During his victory speech in Chicago, President-elect Barack Obama promised to “work to heal the partisan divide.” So he needs to take a good look at what his fellow Democrats are planning to do to their own former vice presidential nominee. A loyal Democrat forced to run as an independent in 2006 after being spurned by fellow party members for supporting the war in Iraq, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman is now in danger of losing the chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Oversight Committee because he campaigned for Republican hawk John McCain. Majority Leader Harry Reid reportedly told his colleagues that he has no intention of letting Lieberman keep his committee chair even though the Connecticut senator voted with Democrats on virtually every other issue and gave them a critical one-vote majority, never mind that he is arguably the best man for the job.

So Lieberman can either accept a greatly diminished position within the Democratic caucus, switch to a party with which he has little in common besides a fierce determination to make sure the U.S. is victorious against its enemies, or resign and let his state’s Republican governor appoint his successor. But if anybody has mastered the new spirit of bipartisanship, it’s Lieberman. “Everybody seems to agree that we need a new kind of government in Washington that breaks across party lines, right? That gets things done,” he told a crowd in New Hampshire. “I want to present myself immodestly as Exhibit A. I’m a Democrat, re-elected as an Independent, here to support the Republican candidate.”