Nedmentum

Though I haven't commented on it much, I have been watching the Lieberman/Lamont contest diligently. One can draw quite a few lessons from what has transpired thus far. I think Lamont has a pretty good chance of unseating Holy Joe, and I certainly hope that he does. In the run-up to the primary, Lieberman has exemplified the clueless, out-of-touch swell who substitutes "principle" for common sense, when it becomes more and more clear that he has neither of those things in any measurable quantity. Lieberman's principle has boiled down to serving as a moral scold to the picayune transgressors within his own party, while faithfully carrying water for Chimpco's doomed and incompetent policy-making.

So now Lieberman thinks he can save his hide by bringing in The Clenis, the very same person he so pontificated against during the impeachment hearings that blighted the end of the last millennium, to get the black vote for him.

He’s been going around to African American churches of late and with his political tin ear hoping to get them riled about Ned’s Halliburton stock (YouTube above), but Joe has several liabilities within that community which are going to be hard to overcome.

To begin with, Joe was chair of the committee that approved Michael Brown to be the head of FEMA in 42 minutes, and he also famously said that George Bush had the right to appoint anyone he wanted to. He gave cover to the cracker coalition in the mid-nineties by saying affirmative action was wrong, and then tried to pander to the Congressional Black Caucus during the 2000 race by saying he’d always been for it.

Now, I'm sure it's a shock to the media creeps who keep insisting that the only reason anyone wants Lieberman out is because of the Iraq War, and that Lieberman is Bush's shameless point man in the putative opposition party. Those are indeed major reasons, and it's not as if they're bad ones. Were the Bushies to, say, admit that they fucked up royally and set about working cooperatively to start fixing what they've wrecked, things would be different.

But they are resolute in their contention that they meant to do all this shit, that the chaos and death they've unleashed on the region is not a bug, it's a feature. Even some Republicans are starting to break ranks with the administration, if only to try to save their own sorry asses come November.

If Lieberman wants to hang on his vaunted "principles", as if there were anything at all principled about being a willing butt-boy for an incompetent and corrupt administration, that's his problem. He and his lapdog the Bullshit Moose can suck on their principles for all I care. There's nothing principled about people who refuse to admit they were wrong, and need to start figuring out how to set things right again.

The real problem, for the self-styled "serious" politicos, is what a Lamont upset would mean for them and all their cushy little careers explaining shit to the proles. It petrifies them that the barbarians at the gate, who now have a variety of resources and opinions to review and compare, no longer have to rely on the corporate missives of the punditocracy. Something like this really could legitimize a true net-roots movement, which if cultivated could quickly start serving as a political counterweight to the "family values" lunatics that have fucked up American politics over the last generation.

Not that they'd ever admit it; it's far to easy to rely on the usual "purging a maverick" and "ideological purity" tropes:

MONTHS AGO, I was lunching with some savvy Democrats, when one of them asked me: What is the problem with all those Republicans who can't stand maverick GOP Sen. John McCain?

As a McCainiac, I warmed to the subject. I disagree with McCain on illegal immigration and other issues, but I like the fact that McCain appeals to Democrats and independents and that he can work with senators on the other side of the aisle. I appreciate McCain's efforts to curb Washington's runaway spending, and wish more Republicans followed his lead on fiscal restraint. What is more, I think McCain in the White House could go a long way in healing the country's ugly partisan divide.

Then again, I added, Democrats have their own maverick -- Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman. Unlike Dems who ran from their support of the Iraq resolution, Lieberman has remained stalwart. He has forged relations with the Bush White House and joined McCain and Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., in fighting pork-barrel spending.

That's when the table got quiet. It is one thing for Democrats to feel superior to rube Republicans who don't like McCain because he is not sufficiently doctrinaire. When, however, a Democrat gets along with Republicans and espouses moderate positions, well then, he is a turncoat, plain and simple. The episode demonstrated how voters value bipartisanship -- from the other side, only.

Not to pick on Saunders in particular, though she can be a tiresome hack; hers is just the most recent iteration of this "cut and run" nonsense. Democrats -- at least the ones I've been hearing and reading -- are not "running" from their initial (misguided) support of the Iraq resolution, so much as acknowledging what has long been obvious to all honest observers.

Politics is about the only business where you're a better man for stubbornly refusing to admit you fucked up and need to change tack and fix what you broke. No matter how many lives get wasted, no matter how much of the taxpayers' money disappears down a giant hole in the sand, it becomes the height of apostasy to say, "Look, we gotta fix this fucking thing before it gets out of our control. Indeed, it may already be."

It's a common conservative fallback cliché to ponderously intone what something "objectively" means. Well, a deliberate avoidance of what this war of error has devolved to objectively means that you don't really want to fix the problem you've caused, you just want to hang in there in the hopes that a politically viable solution might come along, even though we've completely squandered our position to expect such a windfall. There's no longer much upside for any other nations to do things strictly our way, and our feckless "leaders" refuse to budge on anything. So events just unfold on their own, with no plan, no direction.

If Joe Lieberman can explain precisely why the voters of Connecticut are supposed to willingly endorse six more years of that bullshit, then good luck with that. But to petulantly insult people for expressing their considered opinions shows a contempt for real democracy. Joe Lieberman thinks his seat is an entitlement, that he shouldn't have to earn it, and it doesn't even occur to him that that might be what's really motivating what is turning out to be a nationwide opposition to his simpering appeasement of the most regressive, ass-backwards administration since perhaps McKinley.

Many people, even on the internets, are angry, and they have the right to be, and what they want is real leadership and initiative to counter the current insanity. Lieberman merely represents the party's worst "live on your knees" instincts; he has so thoroughly misread the public sentiment that he really doesn't get that a lot of people are ready to just say fuck it and die on their feet. You know, with their principles. Imagine that.

I really don't think the establishment politicos and commentators can imagine that, seriously; they are so calcified and jaded and co-opted in their current roles, they no longer recognize a genuine bottom-up political movement when they see one -- and when they do, they have nothing but sneering contempt for it. Their paychecks depend on them not understanding it.

If Lieberman had had the presence of mind to honestly examine his errors and come clean about offering real solutions, it might have cost him his Mooseketeer membership and another SOTU kiss from Fredo, and he would have incurred enough GOP wrath to possibly lose, but at least he would have lost like a man. As it is, he'll have a fine career as a Faux News meat puppet, a sop for the farm animals who can't get enough of the likes of Zell Miller.