Marty Peretz: Joe lost, Clinton's fault [View All]

[charlie]

Yep, that's what he says. How's that for gratitude?

THE CLINTON FACTOR:

I was for Joe Lieberman. I wrote an article about the race between him and Ned Lamont in Monday's Wall Street Journal. It was not neutral. But, though it got plenty of attention in the blogs and on television, it did not, alas, help Joe very much. Worse can be said of Bill Clinton's stumping in Connecticut for Joe (and Hillary's endorsement, too.) When Clinton came into the state, Lieberman and Lamont were running dead even in the polls, more or less. Clinton's appearance began Lieberman's decline. Within two or three days, Lieberman was down by ten points. (In the last few days of the campaign, Lieberman recovered considerably ... but not enough.) I know there's some nostalgia in the Democratic Party for Clinton and for Hillary, too. But for many, in the party and out, the Clintons are a nightmare. A nightmare, as James Joyce said, from which we are trying to awake. The common wisdom is that Al Gore would have won in 2000 had he embraced Clinton more or had he allowed Clinton to embrace him. Well, look at what happened to Joe.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/theplank?pid=29876