Barack Obama’s making good on his bipartisan promises!

The president-elect last week called Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and reportedly asked him to ease up on Joe Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-Independent Senator who inflamed his peers by endorsing and campaigning for former Republican presidential candidate John McCain. Lieberman’s actions during the campaign, some say, went too far, like the time he suggested to Fox News that Obama lacked credibility, especially in terms of the Iraq War, which Obama voted against.

With the Democrats victorious in this month’s election, Reid and other leading Democrats wanted to strip Lieberman of his standing in the Democratic caucus, while others also insisted he be booted from the Senate’s Committee on Governmental Affairs, which Lieberman chairs. Obama, however, isn’t having it, according to sources.

An anonymous Senatorial aide passed on word that Obama called Reid last week and told him that ousting Lieberman threatened his overall message of bipartisan politics. Though Obama’s team won’t comment directly on the matter, spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter released a statement yesterday in which she insists the president-elect will maintain his across-the-aisle approach: "We aren’t going to referee decisions about who should or should not be a committee chair. President-elect Obama looks forward to working with anyone to move the country forward. We’d be happy to have Sen. Lieberman caucus with the Democrats. We don’t hold any grudges."

Obama may be tight-lipped about the matter, but Sen. Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) makes no secret of where he stands, saying his party peers need to look back at Lieberman’s record, not simply the campaign: "Despite what Sen. Lieberman did in campaigning for Sen. McCain, speaking at the Republican convention, he has voted with the Democrats an overwhelming percentage of the time." Many think those votes no longer matter because the Democrats won so many seats in last week’s election.