WASHINGTON - When Sen. Joe Lieberman broke from his longtime Democratic allegiance to back Republican John McCain for president, some rank-and-file Democrats were angry. And after Lieberman spoke at the Republican National Convention and criticized Barack Obama, they were practically apoplectic.
Once Obama won and Democrats cemented their grip on Congress, the talk quickly turned to punishing the senator from Connecticut, who just eight years ago was the Democratic nominee for vice president.
Liberal interest groups mounted a campaign to have Lieberman tossed out of the Democratic caucus in the Senate altogether. Some senators proposed stripping Lieberman of his chairmanship of a prestigious committee.
But that none of that looks like it's going to happen. Instead, when Senate Democrats vote this morning, they are likely to ask Lieberman to step down from chairing two subcommittees - and allow him to keep running the Homeland Security and Government Affairs panel he now heads. Technically an independent, he would remain working with the Democrats.
Sometime between the heat of presidential campaign and now, the passion for retribution cooled drastically. Much of that might have been due to Obama himself. Last week, he said he believed Lieberman should stay with the party.
One senior Democratic Senate aide said that before Obama made his feelings known, more senators than not thought Lieberman should "pay the price." But, the aide expects "the caucus to follow [Obama's] lead."
Lieberman could give up chairmanship of two subcommittees as part of the deal, one a panel of the Armed Services Committee and the other of the Environment and Public Works Committee.
The compromise, should it occur, would provide an anticlimactic ending to one of the more stirring subplots of the presidential campaign.
Already unpopular with many Democrats after running and winning as an independent candidate in Connecticut in 2006, Lieberman stirred even more resentment when he not only campaigned for McCain but suggested that Obama was not ready to be president.
After meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid about his future earlier this month, Lieberman suggested that he could join the Republicans if he lost his chairmanship.
