Good Things Sometimes Happen In Washington, D.C.

We're finally getting Lieberman's brand of evil out of the Senate! There is a role for partisanship polarization in politics, and Lieberman's ultimate exile demonstrates that, after twelve years of chaos-making Republican shock doctrine - no, make that 18 years, since the 1994 Congress - no, make that 34 years since Proposition 13 - that the needs of the American public will finally start getting some much-needed attention from our political elites.:

It was a lonely farewell for Joe Lieberman.

When the senior senator from Connecticut stood to give his parting address Wednesday afternoon, just one of his colleagues, Delaware Democrat Tom Carper, was with him on the Senate floor.

...A few more senators arrived during the 20-minute speech, but even by the end Lieberman was very much alone — which is how it has been for much of his 24-year tenure.

...Lieberman was excommunicated by his party (he won as an independent in 2006 after losing the Democratic primary) and retired this year rather than face probable defeat. Yet he received little love from the Republicans, either, because despite his apostasies on key issues — the Iraq war, above all — he remained a fairly reliable vote for the Democrats.

...And so it was a man with few political allies who bid the chamber farewell. “I regret to say as I leave the Senate that the greatest obstacle that I see standing between us and the brighter American future we all want is right here in Washington,” he said. “It’s the partisan polarization of our politics which prevents us from making the principled compromises on which progress in a democracy depends.”