Letters to the Editor
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what a bunch of brats
How does it feel to be so incredibly useless? For all of your oh-so brave raging, the guy's going to win the primary and he's going to be re-elected. It's time for liberals to get off their damn high horse and get with a winning program. The message, as always, is that America hates left-wingers. The "netroots" people get all excited, but don't seem to accomplish anything but Republican victories. So please, shut it and let the adults in the party, like Joe and Bob Casey and other mods, do their job.
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It's not just the war
While Joe Lieberman's hawkish stance towards the Iraq War has won him few friends among progressive Democrats, Walter Shapiro overstates its significance. Nearly all of the congressional Democrats supported invading Iraq back in 2003, a time when, had they any shred of political courage, they might have prevented this miserable failure. What distinguishes Lieberman is his unabashed eagerness to appear on Fox News time and again and chide his fellow Democrats -- not just for their belated opposition to the war but, significantly, for their opposition to Bush. In doing so he has lent support to the absurd right wing claim that the Democratic party is a bastion of left wing extremism.
Like Zell Miller, Lieberman sidles up to the Sean Hannities of the world at the expense of his own party. But at least that crazy old Georgia coot had the sense to switch parties when he found himself alienated by all the Trotskyites who apparently dominate the Democratic party.
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Crocodile Tears
I must add my voice to those who are perturbed by the obliviousness (actual or intentional) of Walter Shapiro's article. Lieberman's reputation as a regular enabler of both President Bush and of right wing propagandists such as Sean Hannity is hardly debatable by anyone who has watched him over the past few years. Lieberman's "bi-partisanship" goes well beyond a spirit of healthy compromise or Senate collegiality. His title as “Bush’s favorite Democrat” may gall Lieberman, but it is hardly unearned. In exploring how Lieberman gained this dubious distinction, this article comes off either as...
1) A naive puff-piece in which Shapiro scratches his head over why the Democratic base might be disgruntled with Joe's role as a Fox News house-liberal.
“As a punching bag for left-wing activists, Lieberman *somehow* ranks up there with Tom DeLay and Dick Cheney.”
Somehow? While exploring some of the reasons (the infamous Bush kiss and Lieberman’s over-loud distaste for Clinton’s sexual proclivities), he wholly fails to mention the primary reason, which is his apparently never ending tendency to collude with right-wing activists in attacking his own party. This is the heart of the matter for many and a matter on which the article remains strangely silent.
2) A calculated and disingenuous push-piece to convince the uninformed that Lieberman is the victim of irrational attacks on this score. The catalogue of liberal complaints and concerns regarding Senator Lieberman are by now very well known (as amply evidenced by the responses to this article), but Shapiro ignores the most damning reasons for the grassroots disaffection, instead reporting Lieberman's purported confusion at the base's anger at face value. Lieberman’s crocodile tears about “hatred” in the Democratic Party would be more credible if he was not in bed with stellar-haters the likes of Sean Hannity.
The apparent point of the article was to explore Lieberman's current difficulties vis-à-vis the Democratic base, but Mr. Shapiro makes no concerted attempt to do so. While the article contains some useful tidbits, it falls far short of exploring the subject at hand and thus fails to illuminate.
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Why we REALLY hate Leiberman
It's not the anti-war stance that triggers the liberal revulsion for Leiberman. It's the memory of that moralistic prick standing up before the country and condemning Clinton at the worst possible time during the Lewinsky 'scandal'. Self-righteous, opportunistic little bastard.
To top it all off, he's trying to associate himself with Clinton now that he's finally running into significant opposition on his home turf.
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It's not only not JUST the war...
...for many of us, it's not even primarily the war, as important as that is.
As I'm sure other posters before me have said, and probably better than I (post first, read later; apologies to everyone who said it earlier and better), it's that LIEberman can be relied upon to be found supporting Republican themes, memes, talking points -- the whole megillah -- over Democratic ones.
He's provided huge levels of support for the entire enterprise of corporatocracy, kleptocracy, and nascent theocracy with which we've been saddled for 5+ years now, and made it that much harder for any progressive messages to break thru the media cloud of obfuscation.
If the claims that "Democrats are in disarray," that we "have no new ideas," that "we're just out to bring down a good President" who "is just fighting to keep us safe" have found any fertile ground in voters' minds, it's partly because of the shit that LIEberman's been spewing for the entire period.
It's time for him to go.
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What's the Matter with Bloggers?
I see this more and more lately--opinions dismissed because they come from the blogosphere. Lamont is popular with bloggers, which apparently is less important than being popular with...whom? Reporters who own property on Nantucket?
I am not a blogger. I'm a person who gets news from the foreign press and blogs now because the newspapers have completely fallen down on the job covering Iraq and the Bush administration. I'm a person who is sick of Democrats apologizing for their ineffectiveness because they don't want to offend anyone. I'm a person tired of watching Democrats decide how they should position themselves on the issues, instead of just having beliefs they're willing to stick to.
I sent money to Ned Lamont because he has a truly progressive voice. I don't have a Senate race in my state this year, but I'm adopting Lamont because it would be refreshing for a change to have Democrats in Washington who speak like Democrats.
Bloggers and readers of blogs are not automatons with keyboards. They are voters, and to dismiss them as insignificant or pesky is as foolish as dismissing any block of the electorate.