Joe Lieberman did not ‘earn’ the committee chair position he currently holds, he bargained for it. Joe Lieberman got primaried out in 2006 because he no longer represented his constituency. Joe Lieberman is no longer in the Democratic Party. Joe Lieberman was needed in the Democratic Party caucus from 2006 through 2008 in order to secure majority control of committees. The party with majority control gets more staff, more offices, and the ability to determine the course of the bills in the Senate: what they’re about and whether they ever move out of Committees to the floor for a vote at all. This was, obviously a valuable contribution that Joe Lieberman could make to the Democratic Party, this shift to majority control, and it is (1) why he was needed in the caucus and (2) why he was able to barter for an important committee chair position in return.

The democrats do not need Joe Lieberman anymore. They do not need him for majority control, as they have a clean majority without any independents caucusing with them, although I recommend they keep Bernie Saunders because he’s a respectable human being more in line with the party platform. I will not be the first to assert that the line about Joe being with the dems 90% of the time is just that, a line of bull, nor will I be the first to point out that the 10% divergence rather markedly coincides with the topic of the committee he currently chairs. Beyond pedantic arguments about which of his votes are or are not in line with the party, he actively campaigned against a fellow Democratic senator as the candidate for President chosen by the party he caucuses with. It seems like the most basic function of a Democrat (even a self-described pale shadow of a former one like Joe Lieberman) would be to support the party’s candidates, if not in all state-level and national races, at the very least in the instance of the presidency.

Which brings me to the summation: (1) Joe Lieberman is no longer needed in the caucus, (2) his chair position was payment for keeping him in the caucus when he was needed, and (3) he is totally off the ranch and is no longer a Democrat in either form or substance. Which means his committee chair position can be given to someone else, he can stay or go, and we can close this sorry chapter in American political life. Frankly, I don’t really get what the problem is. Are the Democrats afraid to acknowledge that they bartered with Joe to gain control of Congress? Do they think their voters will shun them for demonstrating a pragmatic grasp of the workings of government and accurately assessing the cost of the greater of two evils — continued control of the Senate by Republicans with a Republican president — and choosing the lesser? I don’t think so. I think that the country has pretty much agreed they’d rather have the Democrats running things, and they accept the reality of what has been done. Up until now. Now, they are looking to see that the Democrats are not, for lack of a less sexist term, wusses. They want to see that the Democrats are able to make a second, arguably more important, pragmatic choice and take away the chair position from Joe Lieberman now that they no longer need him. It is not the responsibility of the Senate Democrats to prolong Joe Lieberman’s political career for as long as humanly possible while he does his best to tank it.

Everyone except Joe Lieberman seems to understand that the Democrats no longer need him, which makes his positioning a bluff, a situation which I am again not the first person to characterize in this manner. It is in Joe’s best interest to remain in the caucus, and he will likely not walk away from it. Which doesn’t matter and solely affects him and his own career because (I can’t emphasize this enough) the Democrats no longer need him. Offer him another less important chair position, one where he maybe, I don’t know, actually holds Democratic Party opinions with regard to the topic area. If he doesn’t take it, he doesn’t take it. Oh well.

I hear that other old increasingly out of touch Senators feel for Joe and fear that his fate will be theirs, too. Maybe. Probably it won’t help their cause to take Joe’s side on this, though. If they are looking for a way to show their goodwill toward fellow long-term Senators outside their party, I recommend lobbying for Dick Lugar to get a cabinet position. Joe is a sinking ship, my friends. Reassign his chair position, give him his choice about remaining in the caucus, and let him be the architect of his own fate. Seriously, this is way past overdone and requires some actual senate leadership, Mr. Reid. Get it done, and deal with your personal feelings on your own time.

Chicken with Bok Choy (or Pac Choi)

Ingredients

3 skinless, deboned chicken breasts (chopped)
2 tbsp. soy sauce
2 tbsp. corn starch

4 tbsp. safflower or other high heat oil
1 lb. bok choy or pac choi, including stems (chopped)
1/2 c. water
1/4 tsp. salt

4 tbsp. safflower or other high heat oil
1 tsp. grated or minced fresh ginger root
4 cloves garlic, minced

1 tbsp. oyster sauce or soy sauce
1 tbsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. corn starch
1/4 c. water

Toss chopped chicken with soy sauce and cornstarch until coated; set aside. Heat oil in wok or large fry pan. Stir fry bok choy with salt and water until limp, then remove from heat and set aside. Heat oil in second wok or large fry pan. Stir fry ginger root and garlic until fragrant, then add chicken and stir fry until cooked. Mix together oyster sauce, soy sauce, sugar, corn starch and water; add to chicken and stir quickly to mix. Add bok choy and stir together. Remove from heat and serve immediately (with brown rice that you’ve already made in your rice cooker).

Enjoy!

The lavender bush, newly planted in spring.

This weekend we engaged in a superhuman final push to get the yard cleaned up for the winter. ‘Cleaned up’ is, of course, a relative term. We did not, as I’d hoped, prepare any beds for the transfer of rose bushes in the spring. Nor did we plant anything, move any bulbs, or cut the ivy back off of our neighbor’s trees. We didn’t even mow the lawn one last time before the cold rain of November descended for real (oops).

Even without meeting any of those goals, we accomplished a lot in the yard this year. Much of that work took place in the spring and early summer: digging up the liriope, relocating plants that were being suffocated, planting new azaleas in the front, putting in a new bed in the back, cutting back the ivy, and pruning the quince trees. Nonetheless, we pushed on and were able to find more to do. We dug up (even) more liriope, filling about three contractor bags with the stuff. I cut back the holly trees, to allow us to walk under them and to give the recovering crape myrtle (ours) and magnolia (our neighbor’s) some breathing room. We pulled oodles of dead vines down from the back trees and cut the mulberry back from the garage. I raked all the leaves, and we transferred them via the tarp method to the back beds where the great multi-year weed-smothering process continues. I was extremely glad to see that a decent layer of leaves remained from last year in many places, such that the leaves from our own yard should be sufficient for this year’s efforts. The tarp method, in contrast to last year’s wheelbarrow method, also went quickly and allowed us to move larger piles of leaves at once.

All in all, it was a satisfying clean up and I’m pleased with how our yard is looking. It’s conceivable that what remains to be done — ivy, liriope, and sapling stump removal — can be accomplished in the spring without much effort. Okay, with a lot of effort, but in plenty of time to allow me to actually plant things throughout the summer. Imagine: gardening that involves futzing around moving things here and there rather than mass killing.

It’s likely that this dish was meant to be more of a pasta dish, in the sense that the squash chunks would remain whole and be tossed with the orzo. I wanted a risotto impersonation, however, so I used my handy potato masher to mash the squash toward the end of the cooking time and create a nice thick soupy sauce to be mixed in with the orzo. It was delicious! After our experience with the Winter Squash Galette, I was pretty confident that the dish would be great, as it had the same winning combination of sage and parmesan cheese (pecorino again, in my case). I didn’t take any pictures, but I’m sure you can imagine: it looked like a warm bowl of yummy squash and orzo with sage!

There is really not much else to say about this dish or squash. Except that I still have three pumpkins, one butternut squash, and one spaghetti squash hanging about, as well as something like two quarts each of pureed pumpkin and courge longue de nice in the freezer. I will bring another batch of pumpkin bars to a dinner next week, but beyond that I got nothin. Except a recipe for pumpkin apple muffins that looks delicious if I ever get around to making it. I fear that we’re a little muffined out on pumpkin, though, after last year’s seemingly endless stream of pumpkin bread. We’ll see.

Which is all to say that I’m happy about the results of Tuesday’s election. I’m happy about the senate races, even those too close to call. Mostly I’m happy about the prospect of the return to the national stage of science, and talking and thinking and debating and considering and trying to do the best for the most with the least. In this, I am wholly process-oriented and while others may be focused on specific outcomes they’d like to see come out of the first Obama administration — stronger protections for wolves and polar bears, renewed freedom of states to regulate emissions, lifting of restrictions on abortion access and counseling around the world (for example) — I’ll just be glad to see these things taken seriously and acted on responsibly. I look forward to hearing substantive conversations in DC again for the first time since I’ve lived out here.

In the meantime, between now and January 20th, I wait with bated breath for the Dems to kick the Lieb to the curb and Alaska, Minnesota, and Georgia to settle their senate races.

If you’ve helped your mother or grandmother make an Irish-style Christmas cake before, the recipe will be less daunting. You put all the additions in a bowl with flour, in my case currants, raisins, and chopped walnuts. You heat the honey and add the spices to it, remembering that baking soda added to hot honey will make it foam like crazy and therefore you’ll need a taller saucepan than you might initially think based on volume alone. You mix the wet ingredients together into a stiff dough, using a mixer. You add in the flour-coated additions, nearly dislocating your shoulder. (I have to admit that at this point I made the incredibly impolite exclamation of ‘no wonder those Eastern European women are all built like oxen!’ for which I most sincerely and heartily apologize.) If you are stronger than I am, you move on to beating the egg whites until stiff and folding those in; if you are as strong as I am or weaker you call in reinforcements in the form of anyone else in the house at the time to dislocate their shoulder by helping you. Once the egg whites are folded in, the dough returns to a more batter-like consistency that can be spooned into the loaf pans. Loaf pans which you have buttered to within an inch of their inanimate lives and which are themselves lined with parchment paper that has been buttered to within an inch of its life on both sides. You then bake the loaves at what seems like incredibly low heat, 300F, for what seems like an incredibly long time, 90 minutes. In my case, the taller loaf pan required an additional 10 minutes or so, and the shorter one probably would have been fine at 85 minutes.

When the loaves are done, you tap them out of the pans, remove the buttery paper, and let them cool to room temperature. They are then loosely wrapped in wax paper and left to stand at room temperature for 1 or 2 days, depending on how far ahead you planned and when you need to serve them. This is the point when you will be wondering if this is the type of cake you soak in a bowl of brandy; it is not, sadly, that type of cake. It is, though, quite tasty, and perfect as an accompaniment to tea or coffee.

Having acknowledged that this is, in fact, a very nice cake, I have to say that I plan to never make it again. Unless I have a Ukrainian friend to impress, and that friend is an elderly person on their deathbed. Because it was hard and I’m a wimp, that’s why! Seriously, though, this strikes me as a recipe that one makes because it’s what one grew up with and it tastes like home and Christmas at Grandma’s. Like, you know, fruitcake. If Medivnyk isn’t in your particular personal or cultural history, it’s a lot of work for a spiced loaf.

¹I know that the Ukraine is not Russia. I expect that the ladies who organized this lunch know it, too. The focus of the day was a visit by Naomi Collins to discuss her book about living in Soviet-era Moscow as an American, and I imagine that time’s linguistic conflation of ‘Russia’ and ‘the USSR’ bore out in the general description of all the dishes as ‘Russian.’

8:05pm Holy god, they aren’t calling Mississippi and Alabama right away? I might yet get my BLOODBATH! In other news, of course Pennsylvania went to Obama, it was polling nearly the same as Michigan and Wisconsin. Thank you for acknowledging that, NBC.

8:13pm THANK YOU, KAY HAGAN! BOOYAH, LIDDY DOLE! BITE ME, JOE LIEBERMAN! In other news, is Shep still going rogue?!

8:25pm The Chinese food delivery person basically ran up to our door, said ‘We’re VERY busy tonight!’ and grabbed the check slip to dash back to the still-running car. Yum, americanized Chinese food!

9:01pm I’m glad to see that the shenanigans around Detroit didn’t make the presidential race competitive there, I have to admit I was a little worried this morning. Also, they are not calling Arizona yet! Woot! Shep just introduced Karl Rove as the architect of something, and I swear I thought it was going to be ‘of McCain’s demise.’ Seems like everyone’s calling Georgia for McCain, which probably means a runoff for the senate seat.

9:19pm OHIO! How sweet was it to hear Shep Smith say ‘There is NO PATH TO THE WHITE HOUSE FOR MCCAIN without Ohio.’

9:35pm We are going to the new bar near our house to celebrate with the masses! Also with big TVs and cable!

10:55pm Virginia goes to Obama! Everybody in the bar cheers! There is lots of speculation about whether Obama will just declare himself the winner before the polls close or what (we wish).

11pm The polls on the west coast close and the bar erupts into cheering and yelling and screaming and clapping and that is why I needed to be somewhere with other people! We listen to McCain’s surprisingly normal-sounding concession (where was this McCain for the past 6 months?) and then we all start crying and clapping and cheering when Obama starts speaking and Jesse is there and everything is just totally surreal and not yet sunk in.

12:30am We keep hoping they will call Indiana, but they haven’t yet. Everybody leaves after we all hug each other and shake hands and congratulate each other and remark upon the enormity of the first black president of the United States. Also we express the desire to be at the White House and regret that the metro isn’t running because it’s a weekday. Instead, we walk home and I have my partner take my picture with our Obama yard sign.

1:15am I am still really wishing we still lived a mile north of the White House so we could join the ecstatic crowds down there! And also waiting for the Indiana result to be finalized; it’s been holding at 99% reporting and a 20k gap for a while now.

First, my hope is that Kay Hagan’s race to unseat Senator Liddy Dole in North Carolina is the first one called tonight. Thanks to Dole’s supreme misstep last week, of slandering a Sunday school teacher who has turned out to be totally hardcore, the race is pretty much in the bag. Having it called first, though, will mean that Kay Hagan (badass) will be the senator who hits the magic 50 and makes Joe Lieberman finally officially irrevocably irrelevant. I hope they have a runner ready to personally deliver the memo to his office as soon as all North Carolina precincts are done reporting. I don’t know who I’ll love to hate when Joe’s been kicked to the curb, but I have no doubt someone will emerge.

Second, my dream is of an Obama Indiana. Whether this election or next, I will be cheering on every percentage tick upwards in the balance of Democrats to Republicans in the state where I grew up. More than just bragging rights, I want to see a black man win the majority of the vote in a place where stupid racist crap still happens all too frequently. I want to be able to believe that people walking off their jobs to protest a smear campaign is the true heart of where I grew up.

In the intervening hours between now and when these results might be known, I’ll be in Virginia with umbrellas.

8:30am I go over to our polling place to check out the length of the line (still inside the building) and to talk to the folks in charge about bringing over some coffee for the voters. I get the all clear and come back home to make it in a pot I borrowed from the Women’s Club, with a little help from the interwebs.

9:30am The coffee finally finishes percolating and I take it over to the school with some cups. The line is small now, just inside the main room. Realizing that I don’t have anything to offer folks with this coffee, I head to the grocery store, to pick up some fake creamer, sugar packets, and more cups.

10:30am When I get back to the school — with day old donuts in tow! — the line is again stretching outside. I am heartened to see that the Obama volunteers are still outside: if they are at our polling place in Prince George’s County, Maryland, they are truly everywhere. Once inside, I relocate the coffee station to the hallway from right beside where you check in, figuring there would be more takers farther back in the line. Former mayor and current Town Council member Margaret Mallino happened to be in line just then, and graciously agreed to pose for a shot near my new coffee station.

11am Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I’m finally mixing up the cookie dough I didn’t get to last night. It’ll go into the fridge to chill while I shower (!) and then into the oven and it’s off to Virginia for the afternoon. Somewhere in there a lunch consisting of something other than day old donuts will get consumed. Depending on demand, I may perk another pot of coffee at the school for the post-lunch crowd before heading out.

1:30pm A guy I went to junior high with, who now lives in Florida and I’ll refer to as Rainbow941, sent me his analysis while I was in the kitchen making Pumpkin Cookies For Obama: “This is the classic mismatch. Horrible economy, stagnant war bleeding the country dry, old out of touch candidate versus the new, free- thinking, idiologically super hot liberal. GAME OVER.” With which I tend to agree; a similar analysis led me to observe to my partner last week that I could ‘totally see’ why voters elected FDR over and over and over until he died. Which reminds me to share with you where the voting populous was with regard to this very matchup two years ago (no wonder McCain always looked like a pole was jammed somewhere unpleasant during joint appearances). I will feel sorry for the old dude and his dramatic decline at exactly 1:59am this evening, or whenever we get the Alaska results, whichever comes later.

2:30pm It’s now raining, lightly but steadily, and is predicted to keep doing so all night. I am heading to Virginia for the next few hours, to do whatever I can to support the voters and Obama volunteers. Here’s what you can do for me (and Barack Obama!) while I’m gone: (1) Live somewhere warm? (Arizona, Florida, New Mexico!) Buy a 24 pack of water bottles at your local store and drive it to your local polling place; (2) Live somewhere cold? (Colorado, Montana, Pennsylvania!) Buy a gallon of coffee at your local Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks and drive it to your local polling place; (3) Live somewhere rainy? (Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina!) Buy a few cheap umbrellas and drop them off at your local polling place; (4) Got more time than money? Stop by your local GOTV office and help them with whatever they’re doing; (5) Got more free minutes than time or money? Call voters from your own phone; and (6) Do all of this in the evening after work! Lines are going to be long well after the polls close, and poll workers — your neighbors who will have all been there since an hour before the polls opened this morning — and voters alike will thank you.

3:15pm Traffic is slow as I approach ‘that damn drawbridge,’ however it’s mostly going the other way out of the city, which makes me hopeful that people are rushing home to make sure to be able to vote. Once I get to Englin’s house, I make phone calls for about half an hour. I really hate making phone calls, by the way, but that’s what there is to do, so I do it. The local effort is so under control, though, that the calls are to Virginia Beach, in support of Glenn Nye’s congressional race. As part of the organizing efforts extraordinaire, folks have canvassed the neighborhood twice already by 4:30pm to determine who’s voted. There are a few people left who they haven’t caught, so I head out for another loop of the surrounding blocks to knock on doors as ask if folks have voted. They have or they aren’t home or, in the case of two guys I catch on their porch, they’re on their way to do so right now.

5pm I am getting concerned about getting back to Maryland, and I want to stop at the polls themselves with the snacks I’ve brought. I was hoping for mobs of people after work, so that I could get some good pictures. Apparently I needed to be in Virginia at 6am to get those shots; by 5pm everything is moving along quickly. The Obama volunteers and Election Protection folks are still there, though, so I stop at two local schools and offer up cookies on my way back out of town.

6:30pm Once home, we head right over to the elementary school so that my partner can vote. Someone has very kindly cleaned up the coffeepot that I left there earlier in the day, and I pass around the remaining cookies to my local poll workers and get my photo taken by the local AP guy. The afternoon has been really slow (thus the opportunity to clean up the coffeepot) and everyone’s looking like they’ll be very glad to see the other side of 8pm. We also ran into our new neighbor, who’d been doing Election Protection down in southern Virginia all day. She tells us that she got stuck behind the Obama motorcade on the road last night and went all day on only three hours of sleep, and therefore declines our offer to hang out at our place and drink until the wee hours.

7:30pm Here we are back in our house, TV on, websites loaded, minimal precincts reporting as of yet. Expected first toast: Kay Hagan! In the meantime, I will be glued to the Indiana Secretary of State site. And, the returns blogging will continue in a new post.

The scene where I picked up my marching orders.

Today I spent a couple of hours hoofing it around Alexandria, leaving hangers on doors. Today’s hangers were all about letting people know where their polling place will be and what to do in the event that you’re not on the rolls when you show up to vote. By pure happenstance, I was dispatched to work out of the house of a Virginia State Delegate, David Englin. Having learned the route there and home, I’ll likely return to the same spot for tomorrow’s late-afternoon and evening poll support work. For which I will be baking cookies, brewing coffee, loading up the car with chairs and umbrellas, and just generally preparing to be cheerful.

I can’t remember being so excited about an election since we were the Clinton youth vote. It’s funny to look back and see how increased youth turnout (and Ross Perot) were credited with handing Clinton that win, and how later elections just didn’t measure up. We’re hearing all the same rhetoric about young people voting and seeing all kinds of evidence of increased campaign participation. At the same time, I spoke just this weekend with a woman who was part of the youth vote for Truman, and volunteered as a poll watcher in Philadelphia while in college. I expect that the first time you vote for president is the time that defines you, but we of Clinton youth vote have been stepping up and doing our part in this cycle as well. I’d hazard a guess that a lot of the folks I’m seeing out volunteering were Kennedy youth voters in their time, too.

Maybe after tomorrow, though, we’ll all just be part of the Obama vote. It’s not often that you get a chance to be involved in something you’ve waited your whole life for, and that’s exciting. I, for one, was confident I’d live to see the day the U.S. elected a black president. I just didn’t expect to be this young.