The big book about Joe
Lieberman is gtting a lot of press today. (I hadn't planned on voicing, or even linking, anything, mainly because Joe pisses me off, and I'm working really hard at staying calm today.)
WaPo: Joe plans to run as an independent if Lamont beats him out of the primary.
NYT: Joe makes it hard for Democrats to make Iraq Dubya's problem.
OK, it's no secret that I subscribe to the old adage, "With Dems like Joe, who needs Republicans?" But I'm going to try to put my personal feelings aside and really look at today's story with a critical eye.
1. As if it weren't already clear, today's story makes it clear that Joe is already running as a Democrat and as an independent. See, Joe has to have sufficient signatures (7,500) filed the day after the election in order to get on the ballot. So he's collecting now. In CT, and many other states, collecting sigs is the one and only thing a candidate has to do to run outside of the party structure. Ergo, he is "running". Call him a political pragmatist if you will. But call it what it is.
2. Speaking of calling things what they are: could everyone please stop calling Joe a "centrist"? He may be centrist in the accepted Washington sense of the term, but not in any intellectually honest sense. Why label Joe a centrist? "Well, he's a Democrat who still supports Dubya and his dumbass Iraq policies," the answer goes. No. That makes him an idiot, a whore, or willfully and criminally blind. Take your pick. Reaching across the abyss to the extreme right wing does not "center" you. It stretches you over a fucking abyss.
3. The coy manner in which he put forth his options with regard to the CT primary is unsettling (and probably politically stupid). Remember, it was just two weeks ago that he said that "under no circumstances would [he] run as anything other than a Democrat" in August, but refused to rule out running as an independent if he lost. But Joe needs to demonstrate to committed Dems -- who are, after all, about the only people gonna be voting in the August primary -- that he's not a ringer. Using weasel words and being coy about the fact that he's already running as an independent is the worst of Joe's three options at this point.
Here's the thing. Joe has other (and IMHO better) options today. He could embrace the primary fight -- see it and talk about it as a chance to vindicate his decisions to the people he represents, engage in a real debate with his challenger, and accept the decision of his most committed constituents with dignity and grace. He could go on the offensive -- denounce the Joe-haters and their tactics because by God, he represents the people of the great state of CT, not the great state of the Democratic Party -- although, to be honest, he whiffed that tactic in his interview with Broder a couple weeks back, and in all likelihood that's not gonna work anyway because his constitutents are pretty overwhelmingly against the war. Or he could do what he's doing -- weasel and spin, play both ends against the middle, announce his commitment to the party while he's already planning to jump ship, and in the process do some real damage to his party's efforts to retake Congress.
This isn't a man committed to his values. This is a man committed to his position.
Fuck him.
WaPo: Joe plans to run as an independent if Lamont beats him out of the primary.
NYT: Joe makes it hard for Democrats to make Iraq Dubya's problem.
OK, it's no secret that I subscribe to the old adage, "With Dems like Joe, who needs Republicans?" But I'm going to try to put my personal feelings aside and really look at today's story with a critical eye.
1. As if it weren't already clear, today's story makes it clear that Joe is already running as a Democrat and as an independent. See, Joe has to have sufficient signatures (7,500) filed the day after the election in order to get on the ballot. So he's collecting now. In CT, and many other states, collecting sigs is the one and only thing a candidate has to do to run outside of the party structure. Ergo, he is "running". Call him a political pragmatist if you will. But call it what it is.
2. Speaking of calling things what they are: could everyone please stop calling Joe a "centrist"? He may be centrist in the accepted Washington sense of the term, but not in any intellectually honest sense. Why label Joe a centrist? "Well, he's a Democrat who still supports Dubya and his dumbass Iraq policies," the answer goes. No. That makes him an idiot, a whore, or willfully and criminally blind. Take your pick. Reaching across the abyss to the extreme right wing does not "center" you. It stretches you over a fucking abyss.
3. The coy manner in which he put forth his options with regard to the CT primary is unsettling (and probably politically stupid). Remember, it was just two weeks ago that he said that "under no circumstances would [he] run as anything other than a Democrat" in August, but refused to rule out running as an independent if he lost. But Joe needs to demonstrate to committed Dems -- who are, after all, about the only people gonna be voting in the August primary -- that he's not a ringer. Using weasel words and being coy about the fact that he's already running as an independent is the worst of Joe's three options at this point.
Here's the thing. Joe has other (and IMHO better) options today. He could embrace the primary fight -- see it and talk about it as a chance to vindicate his decisions to the people he represents, engage in a real debate with his challenger, and accept the decision of his most committed constituents with dignity and grace. He could go on the offensive -- denounce the Joe-haters and their tactics because by God, he represents the people of the great state of CT, not the great state of the Democratic Party -- although, to be honest, he whiffed that tactic in his interview with Broder a couple weeks back, and in all likelihood that's not gonna work anyway because his constitutents are pretty overwhelmingly against the war. Or he could do what he's doing -- weasel and spin, play both ends against the middle, announce his commitment to the party while he's already planning to jump ship, and in the process do some real damage to his party's efforts to retake Congress.
This isn't a man committed to his values. This is a man committed to his position.
Fuck him.