Democratic national chairman Howard Dean says Joe Lieberman ought to quit and Democrats “have an obligation” to get behind Lamont. What do you expect? The Democrats are a political party, and Lieberman lost because he didn't align sufficiently with Democratic values. He's being portrayed as pathetic. Not only did he lose the primary, he's "too angered by his loss to accept ... counseling" that he needs to give up.
How will Lieberman frame his independent campaign? Can he say sharp things about all the Democrats abandoning him? Can he fall into the embrace of the Republicans, who seems to only want to say nice things about him to make the rest of the Democrats look bad? This embracing of Joe to make the rest of the Democrats look bad is a painful reminder of that kiss, and we can only imagine how terrible Joe feels about that. (I picture Joe singing "He Kissed Me and It Felt Like a Hit.")
Meanwhile, the Republicans don't seem to care at all about their guy in Connecticut:
[Alan] Schlesinger, a lawyer who won his party’s nomination back in May, when few thought Mr. Lieberman’s bid for a fourth term was in much jeopardy, is not widely known. He has raised very little money. Not a single national Republican figure has come forward to promote his cause. And, amid some murmuring by fellow Republicans that he step aside, Mr. Schlesinger said he was in the race for good, and could not and would not be removed.What an awful candidate! Either Schlesinger needs to step aside or Republicans should just all get the message to vote for Lieberman, right?
“I’m not going anywhere. The way the numbers stack up, I can win this thing,” he said cheerfully.
Mr. Schlesinger, a former mayor of the town of Derby, first burst into the headlines this summer after The Hartford Courant reported that he had gambled under a fake name and once had gambling debts (he dismissed the accounts as irrelevant).
UPDATE: Peggy Noonan writes:
So it's Lieberman versus Lamont unless Mr. Schlesinger drops out, in which case a Republican with his own money could conceivably come forward and shake things up. A new candidate like that would take votes from Mr. Lieberman.
I wonder how national Republicans will play this? Would the White House allow a conservative to come forward? Personal ties and gratitude aside, a newly elected Joe Lieberman, free of the constraints of the Democratic Party, might be a much more reliable supporter than an independent Republican moneybags with a lot to prove.
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19 comments:
I think Schlesinger's candidacy points out the problem with both Political parties. If the incumbent is strong (and which ones aren't?), only unelectable no-names are offered up by the opposition. Then when you have something happen like it does in Connecticut, what kind of choice does a voter really have?
The same thing happens here in WI. Name the last credible candidate to run against Herb Kohl. And what does Herb Kohl's senate office ever do for Wisconsin?
Lieberman IS aligned with Democratic values EXCEPT for the War on Terror.By ever measure possible he's in the middle of the Democratic Senators when it comes to his liberal ratings, and he votes with the Democratic leadership 90% of the time. He used to be even more to the left, but as the Democratic Party has radicalized, his ratings have moved him into the center of Democrats.
Lieberman was targeted for two reasons:
1) If the Kossacks and moonbats could dump him, it would be a great show of strength and a means to intimidate other Democrats (especially those to the right of him).
2) It was possible to recruit a rich candidate willing to spend millions of his own on the campaign. 60% of Lamont's expenditures he paid for himself.
Senate campaigns cost literally millions of dollars to run now. It is impossible to recruit top rated people to run for "safe" seats because of the expences involved. It's the same reason why Hillary shopped around for her Senate seat. If she thought it would have been easier to win, she would have run in Arkansas or Illinois where she has ties, instead of New York where she was a complete carpetbagger.
MM: Yeah, I was thinking of Kohl. Does he even have an opponent? The parties always half look like they're working really hard and half like they aren't even trying.
Gahrie: Why wasn't there some rich Republican in Connecticut to mount a credible campaign?
Not only did he lose the primary, he's "too angered by his loss to accept ... counseling" that he needs to give up.
How do they reconcile this with the continued "re-elect Gore" and the "Kerry gave up to easily on 2004" mantras?
gahrie, from what I've read, Lieberman lost significant support when he started telling his constituents how to speak and when and when not to criticize the government. That's really the kiss of death to any politician. I also got the feeling from listening to him that he thought he was indispensable. Does anyone like hubris in a politician?
I'm not sure how I would have voted were I a Nutmegger. I think pulling out from Iraq would be a mistake. But I also thought going in was a mistake.
It's not quite analogous, but CT somewhat reminds me of the 1990 Minnesota Governor's race when the eventual winner couldn't win the primary but won the general election running as an independent. More or less.
Perpich was the incumbent democrat and vulnerable to defeat due to his increasing wackiness. Grunseth and Carlson opposed each other in the Republican primary. Because the party was being run by a very conservative faction, the moderate Carlson didn't put up much of a fight and the family values Grunseth won easily. Carlson threatened to run as a write-in, but didn't actually do this until Grunseth was accused of molesting a couple of 14-year olds at a family party a few years before. He did not drop out then, but when a few weeks before the election the front page of the Sunday Star-Tribune had him admitting to a marital affair, Grunseth finally quit. Carlson was added to the ballot as the republican nominee and easily won.
1990 was a weird year in Minnesota. That was also the year Wellstone won the senate race. The final straw pushing him over the top being the Boschwitz letter accused Wellstone of a being a bad Jew for marrying a gentile.
Lieberman, Lieberman, Lieberman -- I’d actually like to start posting about something else. Something like Holga photography. But first:
The trouble with the conventional wisdom about Joe winning a three-way race this fall is that it IS the conventional wisdom -- a nostalgic look in the rear-view mirror. Back to a time when Joe was a VP candidate, his party’s standard-bearer, not the pathetic joke and spoiler wannabe whose rapidly shrinking support is melting further day by day. And there won’t be much left after the comics get through with him. A lot of Stewart shows -- or perhaps more important, given his demographics, Leno shows -- between now and November.
After he gets over the shock of defeat, we can hope that Joe sees this is really all about generational change. Some actors are leaving the stage, while others are just starting to play their parts. Joe can accept that and walk off the stage gracefully, or he'll most likely just end up taking an even bigger tumble.
It's too early to firm up the numbers after the primary, but agreeing with yetanotherjohn, the IND vote inCT is huge. I think it breaks like:
DEM 35%
IND 40%
REP 25%
Another twist will be how the Senate DEMS respond to the Lossack requests to sack Joe from all his assignments. Effectively to make him a non-person (how Stalinist :)
If that happens, I wonder if Frist and McConnell won't go to Joe on the sly and say: If we get the REP to quit, would you consider coming in to the next Senate as an IND caucusing with the REPs? An Anti-Jeffords
I agree with YAJ and the Drill Sergeant as far as the numbers are concerned.
The vocal left in the Democratic party is the voice of the young, wealthy and trendy. Lamont is a perfect spokesman for those folks because he is one of them.
Madison Guy is pitch perfect in his expression the attitude of this demographic.
In CT, the majority of this demographic are, I suspect, registered Democrats.
Older, less trendy, middle and blue collar CT voters are split between registered Republicans and Independents.
I doubt that Joe is listening to Madison Guy's Connecticut counterparts.
Henry: Does anyone who understands the web seriously believe Lieberman's website was attacked? He had too much traffic for the dinky website he paid for. It was his own fault. He kept complaining about being attacked when there was no ground for the accusation.
I posted this at MoveOn today:
So, let''s see. An organization that purportedly wants to return power back to the people, in league with Daily Kos, etc., has hitched its wagon to an ulta wealthy Exeter WASP opportunist and, in the process, trod all over a decent man because it disagrees with him on one issue, albeit a very important one. Whither nuance and the once "vital center"? Now, we have the rogues on the right, who I abhor, facing down the naive but very Rove-like "We'll show you not to support the war!", beat-a-Democrat-in-the-primary-at-any-cost MoveOn folks. Wonderful. What now? Having handed all political momentum back to your opponents, while tolerating vile anti-senitic rants on your various websites, what exactly comes next. Feeling pretty muscular, I bet. Bravo!
As I said yesterday, you have driven me completely out of the party, which now seems to have room only for "disaffected" naifs with no ability to manage what they have wrought. Like it or not, and this goes for both sides, governing is about disagreeing respectfully, compromising, and groping, sometimes despairingly, for that ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY "vital center". Rushing to either extreme while ranting and insulting has been tried by the likes of Hitler and Stalin. Absurd absolutism from either extreme looks the same when all is said and done.
There must be a third way. The world will not survive unless common sense moves the two extremes towards one another. So, in your delirium, pause and ponder where you are headed, if you can. You strut about as though you have accomplished something, when all you have done is tear things to pieces in a directionless frenzy.
If you on the lunar left could find some way to plant your flag nearer the middle, which would give you a footing to bring your opposites also back to that same middle, then all is lost. For now, I guess I am left with Kinky Friedman and the waning hope that you will learn to lead and not lock arms in a parody of some childhood game.
- Will Hough, Educator (August 10, 2006; West Wareham, MA)
A little OT, but for the disillusioned Lieberman Democrats who might be reading this blog:
[T]he anti-Bush Leftist mindset comprises a solid 40% of the electorate, making it the single strongest ideology in America today. Conservatives and libertarians and their various stripes run about 30%, while the rest are somewhere in between. …
[T]he Dems are not going to die out anytime soon per your fantasies. The Left will be around for a loooong time; their propaganda, ideologies, and proponents are too well-ensconced in seats of power, whether in media and bureaucracies, academia, or the cultural elite. It also doesn’t help that secular progressivism is still the driving political force in Europe. …
You’re going to hate this answer like all hell, but the true answer is for people like you to join the Republican Party and help us weaken the Pat Robertsons, Tom DeLays, and George W. Bush’s of the party so that we can have a broad-minded coalition of people who largely agree on free-market economic principles, conservative fiscal policy, muscular, neoconservative-like foreign policy, and libertarian social policy. You’d have to sacrifice a few sacred shibboleths… but then again, so would we. For example, the Religious Right would have to decide the protection of Western culture and economy and the defense of classical liberalism is more important than minimizing the participation of homosexuals in American culture and society or achieving legislative prohibitions against abortion. In return, you’d have to abandon the precepts of Big, Helpful Government in the grand tradition of FDR and LBJ in favor of more market-oriented tax-and-spend principles. Neither sacrifice will be easy or painless, but they are both more probable, more possible, and more beneficial for America than your alternative dream of a dead Left and a “Third Way” centrist party to battle against right-leaning Republicans for control of America–a dream that is both seriously contra-ideological reality and probably less beneficial, because if moderates like yourself become the new dominant foe for the GOP, the Right will only go further to the right in contradistinction, to your chagrin.
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The MoveOn types haven't been able to win any against Bush, so they've turned on fellow Democrats. Now they're crowing like they've killed an elephant. This worked because CT is such a solid Dem state. If there were more Republicans, there'd be better Rep Candidates and attacking Lieberman would have cost him and Lamont and the Dem party a Senate seat. If Lieberman loses, the only thing that will change is that we'll have Dennis Kucinich in a Senate seat from CT.
Read "The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy" by Byron York. It's the best book I've seen about what's eating the Democrats. It's 1972 all over again.
Gahrie: Why wasn't there some rich Republican in Connecticut to mount a credible campaign?
Because, given the electoral politics of Conn., he would be wasting his money. Instead the smart ones find a safe Republican seat to buy.
The biggest group of Conn. voters are independents, then Democrats, and Republicans a distant third. And the independents are decidedly liberal.
The last Republican Senator from Conn. was liberal enough to be a Democrat.
Ann Althouse said...
"Does anyone who understands the web seriously believe Lieberman's website was attacked? He had too much traffic for the dinky website he paid for. It was his own fault. He kept complaining about being attacked when there was no ground for the accusation."
I read a denial that this was the case from the hosting company, which would suffice unto itself.But even were that not the case, it bears noting two other points: first,that a site which runs out of bandwidth or that does not pay its bills does not go "up and down", as Lieberman's site did, it goes down and stays down. Second, a denial of service attack is defined by the intent,not the mechanism: it doesn't matter whether they hacked the site, or soaked up its available bandwidth, or flooded the web server until it crashed, or even if they physically burned down the building it's housed in. What makes it a DOS attack is the intent to take down the service.
So at very least, their claims are non-ridiculous, even if they are yet to be proven.
Chris O.:
1) There are more Democratic millionaires in Congress than Republican ones, and the four richest Congressmen are Democrats.
2) In the next week or so, I believe you will see all the serious contenders for the Democratic nomination in 2008 pay homage to Markos. (those they haven't already that is, like Gore and Kerry) Those that don't will be the next victims of the nutsroots.
3) Kos is now 1-17. However his "1" is an incumbent Senator. And perception is much stronger politically than reality, especuially among liberals.
4) Remember you bragging this November and in 2008 when the Democrats get there ass handed to them. (Including Lamont) There are far more moderates in this country than moonbats, and you guys have been pretty effective at alienating the moderates.
You may want to read Charlie Cook's political report if you don't want to be very surprised in Novemeber.
Isn't he one of the ones predicting doom and gloom for the Republicans in 2000, 2002, and 2004? The pollsters were down on the Republicans in all three of those elections.
In fact the moonbats used the polls as part of their evidence that 2000 and 2004 were stolen elections.
geoduck2 said...
"I'm no seer - but I'll bet [] two bits that the Dems gain seats in both the House and the Senate in Novemember."
I'll bet you're right (in the House, at least - I don't agree they're going to make a net gain in the Senate, not least because by alienating Lieberman, he will be less well-disposed towards them in his next term), but simply gaining seats is not the object of the game. Gaining seats is the LEAST one might expect. One might ask, if Democrats can't pick up seats in this election, when on earth could they? I continue to agree with David Brooks' observation: if the Democrats can't win back the House in this climate, what is it going to take for them to do so? In so many ways, it's theirs for the asking; they have an open goal, all they have to do is control the ball and tap it in. If they still can't accomplish that this fall, doesn't that reflect pretty dismally on their credibility among the public?
Moreover, consider the historical precedent, the sixth-year midterm of the nearest comparable Presidents: in '86, Democrats gained five House seats in Reagan's sixth-year midterm, while in '58 Democrats gained a net of forty-nine House seats in Eisenhower's. It would be unusual if - absent extenuating circumstances - the opposition party did not gain seats in Congress at some point during a President's term, particularly at this point during it.
The default supposition, I would think, would be that the Dems can, should and probably will win the House this fall. It should be considered abject failure if they do not do so, not a spectacular triumph if they do.
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