Quantum of umbrage: “It's a wonder people didn't show up yesterday to pelt him with rotten fruit."

But Joe Lieberman's ace in the hole was that, first, people would have had to actually show up at his retirement speech on the Senate floor  before they could introduce the vegetable motive. The NYT teed-up their report of Holy Joe's farewell with this description that says so much about the esteem and regard the Weasel from the Nutmeg State has accumulated over the years from his friends on both sides of the aisle:

With only a few of his Senate colleagues in attendance and the gallery sparsely filled [. . . ]

And if you are guessing that he used the rest of his time before that ever-diminishing audience to give a mealy-mouthed plea for the sort of bipartisan comity he always stood for -- that would be racing for the camera to sell out whatever his fellow Democrats were currently trying to put together -- you would be absolutely correct.

It remains one of the bedrock convictions at p3 that, however Al Gore may have redeemed himself in the last 12 years, he hasn't even made a dent in atoning for the worst thing he ever did: Elevating Lieberman to the national stage in a misguided attempt to distance himself from Clinton.

I've been under the weather this week, so I'm doubly pleased that Charlie Pierce has taken in hand the matter of itemizing Holy Joe's most egregious offences:

I think there has not been a more completely worthless political figure in my lifetime than Weepin' Joe Lieberman. His practical accomplishments were practically nil, when they weren't actively hostile to progressive interests. What Milbank sees as a "push back against mindless partisanship," people who don't have to worry about their Beltway social schedules will see as the career of an utterly unprincipled, warmongering hack.

Pierce conveniently lists the worst of the items in the indictment; I recommend it, just to refresh your memory about what a corrupted notion “bipartisanship” has become to Beltway Insiders.

(That's a Pierce-ism in the title to this post, by the way.)

This also makes Lieberman the first person to receive not one, but two p3 Good Riddance bumper stickers.

Joseph Lieberman: Nothing so became his presence in the Senate as his leaving it.