Five senators from the Democratic side of the aisle have already decided to hang ’em up after this term. Each has his own reasons, but it mostly boils down to this: For some senators, a job in the “most exclusive club” is not worth the hassle anymore.
“It’s about campaigns,” Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), a retiring member of the Democratic Caucus, told POLITICO. “It’s about both the unremitting — that’s a bad word to use — about the constant pressure to raise money and travel all over the country doing that and the nastiness of the campaign. … I have no second thoughts about it.”
Lieberman, who lost a 2006 Democratic primary only to win in the general election as an independent, faced a tough path to win reelection. And he’s 69. Democrats could well lose the Senate in 2012 anyway, meaning he would lose his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
