Lieberman

[cryptique]

The following is from Glenn Greenwald on Salon.com today. Can't say I disagree.

 

-----------------

 

The sad, sorry state of Joe Lieberman

 

Most of the ramifications of Joe Lieberman's extraordinary defeat will require some time to discern, but one thing is already painfully clear. With his behavior Tuesday night, Lieberman has turned himself into the most vivid symbol of the insular, arrogant, corrupt and power-desperate Washington establishment, the sheer cravenness and corruption of which are what catalyzed the campaign against him in the first place.

 

Those who compose that entrenched Beltway power establishment -- the endlessly reelected political officials, the hordes of consultants and lobbyists who feed off and control them, and the pampered, self-loving "journalists" who enable it all -- are characterized by a single-minded quest to perpetuate their own power, flavored by a thinly masked contempt for the masses on whose behalf this system ostensibly plods along. Lieberman's conduct last night was a perfect textbook for all of those afflictions.

 

Like the establishment mavens who rushed to defend him, Lieberman exposed himself as a man driven by a single, overarching motivation -- a desperate desire to cling to his source of power, his Senate seat, not because of any political ideals he wants to pursue but solely because of the personal satisfaction, attention and benefits it provides him. Embodying one of the defining attributes of the permanent Beltway class, Lieberman plainly craves -- has become addicted to -- the petty trappings of his role in the grand Beltway court. The only cause that seems to stir Joe Lieberman to anger, aggression and confrontation is the glorious struggle for Joe Lieberman to cling to his Senate seat.

 

The man whose (largely Republican) media supporters glorified him as one of the few "men of principle" left in Washington has revealed himself to be bereft of all principles save one -- the "principle" that Joe Lieberman's Senate seat belongs to him personally and that no mere voters, those silly, unenlightened masses, have the right to take that away from him. In the face of this rare testament to true democracy -- the decisive rejection of Lieberman by Connecticut voters in defiance of virtually the entire national political establishment -- Lieberman had nothing but scorn, contempt and defiance for their decision.

 

He thus intoned: "I am disappointed not just because I lost, but because the old politics of partisan polarization won today. For the sake of our state, our country and my party, I cannot and will not let that result stand." This man of principle "will not let that result stand" -- "that result" being the considered decision of the voters whom he has claimed to represent for the last 18 years.

 

A more selfish and craven act is difficult to imagine. Lieberman single-handedly will impose endless grief and conflict on his Democratic colleagues who loyally rallied to support him. He will drain attention and resources away from his party's already difficult struggle to restore balance and oversight to our federal government, and to end one-party rule in November. He will sow still more intense divisions and raging hostilities among those who oppose the Bush administration. And he will subject his state to three more months of electoral warfare while he forces it to have what is sure to be an increasingly bitter and nasty election -- an election that it just had.

 

And this "man of principle," this elevated gentleman who is too pure and righteous for Washington, will do all of that for one reason and one reason only -- because he is too weak and selfish to give up his Senate seat and accept the decision of Connecticut voters that they want a different senator representing their interests in Washington. The fallout from the well-deserved and desperately needed blow dealt to the national political establishment will be unclear for some time to come, but one thing that is not unclear is Joe Lieberman's character. He has revealed it for all it to see.

[Edie]

Oh my. Quite scathing. I would have to agree with the last two paragraphs particularly....

[Atticus]

... on his Democratic colleagues who loyally rallied to support him.

 

 

huh?

 

[cryptique]

huh?

 

Before he lost the primary, they did.

[MrRain422]

huh?

 

 

I think the idea was that he's hurting his supporters by splitting the party and making it harder for Democrats to make gains.

[explodo]

I have hated Lieberman since he tried to throw up some legislation against violent video games and this certainly isn't going to make me love him. What a disgusting man. He is one of the most evil looking men in Washington, too. I'm afraid of him.

[embiggen]

sad state of affairs, but he has never been a true Democrat as far as I'm concerned. one of the main reasons why Gore selected him to run with him in 2000 is because he's a conservative Democrat.

 

one thing this race definitely proved is that the Democrats in this country are fed up with the war in Iraq, which Lieberman supports. IMO, he's lost touch with his Democrat constituants, he supports the war and that's why he lost this primary.

 

now, if only more Democrats would get out and vote!

[Reni]

oh the Dems were out in force behind Lieberman......Bubba Clinton was in CT last week giving support.

[embiggen]

oh the Dems were out in force behind Lieberman......Bubba Clinton was in CT last week giving support.

 

I know, but many Dems in CT were disgruntled with Lieberman, regardless of Bubba's support, who I still love by the way. Ned Lamont ran in strong opposition to the war and I think that is what sank Joe's ship.

 

now, if only more Democrats would get out and vote!

 

oh, and by this I meant Dems all over the country.

[darkstar]

Interesting article

 

Like the other guy Lamont is going to be any better, he was on the news this morning where they were showing his "victory" celebration yesterday and who is there right smack dab in the middle of it all? Jesse Jackson....I guess he took a few days off from shaking down corporations and others to support this guy.

 

Just another politician sleazing up to the trough. That article paints Lieberman as a scum bag, it won't take this new dude but one term to become just as bad if not worse.

[Reni]

Jess I meant like the old guard Dems....Clinton, Reid, etc......

 

--

 

I am sure many Dems have been fed up with Lieberman for awhile. Still, at the end of the day they don't care WHO runs, as long as he/she WINS. The Dems are trying to recapture Congress. They can't be losing a seat to a Republican because of a split Dem ticket.......I want to see the Dems get Congress back too, not that I have much love for them - but there needs to be some shift in this single party, blank check bullshit we have put up with for years.......not that much will change, but hopefully it will a little...... ugh.

[Lammycat]

Ned Lamont ran in strong opposition to the war and I think that is what sank Joe's ship.

Exactly. Lamont is basically a no-name guy but is being backed solely because of his anti-war take. As a former citizen of CT and someone who used to support Leiberman I think he's acting selfishly in terms of what's best for the Democratic party. I went to H.S. with his kids and have met the man a few times (even been to his house) and I don't think the man is a scumbag or a bad guy, just that he's desperately trying to cling to a position that he's warn out his welcome in.

[quarter23cd]

The national coverage of this is interesting to see. As a CT resident, the outcome of this thing long ago seemed like a foregone conclusion. It was over the moment Joe finally looked up and realized he actually had an opponent and he got that deer in the headlights look.

 

Yeah, Joe's an establishment guy. More than anything, he acted like a guy who just wanted to save his seat. Sometimes he tried to cloak it in grand imagery where he painted himself as a practical guy who realizes that in order to govern effectively, you sometimes have to make deals with people whose ideas you disagree with. Fair enough, but Joe's biggest problem is that he never really seemed to disagree with them. There's nothing wrong with crossing party lines on some issues, but he seemed to make it a general practice to side with the other party on some of the most definining political issues of our time. Its hard to imagine that it came as a shock to him that voters in his party didn't really like that. Honestly, if Joe insists on running, in a state like CT he'd be better off running as a moderate Republican rather than as an independent.

[cryptique]

More from Salon.com:

 

-------------------------------

 

Joe's fall from grace

 

Lieberman, the Democrats' man of faith, is now running on bad faith.

 

By Sidney Blumenthal

 

Aug. 09, 2006 | Joe Lieberman's fall from grace appears straightforward. In Connecticut, where George W. Bush and his war are intensely disliked, Lieberman stationed himself as the president's defender. But Lieberman's precipitous descent from nomination as vice president to rejection by his home state partisans is also something of a mystery.

 

Lieberman was once the most attractive and promising Democrat in his state, his grasp of political realities subtle and sinuous. But he became scornful of disagreement, parading himself as a moral paragon to whom voters should be privileged to pay deference. The elevation of his sanctimony was accompanied by the loss of his political sense.

 

When Lieberman ran his first primary campaign, for the state Senate, in 1970, against an entrenched Democratic machine politician, he was an insurgent reformer, relying on an army of young idealistic volunteers. (One of them was Yale law student Bill Clinton.) Lieberman was a star liberal on the Yale campus, editor of the Yale Daily News, a civil rights worker in the South, an activist against the Vietnam War, and yet adept at getting out the vote. His senior honors thesis was a study of the Democratic state boss, John Bailey, who forged competing ethnic groups into a winning coalition. The young Lieberman's victory seemed to herald a new day in Connecticut.

 

For decades, indeed for two centuries, Connecticut has been a caldron of peculiarly American culture wars. In the election of 1800, the president of Yale, speaking for the reigning puritan establishment, denounced the Democratic presidential candidate, Thomas Jefferson, as "immoral." Starting in the 1870s, Connecticut was straitjacketed by laws forbidding birth control. In 1926, Katharine Houghton Hepburn, the wife of a liberal Hartford doctor, formed the Connecticut Birth Control League to challenge the restriction. (Their daughter, actor Katharine Hepburn, continued their activism as the league grew into Planned Parenthood.)

 

In 1950, the state treasurer of Planned Parenthood, a liberal-minded Republican banker tainted by his association, was narrowly defeated in a race for the U.S. Senate. His name was Prescott Bush, father of George H.W. and grandfather of George W., and he won election two years later.

 

It was not until 1965 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Connecticut's birth control law was unconstitutional, violating the right to privacy, a decision that laid the groundwork for the legalization of abortion in 1973 and ignited new culture wars.

 

In 1988, conservatives in the state, led by right-wing writer William F. Buckley Jr., in their loathing for liberal Republican Sen. Lowell Weicker Jr., rallied behind his Democratic opponent, Joe Lieberman, who won a bare margin on the basis of their votes. Lieberman was liberal on abortion, but that didn't matter to the right, which was determined to purge the Republican Party.

 

Over time, Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, became more observant and culturally conservative. His speech denouncing President Clinton as "immoral" during the impeachment spectacle was as unsurprising as it was unctuous. His links to neoconservatives and the religious right proliferated. He became close to Dick and Lynne Cheney and helped found a group with Lynne to criticize liberal professors. Last year, at the 50th anniversary dinner of Buckley's National Review, the leading conservative magazine, Lieberman sat at the head table.

 

Al Gore chose Lieberman as a symbol of his separation from Clinton, and it was symptomatic of the strategic misdirection that landed Gore in the Florida swamp. Lieberman's main contributions were an unusually gentle debate with Cheney and a unilateral concession to count illegal ballots in Florida that favored Bush.

 

In the rush to war in Iraq, Lieberman was in the forefront of cheerleading, and Bush took to citing him often. Entering the House chamber to deliver his 2005 State of the Union address, Bush famously kissed him, godfather-style. In November of last year, after a Potemkin village tour of Iraq, Lieberman wrote an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal hailing "the coming victory" and, a month later on the Senate floor, rebuked "Democrats who distrust President Bush" for failing to acknowledge "we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril."

 

Believing that he had turned into a sacrosanct institution beyond reproach, the acolyte of Democratic leader Bailey neglected political organization. Disdainful of New England Democrats for daring to criticize the Southern conservative president, Lieberman was stunned by the emergence of an intraparty opponent, Ned Lamont, a liberal patrician banker.

 

Lieberman finished his campaign on a desperate note, proclaiming his purity of heart as a Democrat and assailing Bush on Iraq blunders, even as he announced in losing that he would not abide by his party's verdict and instead run as an independent. The man of faith is now running on bad faith. Self-righteousness fostered self-delusion, leading to self-destruction. Lieberman's fall is a cautionary tale not limited to Connecticut.

[mountain bed]

oh the Dems were out in force behind Lieberman......Bubba Clinton was in CT last week giving support.

Yeah & if that milk-toast muthafucka had 1/10th the charisma of Willie this post topic probably never woulda happened...gotta agree w/ S-Dog on this one...I truly dislike the Leeb

 

Could also be said if Gore would've not chosen him for VP,he woulda won...Jeeezus Christ what a different world we'd be living in today.

Scott

[bjorn_skurj]

I like Lamont.

 

[yankhotelfox]

Being from CT I have to say that I am not in tune with politics anymore. Lamont ran such a negative campaign and Senator Joe didn't fight hard enough to protect his own integrity. Oh well.

[quarter23cd]

Being from CT I have to say that I am not in tune with politics anymore. Lamont ran such a negative campaign and Senator Joe didn't fight hard enough to protect his own integrity. Oh well.

Not sure about the "negativity"--I've seen much nastier campaigns before. But I guess its true that the central thrust of Lamont's campaign that Lieberman was essentially Bush's Democrat-lapdog in the senate--I guess that can get to feeling pretty negative after a while, but I'm also not sure there's a way around it because it is an accurate depiction of why much of the party became uncomfortable with Joe. This vote--as much as being a vote against Joe himself--was really a vote against the overall political status-quo. Joe was a stay-the-course guy...and the course sucks.

 

But, hell, I'll agree that I'm feeling somewhat out of tune with politics these days. I didn't even vote in this thing (since I'm not registered with the Dems or any other party), so I'll admit that I kind of sat on the sidelines and watched this one from afar. But, honestly, I think purging Joe is ultimately a good thing for the party. I feel a lot of fatigue towards politics these days. I couldn't feel more detached from the people who are supposedly "representing" me and I'll admit that it is appealing to send up a guy like Lamont who seems to be fighting mad about the status quo (at least I can relate to that). We'll see if he ends up being an improvement or not, but I think Joe had largely fallen out of step with his party and a change was due.

[Mrs. Peel]

I think the most audacious thing he's done is to name his new "party" Connecticut for Leiberman as if somehow the voters that already chose someone else don't really count. If he truly felt his ideals did not line up with the Democratic stance he should have signed on as an independent before the primary. The fact that he only split from the Dems after he lost proves the article true that he just wants to win because he thinks the voters made a mistake in not choosing him and that any outcome other than victory is wrong. Our own Secretary Of State is now talking about trying to instate a "Sore Loser Law" that says you can't just shift parties and run again if you lost your own party's primary. The voters have spoken.

 

As for the negative campaign, I really felt that from Leiberman's side more than Lamont. I listened to their debate on the radio and while there was a lot of back and forth about the war, I felt it was Leiberman who spent most of the time bashing Lamont's lack of experience instead of telling me anything new about what he stands for. I came away feeling like all he basically said was "you know me, I'm famous, he's a nobody, so obviously you should vote for me."

[Mr. Heartbreak]

It's nice to see the Dems in my home state tell the Leeb to f*&k off, but unfortunately, the polls indicate that he would win in a three-way race. Hope Lamont can crank it up and beat Leeb in the actual race.

[WilcoFan]

Lieberman basically stood for what a majority of politicians stand for: re-election and business as usual. He is probably still in shock. The re-incumancy rate is 98%. That means that an elected senator has a 98% chance of being re-elected once in office. It goes to show what a crappy job his people think he was doing.

 

 

"but I think Joe had largely fallen out of step with his party and a change was due."

 

Ultimately, if things work according to plan, it's not that he is out of step with his party, he'll won't be re-elected because he was out of step with the people he represents.

[bjorn_skurj]

Interesting that the first politician to really suffer from the Iraq war going badly is a Democrat. Hillary hears it about Iraq too in this state, but doesn't have a serious primary challenger. Which is a shame, because I kind of miss the vituperative Hillary.

[quarter23cd]

Ultimately, if things work according to plan, it's not that he is out of step with his party, he'll won't be re-elected because he was out of step with the people he represents.

That's what I meant, I guess. Obviously, most self-identified Dems are frustrated with him. I haven't seen the polls that sugget Leeb would win a 3-way race as an in indy--is that true?? That would take an awful lot of Republicans going out of their way to support a guy who is ostensibly still a Democrat, more or less. Not sure I'm seeing that happen, but I suppose if it could happen anywhere, Connecticut is the place.(do the Republicans even have a candidate yet or is Leeb "their guy"?)

[bjorn_skurj]

That's what I meant, I guess. Obviously, most self-identified Dems are frustrated with him. I haven't seen the polls that sugget Leeb would win a 3-way race as an in indy--is that true?? That would take an awful lot of Republicans going out of their way to support a guy who is ostensibly still a Democrat, more or less. Not sure I'm seeing that happen, but I suppose if it could happen anywhere, Connecticut is the place.(do the Republicans even have a candidate yet or is Leeb "their guy"?)

1. Happy birthday.

2. The GOP has a guy, but there's been some talk they may try to get a better guy in an effort to swipe the seat from the Dems.

[quarter23cd]

1. Happy birthday.

2. The GOP has a guy, but there's been some talk they may try to get a better guy in an effort to swipe the seat from the Dems.

1. Thank you.

2. It'll be interesting to see who they come up with. Do we have any republican-leaning celebrities in CT? I heard that Kevin Bacon's kids go to the private school near me--anyone know his political-leanings?