Ah, looks as if the Lieberman conversation is about him retaining some small subcommittee chair but losing the Homeland Security position.
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In Private Meeting, Reid Tells Lieberman That It's Unlikely He'll Keep Committee Slot
By Greg Sargent - November 6, 2008, 6:33PM
In the private meeting today between Harry Reid and Joe Lieberman, Reid bluntly informed Lieberman that Dem sentiment against him had risen to the point where it would be tough for him to keep his plum Homeland Security Committee chairmanship -- but Lieberman pushed back and said he thought he should be allowed to keep it, a source familiar with the meeting tells us.
But Reid stopped short of saying outright that Lieberman would be stripped of the slot if he didn't voluntarily relinquish it, the source says.
"Reid did not say that he was going to strip it," the source says. "There was a discussion, however, about how many in the [Dem] caucus are upset and don't want him to continue on the committee."
Reid confronted Lieberman with some of the comments he'd made about Obama during the presidential election. "Senator Lieberman defended his comments and said he thought that he should be able to continue as chairman," the source says.
No agreement was reached in the meeting, the source says, but Reid apparently is looking at a coming caucus vote as a mechanism to resolve the standoff.
"If they aren't able to work something out satisfactorily, there will be a vote in the caucus," the source said.
It doesn't appear that whatever agreement is reached will be linked to the question of whether Lieberman is allowed to remain in the Dem caucus in a general sense. "That's Lieberman's decision," the source said of the question of whether Lieberman would continue caucusing with Dems.
Earlier today, Nico Pitney of The Huffington Post reported that Reid had offered Lieberman a deal by which he'd relinquish his plum committee slot in exchange for a lesser role on another sub-committee. HuffPo added that Lieberman hadn't accepted the deal. The source we spoke with couldn't confirm the deal offer.
In his public comments on the meeting, Lieberman refused to disclose what had happened, saying only that he was mulling his options going forward.
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