Joe Lieberman, Man Without a Party

More and more articles are coming out about the precarious position that Sen. Joe Lieberman finds himself in these days as he continues to caucus with the Democrats, but actively campaigns for John McCain:

WASHINGTON: Joseph Lieberman, the lapsed Democrat from Connecticut, strolled into the weekly lunch of the Senate Democrats, unaccompanied by a food taster.

He greeted his colleagues, including some who felt he should not have been there last Tuesday. He ate his lunch (salad, eschewing the macaroni and cheese) and sat through a discussion about gasoline prices and Medicare.

Then the conversation veered into the danger zone, the presidential election - specifically, Senator John McCain's recent votes, or nonvotes, on energy policy.

At which point Lieberman walked out.

"I just didn't feel it was appropriate for me to be there," Lieberman explained the next day.

"It was the right thing to do," said Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, the Democratic whip, who said that a colleague approached him afterward to complain about Lieberman's showing up. "This is a delicate situation," Durbin summed up.

It has grown increasingly so for Lieberman, once his party's vice-presidential candidate and now a self-styled "independent Democrat." He has zigzagged the country on behalf of McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and, in recent weeks, amplified his criticism of Senator Barack Obama to a point that has infuriated many of his Democratic colleagues.

At least two have asked Lieberman to tone down his rhetoric against Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, two colleagues said, and at least three have advised Lieberman against speaking at the Republican convention, a prospect he has said he would entertain.

Clearly, Lieberman's already precarious marriage with the Democrats has reached a new level of discord and could be approaching divorce, if not necessarily a remarriage into the Republican Party. The strain has been rooted largely in Lieberman's steadfast support for the Bush administration's engagement in Iraq and his hawkish views on Iran. He has not ruled out switching parties but has stopped short of saying he has moved so far from the Democratic Party - or, in his view, the other way around - that he is at a point of no return.

"I don't have any line that I have in my mind," Lieberman said in an interview. "If it happened, I'd know it when I saw it."

Bob Novak wrote the other day that the Dems are planning to kick Lieberman out of the Dem caucus once the election is over and they've picked up additional seats in the Senate. They've needed him up until now to retain a controlling majority, but once that changes they'll boot him out to appease the lefties that have been screaming for it since 2006.

The problem is, he won't necessarily find a home in the Republican caucus either. With the exception of the war, Lieberman is as liberal as anybody in the Senate and would end up being a vote again the Republicans on almost every issue. He may truly become the complete independent, without any significant committee roles and no party caucus.