McJoan is right. "The Joe Lieberman fight was more than symbolic"

[madfloridian]

I appreciate her posts. She gets to the heart of an issue, and sticks with what she believes. She has a blog up today at Daily Kos discussing the blogger conference call with Howard Dean about Joe Lieberman.

I think they sent Dean on a mission to soothe the bloggers' emotions. Time will tell, but today that soothing doesn't seem to have worked so well.

This statement by McJoan gets to the real point.

Dean's right, we are going to have to figure out where we go from here with a new administration, what our role as the left flank is going to be, and what battles we pick. Obama and the Senate Dems decided that repudiating Joe wasn't worth the potential downsides--we'll see how that works for them in the next few years. Given Joe's track record, it could be a very bad bet on their part.

The Joe Lieberman fight was more than symbolic, more than revenge, more than anger. It's been a long-standing fight to try to make Democrats stand up for themselves and what they believe in. Lieberman obviously abandoned the core of the party when he decided to stand with Bush and McCain on the critical issues of the day.

This is a battle we had to fight, if we were going to remain true to our role in the party. There are going to be plenty more in the future, because while reconciliation is all well and good for getting elected, we need to have strong progressive and Democratic values prevail if the goals of the Obama administration in health care, in energy policy, in the economy, are going to be achieved and achieved in a way that makes the effort of doing them worthwhile.

Dean on Obama, Lieberman, and Us

My thoughts right now are that we picked some pretty serious battles to fight during the last couple of years. We lost every one of them.

Will it be different since we will have real power in the Senate? Time will tell.

Remember all the groups that organized against the FISA bill that allowed even more warrantless surveillance than we already had?

A coalition of 27 groups opposed the FISA bill. The opposition was organized and well funded by the grassroots...they passed it anyway.

American Civil Liberties Union

American Library Association

Arab-America Anti-Discrimination Committee

Association of Research Libraries

Bill of Rights Defense Committee

Center for American Progress Action Fund

Center for Democracy & Technology

Center for National Security Studies

Congressman Bob Barr, Liberty Strategies

Defending Dissent Foundation

Doug Bandow, Vice President for Policy, Citizen Outreach Project

DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Fairfax County Privacy Council

Friends Committee on National Legislation

League of Women Voters of the United States

Liberty Coalition

MAS Freedom

OMB Watch

Open Society Policy Center

OpenTheGovernment.org

People For the American Way

Privacy Lives

Republican Liberty Caucus

The Multiracial Activist

United Methodist Church, General Board of Church and Society

U.S. Bill of Rights Foundation

There were the trade deals we opposed and begged for our party to regulate them a little. The right wing judges we gave Bush. I could go on.

Dean told the bloggers he did not know what came next.

Dean: I'll just say a couple of things. First of all, thank you all for empowering the netroots and being part of the netroots and making sure that America is restored to its greatness by making sure that individuals actually have some say over what happens in their country. The other thing is I just want to--I don't plan on fading from the scene. I'm not sure what I'll be doing next, but I do want to say how much I really have enjoyed all this and how much I've appreciated what you've put into this to reclaim the country for ordinary Americans. No matter what capacity I'm in, I plan to see you all at Netroots next year in Pittsburgh....

Trouble is, Dr, Dean, we were empowered. Part of that was your fault.

McJoan is right. I think there will be some examining and discussing, but in the end I think most will agree that if they don't want to hear us....we shout a little louder.

Either that or we sit back and wait until the next four years is up, and they need our votes again.

[Coexist]

1. didn't you already write this OP today?

[madfloridian]

2. Not that I know of.

Do you have a link?

[madfloridian]

3. High praise for Dean's comments today from Mother Jones, David Corn

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/11/10946_lieberman_democrats_dean_senate.html

"Revenge is for those who don't care about results.

That's the mature message of Howard Dean. Moments after the Democratic Caucus in the Senate decided to keep Senator Joe Lieberman, who had campaigned for John McCain's presidential bid, as head of the Homeland Security Committee, Dean, the outgoing head of the Democratic National Committee told the Huffington Post that the Senate Dems had done the right thing:

"You know, the desire of revenge is great, of course. But the truth is public policy doesn't run on revenge very well. And when you see the trouble this country has gotten into in terms of foreign policy, where Bush basically ran a foreign policy based on petulance because he was mad at, for example, Mexico, for abstaining on the Security Council when the Iraq War came up, if you have to actually run the country, it is best not to do it based on feeling of anger towards your enemies...."

That may well be true, but I still do not trust Lieberman in that chairmanship of Homeland Security. I'm trying, but I don't.

[madfloridian]

4. A last kick before archiving.

.

[alfredo]

5. Because of Obama's recommendation of Lieberman, Joe is in Obama's

debt. Obama now has power over him. Even though Joe kept his gavel, he lost. He can't throw his weight around like he has the past few years.

He must know too that he better play ball from here on out because he can be stripped of his gavel. It won't be Reid's call, it will be Obama's call and Reid will just carry it out.

[kath]

6. Here's a good article from The American Prospect that relates to this discussion,

re: the netroots continuing to put pressure on an Obama administration to make sure we are heard:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=where_do_we_move_when_america_moveson
Where Do We Move When America MovesOn?
Victory could pose an existential challenge for the grass-roots groups that arose in opposition to Bush. A MoveOn.org veteran examines the challenge and its opportunities.

[madfloridian]

7. Thanks, will read tomorrow. Victory may mean problems for the grassroots

You are right.