There's a video of Barack Obama dragging Joe Lieberman off the Senate Floor on Youtube at http://youtube.com/watch?v=h5DNpJBzxG8

ABC News ran it on their obnoxious and barely functional website, under the headline: Obama Dishes Tough Talk to Lieberman, at http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex? id=5006126

Like many other people who oppose the war in Iraq, I usually think of Joe Lieberman as something like a worm with a sugary smile pasted on one end, so the idea of Obama dishing Lieberman some "tough talk" sounds good to me...

But every time I try to feel that party unity feeling about our presumptive nominee for President, something always goes wrong with the details: I couldn't hear the "tough talk," but I could see Joe Lieberman being pulled along sideways all the way off the Senate floor by a much younger and much larger Senator.

Obama shakes Lieberman's hand, and he never lets go. They walk off the Senate floor together holding hands, you might say, but Lieberman's right hand is extended awkwardly across his body, and it isn't much like the way young lovers hold hands as they stroll across a meadow.
 
The crucial moment for recognizing what's going on comes up about 16 seconds into the video, when Obama and Lieberman meet a woman in a pink jacket on their way off the edge of the screen. 

Apparently the woman is trying to say something to Obama or Lieberman, and she reaches out to take Lieberman's hand, but he can't quite turn to face her, and as they brush past her, she takes an awkward step back.

This is a wrong moment. If Lieberman could turn, he would have turned, instead of brushing by sideways, but Obama wouldn't let him go, and it's very bad manners, at the very least.

The whole thing may look like "friendly contact" to Obama's devotees, but for me it shades into something more like physical compulsion, and I have to say...

The next time Obama wants to dance somebody off the floor of the United States Senate, I hope he has the balls to pick a more formidable partner than little old Joe Lieberman.