Say Goodnight, Joe (The Nation)

[im10ashus]

"Shame on all of us if we allow a shrieking minority to hijack the primary," fumed Connecticut House Speaker and Joe Lieberman loyalist James Amann during a rally barely more than a week before the state's primary. Right up through primary day, Lieberman and his allies among the state's political professionals remained locked in denial at his fall. But as an all-time record number of Democrats showed up at the primary polls, as one town after another with old, strong Democratic organizations swung to Ned Lamont, the shrieking minority turned out to be a troubled majority clearly persuaded that it was Lieberman who had been doing the hijacking all these years.

To understand why Ned Lamont's primary victory matters--and it was very much Lamont's victory, not just the former vice presidential candidate's defeat--you've got to understand Connecticut and Lieberman's place in it. Yes, this was a referendum on Iraq. ("Bring them home!" was the chant at Lamont's victory speech.) Yes, it was a test of bloggers' and net activists' political influence. But it also illustrates more. For a long generation, ever since his election to the state legislature thirty-six years ago, Lieberman has tied his political fortunes to his distinct vision of how to rebuild Connecticut's once-mighty Democratic machine, and by implication the party nationally. This was the culmination of a fight for the Connecticut Democratic soul that has been going on for years.

Lieberman's mentor was longtime Connecticut Democratic boss John Bailey, John F. Kennedy's Democratic National Chairman. Over the years Lieberman wrote two books on Bailey's career and legacy. What particularly impressed the young Lieberman, fresh out of Yale Law School, was Bailey's ability to hold together an early-1960s coalition of affluent suburban liberals and old-school urban machines dominated by socially conservative ethnic politics. How, Lieberman wondered, could Bailey's formula for Democratic dominance be reinvented in the era of Nixon and Reagan? His answer, first evident during his wildly popular tenure as Connecticut attorney general in the 1980s, was to combine middle-class suburban populism on consumer and environmental matters with feints to the right on social issues, designed to revive the interest of conservative, largely Roman Catholic constituencies in Connecticut's remaining working-class political machines and union halls. I vividly remember one visit Lieberman paid to the newspaper where I was the political reporter around 1984. Much of the interview was devoted to him explaining just why an ostensibly prochoice attorney general had spent months fighting in the courts to deny Medicaid funding for abortions.

As a tactic it worked, for a while. As attorney general in the '80s Lieberman was the top draw on the Connecticut Democratic ticket and the state's dominant political voice, outpolling governors and all others; it enabled him, in 1988, to beat the fiercely independent Republican Lowell Weicker by running to Weicker's right. Nationally, Lieberman's Connecticut formula turned into the core message of the Democratic Leadership Council.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060814/shapiro

[longship]

1. Recommended.

:kick:ed

[im10ashus]

3. Thanks, longship.

It's a well-written article that gets right to the facts. Another excerpt:

During his (Lieberman's) years in the Senate the Democrats lost the governorship and two Congressional districts; unaffiliated voters, long more numerous than Republicans, came to outnumber Democrats too. Through the 1990s, Connecticut progressives (including some of the same organizers behind Lamont's campaign) waged a series of successful primary challenges to tepid party hacks in the legislature, effectively challenging Lieberman's tactical thesis at the grassroots.

[Exultant Democracy]

8. So for the 18 years that Joe was the dominate Democratic

voice in CT all he helped was the republicans take the state. And now since the Impeachment of Clinton, when Traitor Joe back-stabbed his way into the big time, history has repeated itself but on a national stage.

This guy was a plague on our party, and we just found a new penicillin called people powered politics.

[im10ashus]

11. And he had the nerve to mention "partisan politics" in his speech.

Now he's faced with the prospect of being "Joe Lieberman: Average Citizen" and he can't handle the truth.

[ShortnFiery]

2. Holy Joe is turning out to be a petty little bitter b**tard

To say that he shames all politicians is scraping the bottom of the barrel. But to hedge one's bets this way is smarmy beyond words. :puke:

[Nothing Without Hope]

7. He's one of those - like his idol Bush - who NEVER makes mistakes

If anything goes wrong, it's someone else's fault and he is unfairly, even cruelly misused and misjudged. Now he's the unbowed and defiant wounded hero - a role he plays much less well than he thinks. It's all cunning calculaton of how to manipulate the marks and no acountability at all. He'll never stop until he's forced to by being abandoned by those he uses and who use him. He's too much of a self-blinded, greedy coward to do anything because it is right. Like the article says, he's a hollow man, a political schemer with no moral compass at all.

[moc]

4. Very interesting history of Lieberman's political history vis a vis

Connecticut politics. I strongly recommend folks read the whole thing.

[Nothing Without Hope]

5. K & R. A good read on the history of Lieberman's political calculations

Ironic that his craven support of corrupt Bush policies is portrayed by himself, his supporters, and the corporte media as "acting on principle."

The last three sentences of this essay are especially powerful: "Lieberman always claimed he could define the center by dodging between unions and environmentalists on one side, and privatizers and religious conservatives on the other. That dodge, after thirty years, left not a center but a political hollow man, devoid of compass, incapable of confronting a catastrophe in Iraq recognized widely by the Connecticut public. He was defeated by a reformer who insists that politics should stand for something after all."

[im10ashus]

6. Proof again that changing with the political wind is damaging.

Sticking to your guns, even when others may disagree, is far more admirable.

[REACTIVATED IN CT]

9. K & R - Excellent insight, as usual, from The Nation n/t

[im10ashus]

12. I love The Nation.

They always do super work.

[Sir Jeffrey]

10. k & r

[im10ashus]

13. Kick!

:kick: