Senator Joe Lieberman, the Democrat from Connecticut, is now officially useless, at least for the Democrats’ nominating convention. According to the nerds over at Capitol Watch, a blog of the Hartford Courant, Lieberman has been stripped of his super-delegate powers because of his open endorsement of Republican candidate John McCain.

Superdelegates tend to be party officials and other elected politicians who are not legally bound to vote for a particular candidate at the convention. Because neither Obama nor Clinton have a strong majority in delegates so far, the superdelegates are going to be absolutely important if the nomination isn’t tied up pre-convention.

Currently five of Connecticut’s super-delegates are supporting Obama, one is with Clinton and the remaining five are undecided.

At this point in the game, Lieberman isn’t particularly helping McCain. All of the just-right-of-center Republicans are already on McCain’s side and, as Romney’s farewell speech earlier this afternoon suggested, it’s the conservatives he really needs to win over in order to win against the Democrats. Lieberman grinning in the background isn’t going to help this cause, even if he is always sporting a nice red tie.