Well, the voters of Connecticut have spoken, and despite their wishes, Lieberman seems to think that they will have him to kick around for a little while longer.
The cubicle-rats and professional shitbirds at the DLC must be beside themselves at this point. After all, they went all out for their man, flooding the proverbial zone, sending every lackey and would-be consigliere out to the journalistic hustings to warn about the inherent dangers of letting the "blogofascists" and the "nutroots" (in other words, the people) have a say in their political leadership.
Note to Lanny Davis, and every other two-bit whore claiming to be one thing while acting like another -- if you want to be a "liberal antiwar Democrat", then fucking well act like one. Instead of expending time and energy penning bitchy little screeds for the Wall Street Journal op-ed page about how mean commenters at liberal blogs can be, how about talking about the war? How about talking about the indifferent, condescending attitude this administration has displayed throughout, as things have deteriorated from bad to hell? Iraq hangs at the edge of an abyss, torn asunder by death squads and militias, cheered on by a useless little man and his useless little followers, exhorted by nasty little fucks all up and down the right side of the dial -- radio loons, television whackjobs, freelance idiots -- and Davis' big concern is a couple of intemperate commenters at Kos? Seriously?
The Democratic applecart is indeed being overturned by the angry base, and for damned good reasons. This administration, from day one, has operated from a stance of contempt and dismissal. It's been going on for five years now. People have been patient long enough. The dickless DLC hacks hem and haw and preach their bland homilies of incrementalism and bipartisanship, yet seem only to engage in appeasement and capitulation. If Lieberman wants to spend the rest of his life bent over, getting swatted with the Deke paddle, grunting "Thank you sir, may I have another?" for the rest of his life, fine. Maybe he can get a job at Bob Dole's lobbying operation, and make the big bucks humping pols' legs for Big Pharma. Whatever.
We've come to expect smug condescension and belligerent ignorance from the Bushies, but when it comes from the Democrats it's just adding insult to injury. Someone forgot to remind Lieberman that they already have Republicans to defend Bush from criticism. He apparently never got the hint, he ran an amazingly tone-deaf campaign, and when it looked like he was cooked, he acted (and continues to act) like a little punk bitch.
The problem is that the DLC has convinced themselves and their members that their staid, bloodless form of corporate pseudo-liberalism is just the soothing remedy to America's ills, when in fact they are nothing but enablers. Bush needs to be challenged every step of the way on his unprecedented abuse of executive branch authority. He needs to be reined in on his regressive social agenda. He needs to be publicly humiliated over his craven attempts to give the 1% everything while the government runs record deficits, and a preponderance of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
And Lieberman refused to do any of those things, saving his smarmy contempt for his own base. This is an object lesson, folks, in the real difference between how the two parties operate -- no matter what their base does or says, no Republican ever publicly takes them to task. Ever. Yet Lieberman and the rest of the DLC shills cynically use their most impassioned constituencies, the people who are by far the most willing to contribute money and knock on doors, help spread the message, as currency to show the "serious" people how "centrist" they are.
But that's only because the "center" in this country has been dragged so far to the right over the past generation. Getting rid of Lieberman is just a start, but it's a start nonetheless. I remain pessimistic as to true balance being restored any time soon; the media fix is already in on this story. All day long today, all you heard about was Lieberman's website possibly getting hacked, as if there was actually somebody out there who was still on the fence, and needed one last joe2006.com fix before trudging down to the voting booth. Give me a break. No, this is deliberate, to start Lamont off in a hole, where even if he wins the general election (and since Lieberman has shown an unusual eagerness to sell his party down the river, nothing's guaranteed), he gets the stupid "angry nutroots" meme hung around his neck by the lazy shitheads of the corporate media.
Still, it is a start, and I hope there's more energy where that came from. It's at least as important, if not more so, to get George Felix Allen's useless rubber-stamp ass out of the Senate, and get a serious, knowledgeable person like James Webb in. And even if the midterms turn out, as predicted, to be a Democratic recovery of both houses of Congress, it's still important to keep pressuring them to do the right thing. The Democrats, like the media, seem to have a serious case of Stockholm syndrome in their dealings with the Bushies. They are afraid, intimidated by the bluster, buying into the Beltway CW that playing nice is the only way, even with people who do nothing but beat on them.
The only way to break that cycle of diffidence is to keep reminding them that we're here, we want them to do what's right, and we're paying attention. Who knows, someday they might even remember that that's the way it's supposed to be.
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