Lieberman

All the cool kids seem to be making their pre-election predictions…so I’ll join in as well.

• I think it’s going to be a fairly good night for the Dems.  I’ll bet that Obama wins with 338 electoral votes, the Dems achieve 58 seats in the Senate (including Lieberman), and 249 seats in the House.  
   
• I believe that Lieberman will be permitted to continue to caucus with the Dems and retain his committee chairmanship, as his support will be needed for cloture votes.  However, I do believe that Lieberman will choose to retire in 2012, rather than run for the Senate again.
   
• I believe that both the Dems and the GOP will address their internal schisms: the intra-GOP battle between the religious right and traditional conservatives, and the intra-Dem battle between moderates and progressives.  However, I believe the GOP schism will be resolved in 2010-2012, while Dem reform will come only after the next bullet comes true.
   
• I believe that Congressional Dems will not be fully on board with Obama’s message of “change and personal responsibility”.   I believe that Pelosi and her minions will overreach, permitting the GOP to recover in public backlash in the mid-term and next general election.  (It almost seems like 1992 all over again.)
   
• I suspect that not much will change in the next two years.  The sheeple may be voting for “the other party” in choosing a President; but for the most part, the same jokers are headed back to Congress.
   
• Here in Connecticut, I believe that Question One will barely pass.  Some folks will vote for a ConCon on principle (like I did); others because they genuinely want ballot initiative; and still others out of general dissatisfaction with the state legislature.  However…
   
• I believe that the Connecticut state legislature will defang the resulting Constitutional Convention by gaming the rules of the ConCon and the delegate selection.

Those are my bets, and I’m going to stick to them (as much as I would like to be proven wrong on a few of them).

Anyway…have a good election day folks.  Remember to vote…and to vote often, if you were registered by Acorn. 

Seen in PowerLine, the text of a robo-call in Michigan:

Hi. This Senator Joe Lieberman. I’m calling for John McCain.

As you may remember I was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2000. But this year I’m supporting Republican John McCain for President because he is the person best qualified to lead our country forward. He’s a straight talker who will always do what’s right for our country regardless of partisan politics and he’s the only candidate prepared to be commander-in-chief from day one.

There isn’t a competitive Democratic primary in Michigan this year and all registered voters are able to participate in a Republican primary. So I’m calling today to urge you to vote in the Republican primary on January 15 for Senator John McCain. He’ll break through the partisanship and make our government in Washington work for all the people again.

So, a little bit of Jomentum added to the campaign, yes?

I’ll remind politicians of my promise to vote against any candidate who robo-calls me. Politicians are welcome to make a sales pitch to me over the phone, but only if there’s a real, live human on the other end of the line.

While driving home this evening, I pondered, in the wake of Lieberman’s endorsement of McCain—what if McCain doesn’t win the GOP nomination, and what if Unity ‘08 doesn’t snag Bloomberg?

Unity ’08’s rules call for a ticket featuring both a Democrat and a Republican.

Could Unity ‘08 run McCain and Lieberman (assuming “Connecticut for Lieberman” is an adequate proxy for “Democrat”)?

Apparently I’m not the only person pondering this. I got home, and found this editorial from the New York Sun in my reading pile:

Senator Lieberman’s decision to flash his famous independent streak by crossing party lines and endorsing Senator McCain for president might seem to take some wind out of the sails of the idea we have been nursing of a presidential campaign by the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg. If Mr. McCain fills the niche of the candidate who can occupy the centrist terrain and attract independents such as Mr. Lieberman, the Democratic Party’s 2000 vice presidential nominee, what’s the need for Mr. Bloomberg?[...]

In a move that’s sure to further inflame the liberal subset of the Connecticut Democrats, the Weekly Standard is reporting that “Independent Democrat” Joe Lieberman will be endorsing John McCain for President Monday.

I wonder if this will add more fuel to speculation that Senate Dems will finally strip Joe of his seniority, assuming the Dems pick up a few more seats in November.