STFU!

It's the MORNING Roundup, Gomer! What else would the stories be except the last 12-24 hours worth of news? Should they tell us how much sleep everyone got?

G.W. Bush
11 hours (Washington, DC)

D. Cheney
2 hours (Suspended upside down from ceiling)

B. Obama
6.25 hours (Chicago)

J. Biden
7.5 hours (Washington, DC)

H. Clinton
5.5 hours (Chicago)

T. Stevens

0 hours

I like it! Government-mandated Superpolygamy for all!

You know, because the Electoral College will NEVER elect him...

As a liberal and a patriot, I wholeheartedly believe that it would be incredibly foolish for an Obama Administration to come into office with the same attitude about Bush as the Bush Administration held about Clinton. Examine, question, study, probe... If your predecessor was doing something wrong, correct it. If your predecessor was doing something right, improve upon it. I have my suspicions as to which category will be more heavily populated, but the important thing is making thoughtful, rational decisions about how to proceed.

He won most of those 57 states... Still awaiting returns from Missouri, but I can personally attest that Barack went THERE!

So let him twist.

I mean I think THAT ONE (IDiot-CT) certainly deserves to lose his Chairmanship. If he desides to go play ball with Mitch McConnell, he can see how popular he is with his new brothers when he is voting against Reid on Military/Iraq issues and with Reid on all the other stuff. I'm sure the Republican Caucus will be happy to hand a 90% Dem the keys to their cloakroom and a plum "Ranking Member" status on an important committee...

Keelhaul the lot of 'em... In a bipartisan way, of course!

Working backwards, you pointed out that the time to deal with Lieberman is during the election... Only true to the extent that the people of the state of Connecticut are the only arbiters of Senator Lieberman's fate. And that's just not true. After all, Joe was a Democrat until a few years ago when he ran in and lost a Democratic Primary. When Connecticut's Democrats spoke their minds through the system available to them, Joe didn't like the answer and adjusted accordingly. He opted to run as an Independent in the general election and accepted the comfort and support of Republicans along the way. He was democratically elected by the people of Connecticut and he serves as their representative, but that doesn't mean that he earned the right to caucus with Senate Dems or to serve as a Committee Chair. He left the Democratic Party and endorsed the Republican Nominee for President! Technically speaking, he doesn't deserve to be a Committee Chair on the grounds that his party isn't in power in the Senate. Short of attempted expulsion (which no one has suggested he deserves), he really doesn't have any room to complain about whatever happens to him. Our actions have consequences.

"Personally, I think stripping him of his chairmanship will have few positive consequences and will probably cause the republicans to dig in and man their trenches in preparation for a partisan congress."

They're going to do this anyway. That is what makes them "more effective" as an opposition party than Democrats will ever be. Setting aside the few GOP moderates left in Congress, the folks that are left have no qualms about being downright obstructionist, and if the media is unwilling to call their tactics a filibuster by name, it is up to the Dem Leadership to spotlight this behavior. But make no mistake about it, if you look at the leadership transition taking place in the GOP right now, their response to the election is to move further to the right. They'll kick and scream and cry "partisanship" from here to January 20th, and then spend the next 4 years calling Barack Obama a hypocrit and a typical politician. They're writing his legacy right now: Empty promises. Naive. False hope. Status quo. Changed by Washington. It will be up to Senator Obama and the Dem leadership to get things done and deliver. It will be up to his supporters to mobilize and be vocal in supporting that change. Allowing Lieberman or the GOP to hold us hostage with threats of crying Partisanship is a foolish trap. Obama could achieve every single goal he ever set out and the talking points on the right won't change. Good governance that gets results is the only shield against them.

"He is a sitting senator and America has, honest to god, real humongous problems to deal with. Time to grow up and realize that every vote in the senate should be courted with frantic zeal, especially those that aren't already under the democratic umbrella."

There is something to be said for the lost art of creating a good agenda, drafting coherent legislation to support it, and making a case directly to the American people. I agree that our challenges are daunting. I agree that it will take some hard work and some strenuous effort and some compromise and some bending over backwards to make it happen in the current political climate. But if Barack Obama or Harry Reid has to spend the next four years kissing Joe Lieberman's ass to get enough votes to pass a bill or to invoke cloture, what the hell were the last two years about? What happened on Tuesday? What does any of it mean? If Joe Lieberman has any commitment to (upper AND lower-case D) democratic ideals, he will support the policies he believes in, vigorously oppose the ones he doesn't believe in, and let the chips fall where they may. But he made the choices he made for a reason. Either he thought John McCain was the best person for the job, or he thought McCain was the most likely to get elected. Maybe both. But either way, he went beyond voting for McCain, beyond supporting him, beyond endorsing him, all the way to directly attacking Barack Obama, speaking at the GOP convention, and campaigning for McCain and down-ticket Republicans. When you add that to the fact that he set aside the will of his Democratic constituents in the service to his own interests, I don't think the man has any room to do anything but take his medicine. Life cannot be lived without consequences.

What on earth does that have to do with his ability to be effective as Chief of Staff? Listen, I hate to break it to you, but this is the big leagues. If we're voting people off the island based upon their service on Boards of organizations from which CEOs have been forced to resign, Washington will be entirely populated by people who have never served on a Board of Directors. I'm having trouble getting inaugural tickets, so if we're going to make the rules that stringent, let's roll! I just hope I'm not being penalized for taking minutes and arranging the catering.

Some of the hand wringing is to be expected, but people are already pouring concrete around "the Obama Legacy" and putting their grubby little handprints in it. The man hasn't even been sworn in yet! It's one thing to have an opinion, but Christ in a Chrysler, we're not even 72 hours into the transition here! All the electoral votes haven't even been awarded! We don't even know the composition of either wing of Congress yet!

I want to make a sincere recommendation here: Let's take the weekend to decompress a little. If you like to drink, have a glass of wine. Put on some music. Take a nice hot bath. If you've got the scratch, treat yourself to a steak or some good sushi. Watch some college football. Catch a movie. Enjoy the fall colors. Go for a walk. Dig into a good book. Find a local park and just sit on a bench and chill for an hour. Take off your Obama flair and dig out your favorite ratty old sweatshirt from college.

We've got a lot of work to do. Tuesday night was not an end, but rather a new beginning. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are going to need us for the next four years, and we'll be more help to them and to our country if we're rested and ready instead of constantly wound up like a spring like the last 18 months or so. The work is going to be more demanding than clicking a link in an email and plopping down 30 bucks for a t-shirt. It is going to require a level of focus and nuance and consideration and patience that most of us have forgotten over the last 8 years.We might very well need to use the skills we've developed over the last few months to Barack the Vote in Georgia in order to get rid of Crappy Chambliss. We've got a lot of work to do. We'll all be better served if we press reset and try to get away from campaign mode for a little bit.