Can we please stop saying how Lieberman has this liberal voting record? Those tabulations are based mostly on symbolic votes that members of Congress frequently are given the opportunitty to cast but which have no effect on public policy. On the CONTESTED issues that form the basis of the cleavage between the Republican and Democratic Parties, Lieberman's no liberal.

A person who not only voted for the Iraq war but continues to think that everything is going great there and we actually are better off because we got mired down in a civil war than if we had just stayed out is not a liberal.

A person who thinks privatizing Social Security is a negotiable issue is not a liberal.

A person who thinks that allowing a bill to become law that pays off the credit industry at the expense of working Americans is no liberal.

A person who is constantly calling for censorship of the mass media is no liberal.

A person who puts Sam Alito on the Supreme Court is no liberal.

A person who articulates that people ought to accept that Bush is our President for the next 2 1/2 years and not oppose his policies is no liberal.

The point is, Lieberman hides behind his record of phony, symbolic votes for liberal causes. But wheever an issue can allow him to get out in front as the sanctimonious compromiser who bemoans the partisanship in Washington, or allows him to pick up millions of dollars in campaign contributions from big business, he's going to get out there and do it, and sell out liberalism.

"Sell-out", "publicity hound", "sanctimonious hypocrite", and "amoral" are better descriptions of Joe Lieberman than "conservative" or "liberal". But if we have to use the rubric of liberalism and conservativism, Lieberman is a hard right winger on the issues that COUNT. His voting record's a dodge.

Mark

Surely the Democrats have the internal strength and party-wide solidarity to overcome these evil GOP intrusions.

Right???

I keep hearing that Leiberman has a good record on the enviroment. Can anyone tell me what he did there.

I have copied below Kos' analysis from Dailykos today on the CT Senate race. The big problem with his analysis is that it assumes that the Republicans in CT are really dumb and really weak. Neither of those assumptions is correct. Kos assumes first (at least implicitly) that the Republicans are dumb enough to retain their present US Senate candidate, Schlesinger, who was revealed this week to have bounced checks on payment of gambling debts in Atlantic City. What I am told the Republicans will in fact likely do is wait until after the August 8 primary and if Lamont wins they will replace Schlesinger with a moderate Republican like State Senator John McKinney of Fairfield, who is known because he is the son of popular former US Representative Stewart McKinney and has a very engaging personality.

Second, Kos assumes incorrectly that CT Republicans are really weak and that there are "not enough" of them. Kos ignores conveniently the fact that CT's Republican governor, Jodi Rell, will win election this year with 65-70 percent of the vote and that Republicans will have won the governorship for 4 straight elections (16 years). More importantly, Kos misses entirely the crucial fact that if Lamont is the Democratic nominee, 1/3 of the Democrats will very likely remain loyal to Lieberman and will vote for Lieberman over Lamont in the general election. This 1/3 of the Dems in CT is not liberal and will vote for Lieberman because they agree largely with his positions. They have voted in the past for Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush I. More on point, in 1970, this 1/3 of the Dems voted in the general election for the pro-Vietnam War Senator Tom Dodd, who (like Lieberman) ran as an independent, over the anti-Vietnam War Democratic party candidate Joe Duffy. The result was that with the Democratic vote divided, Republican Lowell Weicker won the Senate seat and remained there for 18 years until he was beaten by Lieberman in 1988.

To illustrate the above consider my family's town of Westport, CT, which although fairly affluent has voted pretty much consistently with the rest of the state over the past three decades for president, senator, governor, and so forth. In the August 8 primary, Lamont will very likely beat Lieberman in Westport by a 60-40 percent margin (or even an greater margin). However, about 1/3 of Westport Dems (and independents) will very likely not shift over to Lamont in the general election. The result will be that in the general election the combined vote for Lamont and Lieberman may exceed the vote for the Republican who replaces Schlesinger, but that the Republican's vote total will exceed the votes for Lamont and Lieberman separately. If John McKinney replaces Schlesinger as the Republican nominee, he may even carry Westport and other Democratic-trending towns and cities because his father was very popular in Fairfield County.

A moderate Republican running against a divided Democratic party will also make it harder for the Democrats to win any of the three closely contested US House seats in CT, which the Dems need to win at least two of to help with their chances on winning controla of the US House.

In sum, Kos and his colleagues do not understand how the Dem party voters in CT function. A significant minority of those voters are blue collar, ethnic voters who are not liberal and who basically agree with Lieberman. They will not vote for Lamont in the general election regardless of how much money Lamont spends. The likely result will be a Republican senator and the demise of whatever chances the Dems have of winning control of the US Senate this year. I do not consider this result worth any potential benefit of getting rid of Lieberman.

--David D.

Kos' analysis:

The challenge for Lamont isn't just to win the primary, which looks increasingly likely, but to crush Lieberman. A small victory, while better than a loss, would fuel Lieberman's claims that the primary was decided by a bunch of people not representative of the state's electorate. A good turnout and a crushing defeat (as in Tester's win in Montana) would send a different signal -- that Lieberman has utterly lost the state's rank and file Democrats.

Given the incredible press a solid Lamont victory would generate, what little support Lieberman had would evaporate. No one wants to back a huge loser. Well, except, perhaps, Connecticut Republicans. But there aren't enough of those and they'd be just as likely to back their candidate in the hopes of stealing a seat in this safe, blue state.

With such a vote of no-confidence hanging over Lieberman's head, party elders would be more motivated to lean on Lieberman heavily to exit the race.

So polls showing the race swinging in Lamont's favor shouldn't be a sign to slack off. It should be a sign to throw Lieberman an anchor. If you have family, friends, or neighbors in Connecticut, help get the word to them about Lamont. It doesn't cost anything. And as always, please help however you can, whether it's volunteering (preferred) or contributing.

Kosmo

Then President Bill Clinton said to the American public that, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."

When staggering evidence suggests that Clinton was lying, is an investigation not warranted?

If not, then I would argue Abramoff and DeLay never should have been investigated either. You don't think those were "witch hunts?"

JL's support of the war and the president comes packaged with an implicit support of other odious policies including torture and rendition. That JL would suggest that we should blindly support our president and remain silent in the face of such illegality is chilling. JL should know what happens in societies that choose silence over dissent and honest debate.

"I regard the choice of Lieberman for Veep as one of Gore's largest strategic blunders."

It was the mother of all blunders.

Lieberman pick accomplished one thing; it endeared Gore to the DC Media Elite. For about two weeks. And then they went back to trashing him.

Lieberman pick brought back the whole Monica issue and put Gore on the defensive. Dems had been attacking the GOP for going to the extreme with impeachment and Starr as a jihadist. Lieberman pick gave legitimacy to the GOP jihad.

Lieberman sanctimony cost Gore the youth vote. Clinton/Gore had won the youth vote overhwelmingly in 92 and 96. Gore split the youth vote with Bush. Lieberman preaching turned off the young people.

Lieberman did not help with the Jewish vote. Clinton/Gore had won a larger share of the Jewish vote in Florida in 96.

Lieberman pick made the election about "values". Which party is more religious. Which party loves Jesus more. This was GOP territory. The election should have been about keeping the "peace and prosperity".

Lieberman cost Gore states like Arkansas and Tenn. I hate to say this but anti semitism is still a factor, especially in the south. It doesn't show in polls but it is there. A lot of voters, Dem and GOP, will not vote for a Jewish candidate. This is not Lieberman's fault. It is bigotry, but it is a fact.

If Gore had picked Bob Graham he would have easily won Florida. If he had picked Kerry he would have won NH. Either way he would have won the presidency.

"Then President Bill Clinton said to the American public that, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."

When did he say that? After Starr had set up an entrapment by secretly colluding with the Jones team.

But all that is in the past. Please tell us why Lieberman has no outrage whatsoever for Bush lies and deceptions about far more serious matters, like the Iraq war, illegal wiretapping, war profiteering.

Unlikely that a Republican will take the Senate seat regardless. Their campaign is in disarray, their current candidate a joke. If Lamont wins the primary, which seems increasingly likely, it will reinvigorate a broad swath of activists who, together with the party apparatus, will brush the increasingly clueless Lieberman aside as a afterthought, adding to the general momentum for change. Not at cross purposes with the campaign to replace the Republican Congress, rather a sympathetic current.
.

So Gettysburg, I take it that Clinton coming to support Holy Joe isn't doing it for you?
.

Well, as it turns out:

* Whitewater was a joke.

* Travelgate was a joke.

* Vinc Whasisname really did commit suicide and it had nothing to do with the white house.

* Trying to kill Osama Bin Laden wasn't really wagging the dog.

* Just about all the allegations of infidelity wound up unproven and probably false.

* The Arkansas/Medellin cocaine trafficking ring turns out to be just a joke.

* Dozens upon dozens of other allegations amounted to nothing.

Ken Starr's multi-year, 52 million dollar, leaking like a sieve, multi-pronged, wide ranging investigation of the Clinton's turned out to produce nothing more than:

- A single intern who was so hot to trot that she flashed her thong in a semi-public event and carried out a torrid little affair involving mostly oral sex and mutual masturbation.

- All parties to said torrid little affair were freely consenting adults, operating on their own, and the female participant as noted was both sexually aggressive and forward, so there's no issue of coercion or abusive behaviour.

- Said conduct had absolutely no bearing whatsoever on affairs of state in any way shape or form.

- Grounds for impeachment were a false statement as to personal conduct regarding the affair in a separate court proceeding, amounting to a 'perjury trap.'

It's not my goddammed country, I don't got a dog in the fight. But from my perspective as an outsider, its a pretty classic witch hunt.

As for Delay, it's pretty obvious that their misconduct involved misuse and abuse of government and public monies. There was no question that there were legimate grounds for investigation and charges.

Clinton's affair was an exclusively private matter of no significance to anyone but the participants. As such, it was no different than Strom Thurmond's rape of his black maid and subsequent child, or Newt Gingrich's various sexual peccadillos, Henry Hyde's illicit relationship, etc., etc.

You can feel free to take any view you wish of Clinton for having an affair, but it does considerable violence to equate that to the breach of trust and abuse of the law represented by Abramoff and Delay. It's not a tit for tat thing (no pun intended). The two sets of offences are simply not on the same planet, legally, morally, consequentially or ethically.

Hoppy

This seat is already held by someone who hurts the party more than any republican. He might as well be a republican on all of the votes that matter

Ned is now 10% up in the latest poll for the primary and tied with Lieberman in a 3 way race (40-40-

Get on board with Lamont -this is the best thing that could happen for true progressives

This should scare Hillary and other would be "triangulators" into moving back toward more progressive positions

Right On Mike

Ths is the best thing that could happe to the democratic party. It will effectively end the DLC movement and the rightward drift of the party.

As much as I liked Clinton as a president, he did far more damage to the democratic party than any republican ever did. he gave credence to republican arguments against liberalism. Lieberman does the same. Hillary is trying to continue down that road. This will cause her to rethink that approach.

23 Democrats voted against the AUMF.

Quite right. 23 Democrats had the courage. Of course, you deliberately ignore the rest of that quote, the "continues to think that everything's going great there". Several of the Democrats that voted for the AUMF were defeated for re-election. Many of the rest have come to acknowledge their error. Not Holy Joe.

Lieberman voted against Alito's confirmation. Along with 41 other Democrats. Might want to do your research more thoroughly.

Might want to do YOUR research more thoroughly, smart guy. Lieberman voted "No" on Alito when everybody knew it wouldn't make any difference, when everybody knew the Republican caucus had the votes to confirm him all by themselves. The vote that mattered was the cloture vote, when Democrats could have stopped Alito if they'd been able to muster 41 votes from within their own caucus. How'd Lieberman vote then, when we really needed his vote, on the one chance we had to stop Alito? He voted for cloture and for the nomination to proceed, of course. One thing you can count on with Joe is that his vote will never, ever be there when we need it.

a little research shows that only 12 Senators voted against all three- meaning there are at most 12 liberals in the Senate.

A pity, isn't it? Looks like we have a lot of work to do to replace them and remake the Senate caucus into one that stands up for Democratic principles. Might as well start with low-hanging fruit like Holy Joe Lieberman.

By your logic, the other 33 Democrats aren't liberals, so they should take a hike.

No, not all of them. Some have support too deep and broad for us to topple. And some are the best we're going to get from their state. Ben Nelson is the best Democrat we can possibly expect from Nebraska. But if we find a Democrat who is too conservative, from a deeply Blue state, one that we can replace with a better Democrat, then we will do so. Hm, are there any Democrats like that around? Conservative, Bush-affiliated Democrats...pro-war Democrats...Democrats from Blue states that we can replace with better Democrats? Democrats facing a primary this year in the face of an anti-Bush wave? Hey, I know? How about Joseph Lieberman, D(kind of)-CT?

Methinks your standards for ideological purity are a bit too high.

And here we have the core of the pro-Lieberman argument: "Vote Lieberman, because you shouldn't want or expect to do any better." No thanks. I'll go with the better Democrat, Ned Lamont.

"Sometimes it catches a Senator totally by surprise right before the election, as in Rudy Boschwitz’s 1990 loss to Paul Wellstone. But Lieberman has had plenty of warning, plenty of opportunity to reestablish his connection with voters."

The Connections to the Wellstone campaign of 1990 go well beyond Boschwitz's seeming surprise when Wellstone's poll numbers went up and up a few weeks before election day.

Let's begin with evidence developed after the election that Joe Lieberman used his influence in DC during the summer-fall of 1990 to keep the DSCC and other progressive funding centers from making any significant donations to Paul Wellstone's campaign -- that is until we were so dynamic a few weeks before election day that not sending a check was an embarassment. Joe was helping his good friend Rudy -- simple as that. In the end, Wellstone spent just over a million dollars to Boschwitz's eleven million, and we won anyhow. Good Organization can top money you know.

Joe had prior knowledge of the "Bad Jew" tactic that was pulled on Paul in the last days of the campaign. Essentially it was about Paul being married for plus thirty years to his high school sweetheart, and having three children -- but Rudy questioned (in a letter to the Jewish Community) the marriage because Sheila was a Baptist. It did not play well in Minnesota, but Joe didn't understand why.

Ned Lamont has a great way to understand all this, because his Advertising is being done by Bill Hillsman, who did our very shoestring ad campaign in 1990 for Wellstone. He was in the middle of it, and had to do an instant ad to respond to the Boschwitz ploy in the weekend before the election. (Have you ever run around selling video of Hillsman campaign ads in State Legislative offices to members and staff so as to raise enough cash to put one of the ads on TV -- We did.)

I should add that DSCC has blacklisted Hillsman from campaigns they support. In 2004 Hillsman was contracted to do Oklahoma's Carlson's ads -- and he was told, no DSCC money if you retain a relationship with Hillsman. Where is that coming from??? Hillsman has a good record of actually winning races. Why the blacklist?

noel, vidor has already done the heavy lifting of pointing out the flaws in your anti-purity argument, so there's really only one discussion point left: just what is it about joe lieberman that makes you think he should continue to be in the senate?

i believe the dems have precisely zero chance to win the senate this year anyhow: i'd like to know, david, where you think the races are that will put the dems at 51 seats.

i would be willing to ponder a little longer whether this is the situation for a night of long knives against lieberman if i felt that was a reasonable chance for the dems to win control, but since i don't, i much prefer the lesson: take advantage of a safe seat to talk like a republican and you'll be treated like a republican.

as for your projection as to how the voters will behave in CT in November, maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong. my own guess, as a former resident of the state myself (although not in a long time) is that if it's a close primary and lieberman loses, you may be right, although i suspect he wins the 3-way in that configuration, but if lamont wins big (a longshot, admittedly), then joementum will have precisely the strength it did in the 2004 presidential primaries, and he will not play a 2000 nader role....

"I probably shouldn’t be so obsessed with the Lieberman-Lamont race, but I can’t help it."

How can anyone interested in the internal structure of the Democratic party not be obsessed with this race?

It's fascinating stuff.

And however it turns out, we can start immediately thereafter with "Lessons Learned."

Well, I didn't call Lieberman the 'mother' of strategic blunders, I merely said he was Al Gore's biggest blunder.

If you'd like to put forth some other strategic blunder that turned out to be as consistently damaging in so many ways and at so many points, I'd love to hear it.

Seriously.

I'm OK with the analysis that says Lieberman caused many of the problems that he's now struggling with.  No question he made some tactical blunders etc.

But I ask so what? 

To me, this race is about whether the Democratic party will become an ideological monolith, or whether it can tolerate people within its ranks who follow an independent course.  To read the objections to Joe Lieberman, it seems that what really gets people angry is less about any particular issue - even the Iraq War - than about Joe's perceived sins as a "traitor" who "goes on Fox News to bash other Democrats".  It's this hypocritical stance, by the same people who in fact are pulling out the stops to bash another Democrat, just as they accuse Joe of doing, that really makes me want to go all out for Joe.

It's often said that the GOP would never tolerate someone who is as critical of his own party as Lieberman is of the Democrats. Let's assume that's true, even if it's not.  So the GOP is a model of how Democrats should enforce ideological purity?  This is a good thing?  I don't think so.  Democrats, more than Republicans, need a big-tent approach for the simple reason that the base of the Democrats is smaller and is shrinking. 

Valdron, you didn't call it the "mother," but miri11 did, in the comment below yours. i was responding to both. fwiw, i don't think it was a blunder at all, strategic or otherwise.

ellen, i'd guess that 30% or so of americans know that gore was cheated out of florida.

Correct! As I've said, it was a major tactical blunder. Polls and votes had proven that Clinton's marital problems and pseudo-scandals were not impairing his popularity. Voters correctly perceived these things as a witch hunt. Still, Gore felt the need to divorce himself from Clinton, and this divorce included divorcing Clinton's negatives and positives. You had to take it, or leave it as a whole. Clinton's negatives did not actually transfer to Gore, but he felt he had to cut them loose anyway. In doing so, he sacrificed a major campaign asset.

Having committed himself to this mistake, he compounded it by picking a Veep who turned out to be a disastrous choice.

"Cheated out of Florida"?  SCOTUS, my dear sir, does not cheat.

Do Americans know that Gore won the popular vote -- often accepted under our electoral system as a condition the satisfaction of which puts a state's electors in that winner's column.

Thank you Howard, the mystery is solved.

While I don't propose to prolong the thread, I think I've more than made my case that Lieberman was a blunder and a handicap. Miri has added substantially to this. And of course in subsequent discussion there was the observation that picking Lieberman amounted to Gore divorcing himself from the legacy and support of a popular President in favour of an unctuous moralizing that had already proveably not gone down well with voters.

If you'd like to argue that Lieberman's vice presidential position wasn't a blunder, I'd be very interested in your arguments as to why the items I noted, or for that matter, which Miri noted, did not actually hurt the Gore campaign, or what positive contributions that Lieberman made to the Gore campaign.

Or perhaps you could discuss what you think are 'actual' blunders by Al Gore which undermined his campaign more than Lieberman did?

If the GOP replaces Schlesinger with John McKinney as I think it will, Shays will dump his backing of Lieberman and endorse McKinney. McKinney's father was Shays' longtime political mentor in CT. Shays succeeded McKinney's father in the House.

Lieberman voted for cloture on the Bankruptcy Reform Bill, then voted against it when he knew that vote was useless.

I think it would be worth it to lose the seat to prove a point. Any time the democrats get traction on an issue, Lieberman pulls the rug out from under them. He is an absolute disaster. This will serve as a warning to all would be DLC types that they can vote how they want but they should not go on TV and undercut their fellow democrats, especially if they are taking the GOP position on an issue as Lieberman commonly does.

That is what pisses people off about Lieberman. Half the democratic senators voted for the war but only one is being seriously contested - it's not his support for the war - it's his support for Bush!

Tactics and policy positions are all entwined on this one. His trouble is that he has no issues to run on. Any disagreement he has with Lamont breaks in Lamont's favor. So all he can do is run on character--his upright commitment to doing the right thing even when people disagree. And rip Lamont's character.

The trouble with his "principled stance" argument is that his principled stance is on the single most important issue on the table, and is very hard to defend at this point. All he can do is repeat republican talking points, which, of course, reinforces the "Bush's favorite democrat" message.

The trouble with going after Lamont's character is that it raises Lamont's name recognition, which was Lamont's biggest weakness.

But what else was he gonna do? He coulda stayed in DC and just kept his mouth shut. If he'd had an organization in place it CT, that might've worked. I honestly think he believed that blocking Lamont at the convention was all he needed to do to marginalize him. When that backfired, they had no plan B. To make it worse, the disloyalty of the convention-goers made Lieberman angry, and he made some dumb mistakes in anger.

The criticisms that Joe Lieberman has made against other Democrats fall into two categories:

1. A sense that other Democrats are leading the party into a political ditch
2. A principled difference of opinion on a matter of national importance.

There are those of us who think that the left wing of the Democratic party is what is responsible for the Republican ascendance over the last 30 years.  Particularly in the area of national security, left-wing Democrats are completely out of tune with rest of the population, and that is true despite having been right about Iraq.  These are the people who instinctively are against any American military action, who think that American intervention in other parts of the world amounts to "imperialism" and who do not take the threat of terrorism seriously, particularly its radical Islamic variety.  All the Republican bumbling and incompetence in the world will not matter one bit if these people are allowed to define the Democrats.

What Joe Lieberman represents is the sensible center of responsible national security hawks who care about the Democratic party and will be damned if they'll sit around while the party is hijacked by today's equivalent of the New Left.  The New Left, if you'll recall, was responsible for the McGovern debacle and led the Democrats into the wilderness.

Now its a fair criticism to say that he's gone too far in his hands-off attitude towards President Bush.  There is nothing about criticism of Bush that is incompatible with taking a serious stand on national security. But let's be real about what is going on in the Lieberman-Lamont race.  It's about the viability of being a hawk and a Democrat at the same time.  And no matter much they protest about it being more than that, the leftists who are gunning for Joe Lieberman will interpret a victory against him as a green light to push pacifist, appeasement politics to the center of the party.  The damage to the Democrats in 2008 and beyond will be enormous. 

No question if Joe hadn't made as many mistakes, their efforts would probably have not gained the traction they have.  He certainly gave them more than enough material to work with, often on matters of little consequence.  But the opposition to Lieberman owes its ferocity to the desire of leftists to run a principled hawk and the ideas he represents out of the party.  It's that simple.

John King did a very tough interview with Lieberman a day or so after the independent candidacy announcement.

valdron, in the equal interests of not prolonging this thread, let me simply say this: gore won in 2000.

we can talk into the night about things he could have done better, about mistakes he made, and similar matters, but it's hard for me to get carried away about such considerations when gore won the election. indeed, if i were to highlight my list of Gore mistakes, it starts with how he handled Florida after the election....

let me promise that if ever a thread breaks out in which we discuss the 2000 election, i'll be happy to go into greater detail then!

valdron, i swear, this is it (or else we are prolonging the thread!).

dwight eisenhower: popular president, good times, no scandals. and yet nixon lost.

yes, i'd have run a different campaign than gore ran, but it's not clear to me what other state he could readily have picked up in lieu of florida, and given the relative performance of gore and kerry in florida, it seems to me that lieberman delivered what he was on the ticket to deliver. maybe bob graham would have been a better choice, maybe someone else would have been, but it's hard for me to see that lieberman was the anchor that gore carried around.

don't get me wrong: i'm on lamont's side here. i just don't agree that lieberman was a "strategic blunder" of any size....

that picking Lieberman amounted to Gore divorcing himself from the legacy and support of a popular President in favour of an unctuous moralizing that had already proveably not gone down well with voters.

Yah. From day one, that was part of the Gore campaign. Picking Lieberman just made it clearer to more people.

There is this side of Gore that people tend to forget about: divinity student, tending to frame politics in moral terms, admitted born-again Christian, thinking of public service as sacred trust, infused by a 'noblesse oblige' family history. (All indications I got from what I read is that he was truly upset with Clinton's triangulation and moral relativism, though that's just my personal interpretation of media gossip.) It's entirely possible that he liked Joe Lieberman because of his rigid moral stances and thought he would be a good guy to work with for 4 years.

Just sayin', as an avowed relativist with leftist opinions on social issues who would have been more than happy to have a President Gore, then and now: Gore's no 'classic' liberal and seems to have a tendency to be Lieberman-like on many issues, including often pushing in foreign policy meetings that Bill Clinton go a bit more hawkish on foreign policy than were his druthers. That's not even mentioning some of his wife's crusades on certain social issues in the past.

He may have actually liked Joe Lieberman and actually may have wanted someone like that for his V.P.

Ah, for me, your comment perfectly describes the need for a presidential candidate to "triangulate" in the modern U.S. in order to win. Of course, Gore "triangulated" just enough to win a slim majority nationwide, even with Lieberman.

Whether "sticking to one's principles" and refusing to "triangulate" works in the CT Sentate race, we'll soon see.

Fact is, there is no information stating that Lamont would be a good senator, he has no standing on the issues that would indicate this.. in fact his history shows him tilting republican, and his initial support being from republicans doesn't speak much in his favor. He has been decided upon and marketed in much the same way Dean was.. he wasn't supported because he'd be good for the job.

Lieberman does have a record that shows he does support democratic issues, I don't agree with all the votes he's cast, but if CT was my state, I'd vote for Lieberman rather than another bad character hand picked by neo-leftists who have no interest in all the important issues. The same neo-leftists who decided they wanted to get rid of Lieberman and in fact were decrying him because he made the mistake of talking publically about his personal faith.. not about eradicating the seperation of church and state, or pushing that faith down anyone's throat. I think the Lamontiac-obsessives are motivated by hate for Lieberman, and his faith, and a desire to prove they can take him down more than achieving anything good for the people.

One other thing, I wanted to ask why all the ballyhooing about the latest polling numbers, which aren't CT based, but rather the results of a nationally conducted poll. This doesn't reflect on the race at all, on those who will actually do the voting. Cripes, even FOX news is falling over themselves chortling that Lamont is going to hand that senate seat over to a republican.

"Now its a fair criticism to say that he's gone too far in his hands-off attitude towards President Bush. There is nothing about criticism of Bush that is incompatible with taking a serious stand on national security. But let's be real about what is going on in the Lieberman-Lamont race. It's about the viability of being a hawk and a Democrat at the same time. "

Brad,

The problem is not that he is a hawk! The problem is that he loves to criticize mainstream democrats using GOP/Bush talking points! He provides "democratic" cover for Bush's insane policies! That is why he is facing a serious primary and Hillary is not. Her positions are virtually identical to his on the war, she comes from an even more liberal state. The difference is that she does not go on FOX and criticize fellow democrats who oppose the war and other destructive Bush policies. It's that simple! There is plenty of room in the party, just not for turncoats!

"He didn't balance the ticket, he didn't bring in new constituencies, he didn't make up for Gore's weaknesses, he didn't have any critical leverage."

Actually it was worse than that. Lieberman pick was interpreted by the media as "balancing" Gore's ethical shortcomings. No, not just Monica but the whole Buddhist Temple thing and Gore's alleged "trouble telling the truth".

In other words Lieberman pick gave validity not just to the Starr jihad but also to GOP charges that Gore had serious ethical problems of his own. It put Gore in a defensive position, as someone with serious ethical lapses who needed Holy Joe to gain amnesty.

You leave out one crucial point. Lieberman doesn't have to run as an independent. He could just walk away. Hell, he could even endorse the nominee of his party. Party unity and all that. If the Dems lose Connecticut in a three way vote with Lieberman, shouldn't a committed Dem like you be urging BOTH candidates to support the party's nominee, whoever that may be?

yes, i'd have run a different campaign than gore ran, but it's not clear to me what other state he could readily have picked up in lieu of florida

Arkansas, had he not made such a point of distancing himself from Clinton.

What planet are you on? The Quinnipac and Rasmussen polls were of CT Democrats.

The Mystery Pollster discusses how tricky polling this race is, in particular identifying likely voters. But these aren't national polls.

The lack of nuance comes from the MSM and the Lieberman campaign. If you've read the pro-Lamont bloggers, you'll have seen a very thoughtful series of points on the role Lieberman has played in enhancing the president's authority to engage in really disastrous policy-making. You'll see points made about Lieberman voting in ways that give him a solid NARAL scorecard while undermining women's reproductive rights. You'll note that the idiotic Homeland Security agency was his idea.

And you'll the Kiss, and the one DemoMan standing ovation at the State of the Union address.

This is not to mention sanctimonious hypocrisy and his clear belief that the Senate seat is his for as long as he wants it.

The nickel version, is here complete with musical accompaniment.

The thing that the peacenik wing of the Democratic party never get is that even though they were right about Iraq - in retrospect, it was clearly an ill-conceived idea - they still won't be taken seriously by the vast majority of the electorate when it comes to defending the country. That's because there's a suspicion that when the next time comes, they'll oppose the use of military force again. And the next time. And the next time. And maybe they'll oppose force when it really could do some good.

This is a central reality of American politics. Doves do not win presidential elections. A candidate must be credible on security matters and by credible I mean they must have established, through their votes, their resume, their actions or at the very least their rhetoric, a willingness to engage the military to defend American interests. Bill Clinton understood this. John Kerry paid lip service to it.

Paul Krugman's quote is thus half right. It is true that most of the people considered credible on security were for the Iraq War. But there are some notable exceptions. Al Gore, for example, built up a long history of being the most aggressive, pro-military member of the Clinton cabinet. He can point to dozens of instances where he was willing to engage the military. The fact that he opposed the Iraq War thus would not be a disqualifier, in my opinion. Howard Dean had no such record. So there was nothing to counteract the image of him as a committed peacenik.

"Lieberman's partnership with conservatives including Bill Bennett..." is Lieberman's prime problem. Cowardice under the guise of "common ground" is still just cowardice. Lieberman is a coward, and a whiny one at that. He thought that a Democrat finding "common ground" with Republicans was "centrist." But in the political environment since 1994, it is "being a tool" for the Republicans. The fact that Republicans are some of his biggest supporters, just proves my point. The Alito cloture vote was a betrayal of all of Lieberman's vaunted "progressivism." He knew he could vote against Alito, and still get Alito on the bench. The cloture vote was the only vote that mattered to Democrats. He stabbed his party and his principles in the back. Lieberman's a coward and I hope he loses to Lamont in November. The Democratic Party doesn't need his kind of "progressivism."

He's already aligned with the GOP