lieberman's staff practically begged barack obama to come in and endorse him at a critical moment — requests that obama agreed to, helping lieberman minimize the damage from challenger ned lamont's recent entry into the contest.

apparently that favor wasn't big enough to prevent joe from campaigning against not only him, but every democrat.

perhaps saving lieberman's chair was obama's wish, but i just can't see what lieberman has to offer in return that doesn't require all of us having to trust him again.

all right, it's time for my shit sandwich. pass the condiments.