Meyerson/WP: Lieberman's Real Problem

[Rose Siding]

snip>
My colleagues also finger those crazy lefty bloggers as the culprits behind the drive to purge Lieberman from Democratic ranks. (The New Republic's Jonathan Chait recently wrote that in the Los Angeles Times.) They see a self-destructive urge for party purification sweeping over Democratic liberals, to the detriment of Democratic prospects.

Lieberman himself certainly does. My Post colleague Ruth Marcus recently spent some time on the campaign trail with Lieberman and reported on a talk he gave in Danbury. "Are the extremes going to dominate?" Lieberman asked. "Do you have to be 100 percent in agreement with an elected official or it's not good enough?"

Well. I don't blog; I columnize. But count me with the bloggers on this one. No great mystery enshrouds the challenge to Lieberman, nor is the campaign of his challenger, Ned Lamont, a jihad of crazed nit-pickers. Lieberman has simply and rightly been caught up in the fundamental dynamics of Politics 2006, in which Democrats are doing their damnedest to unseat all the president's enablers in this year's elections. As well, Lieberman's broader politics are at odds with those of his fellow Northeastern Democrats. He is not being opposed because he doesn't reflect the views of his Democratic constituents 100 percent of the time. He is being opposed because he leads causes many of them find repugnant.
.......
Lieberman's ultimate problem isn't fanatical bloggers, any more than Lyndon Johnson's was crazy, antiwar Democrats. His problem is that Bush, and the war that both he and Bush have championed, is speeding the ongoing realignment of the Northeast. His problem, dear colleagues, is Connecticut.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/11/AR2006071101204.html

[burythehatchet]

1. Yeee-frickin-hawwwww

[ShockediSay]

2. This CT resident got a call from the State Dem Committee asking

if I would vote for the State Committee endorsed Lieberman.

Who the hell are they to endorse before the primary!?!?!?

Like Schumer!

Are we a top down organization?

[Warren Stupidity]

3. A purge is in fact needed.

The top of the Democratic Party is a host of self-satisfied beltway corporatist enablers who are way too comfortable with their life in mock opposition to the cabal. These clowns took back control of our party after McGovern's defeat, and have presided over defeatest retrenchment and rightward drift, have run away from the proud liberal progressive heritage of the party of FDR, and have so diluted the message of the Democratic Party that most people have no idea what we stand for, and certainly don't believe for a minute that we stand for them. They have sold our party to corporate america in exchange for a seat at the back of the kleptocracy bus.

Watching Lieberman's senate colleagues line up to support him was nauseating. Listening to the hackneyed arguments, the tortured reasoning of those who have chosen to ignore the obvious and stand with the beltway bozos to support Lieberman is amazing - it is clear that hardly one of them even likes Lieberman, let alone believes the words coming out of their own mouths in supprt. What is very clear is that we are one sick party and that if by some miracle we manage to win control of either house in November, don't expect anything other than the worst. The moles and misguided naifs will do their absolute best to throw every roadblock imaginable in front of the opportunity to expose the crimes of the Bush cabal to the light of day. The War Party Democrats will close ranks with their peers across the aisle to keep the neocon agenda on track. The corrupt many will continue to vote for more corruption. The calls for bipartisanship will come from within our party, our legion of enablers will be reaching out to meet intolerance halfway at every opportunity. It will indeed be an interesting show.

[IndianaGreen]

4. Excellent op-ed by Harold Meyerson!

As early as December 2001 Lieberman signed a letter to President Bush asking him to make Saddam Hussein's Iraq our next stop in the war against terrorism.

And that letter makes Lieberman as much a war criminal as Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz!

[ribrepin]

5. Lieberman's in trouble for one reason

This guy hits the nail on the head--"Democrats are doing their damnedest to unseat all the president's enablers in this year's elections." Joe's an enabler and an easier target than Trent Lott.

The only way to fight these guys is to remove their enablers. The people of Spain did it.

"It's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge he'll be commander-in-chief for three more years. We undermine the president's credibility at our nation's peril." Joe Lieberman