I'd like to see more material like this in Salon. Some of the earlier Salon coverage of the Connecticut primary was off the mark.

On "sore losers": check out the coverage over at The New Republic", which endorsed Lieberman in the 2004 primaries.

They (the pod people for the war) have learned to speak confidently, and loud, and say nothing. It's not surprising that the Republican gurus are frothing at the mouth, repeating the message of the day. But what's remarkable to me is how many of our pundits are quite, quite mad, and quite divorced from reality.

The meme is, Lamont = McGovern. Well, aside from the fact that a Scripps-Howard poll says that McGovern would beat Nixon if the election happened today, the situtations are completely different. There is no counter-culture now, no mass anti-war "movement," no rioting, no Black Panthers, no women burning their bras, and no gay liberation. None of the cultural conditions that the hardhats wanted to defeat so they could get back to "normality" apply.

So, Nixon inherited a Democrat's war, which he promised to "end with honor," using a "secret plan." So people voted for Nixon thinking he would bring peace. And just before the November, 1972 election, what happened? Kissinger announced that a treaty had been signed. A month after the election, the last combat unit left Vietnam. McGovern? He would have done it faster, I suppose, and he thought that Vietnamization was a cynical ploy; which turned out to be right, too. So, in 1972, where was the "stay the course" politician? Nowhere.

In fact, Nixon and McGovern differed on the subject of racial justice -- Nixon inherited the solid South that election -- and the War on Drugs, and the last remnants of the Great Society. Not National Security. The GOP fought a successful campaign of dirty tricks that year. And we know what happened next.

Lieberman, with major help from Republicans, ousted Lowell Weiker, a centrist, honorable Republican senator who had served in the senate for 18 years, in 1988. Seems like Karma to me.

Very well written. Loved the "McCarthyite" jab - nice! I appreciate you naming what is to help lend more sanity to this election fallout. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...

Good job, Connecticut! Perhaps no vast ramifications will result from this ultimately satifying primary, but I'll bet the War in Iraq gets ratcheted up on all candidates lists of important issues. Hopefully to the top.

It appears that every day, more people are finally beginning to pay attention to the discrepencies between what is said by this administration and what is real. Finally!

Jacob Weisberg's article in Slate really pissed me off, and you provided the perfect antidote. I feel much better.

Jim writes, "There is no counter-culture now, no mass anti-war "movement," no rioting, no Black Panthers, no women burning their bras, and no gay liberation. None of the cultural conditions that the hardhats wanted to defeat so they could get back to "normality" apply."

I disagree, the difference between todays liberation movement and that of the sixties is that we have been mainstreamed through advances in communication. We are not so easily stereotyped and marginalized by a monolithic media. Rather it is a convergence of the black, the gay, the peaceniks, the women and the white men that love us that is overthrowing the fundamentalists. The vote against Lieberman rpresents a vote against Bush, as Joe Conason so elegantly expresses. A vote against "Bush the fundamentalist." Because what fundamentalists of every sort from the GOP to Al Queda to Wahabbism represent is opposition to 1.)women 2.)gays and 3.) diversity. I heard that somewhere from an Indian woman and it resonates with truth.

All mainstream media has gone right-wing, even Time magazine and NPR. ( sigh )

I think if any of us could ever get a few hours of one-on-one conversation with any of the respected big media pundits or "journalists", we would be shocked to discover how shallow and trivial they really are.

Murrow and Cronkite are gone and now it's all just show biz.

These guys are terrified that Democrats are going to learn to criticize the war effort openly, harshly, and without apology. They know that 60% of people have turned on the war and are looking to the Dems to provide an alternative. Lamont is forging a template, and the GOP can see a landslide forming. So they are lashing out like cornered animals.

Those in close races will now try even harder to distance themselves from prez-nut. Maybe he should plan to take his vacation in October this year.

Is that what I'm starting to feel as I read common sense takes on what happened in Vermont, and what is happening in the country, optimism? I'm so used to hearing beltway spin drown out the obvious truth the pundits seem to want to hide from us, that to hear repeated instances of exactly the way things are is refreshing in a way that I haven't felt in a long while.

Is it finally happening? The left has finally learned how to tell the same story from all points, the way the right-wing echo chamber has mastered the art of forming opinion--no matter how bogus--and the difference is that we are simply stating the truth.

I hope to hear more and more of it in the coming days and years.

Right on Joe

We must all band together to crush this spectre of democracy before it spreads. Money! Give me more money! Screw the Constitution! Give me money! Front door, back door, honest money, hidden money! Just give me money!

Timing of the first ever red code alert after an investigation in Britain supposedly going on for months ia vwey auapixioua as well. ("Time to round up some suspicious looking Muslims, Tony dear. Be a good boy, OK?") It so nicely dovetails into the Cheney/Rove/Bush cabal's dire warnings (essentially) that any real democratic voting in elections should make everyone afraid, very afraid. Timed together with a fairy tale version of 911 in theaters, the real anniversary of 911, etc., the Cry Wolf GOPers are getting more and more desperate to keep the fear level at fever pitch. Wouldn't want anti-war, anti-repuke uprisings all over the nation now, would we? The voice of the people is not something any of the current corporate-owned polititians really want to hear--left or right. The "mainstream" is now the corporatist special interests who profit from wars, disasters, political pandering and the like.

Heaven help us if/when we ever have a real terror warning after the terror cards and codes have been shuffled so transparently in political ploys each time a major distraction is needed. I smell another phony Bin Laden tape coming soon to a pungent pundit near you and me! BTW--why does no one else comment on the abrupt personality change that came over the alleged mastermind of 911 around end of 2001, going from media hog and attention craver to silent sam, except when politically advantageous for the reichwingers? Why has no one independently verified the tapes, apart from CIA operatives? Why was Bin Laden's funeral reported in the Arab press around that time?

In this last supposed terrorist foiling, the perps were Pakistani, the first unfoiled hit, mostly Saudi. Sure to justify a wider war in Syria and Iran or maybe Venezuela and Cuba?