Looked at from either side of the spectrum, Lieberman has been anything but interesting. He has been the reliable defender of the “centrist” consensus established in the ’90s that finally accepted welfare reform and insisted on U.S. hegemony abroad. In practice, this “centrism” can be used to justify the most extreme, violent and destructive policies, but it is considered reasonable and acceptable because it does not partake of “fringe” ideas and enjoys the support of respectable, “serious” people. The trouble for liberals who accept this consensus is that they feel a constant pull to align themselves with corporate and financial interests in addition to endorsing every military action and security measure imaginable.
Back when I was a full-fledged wingnut, I used to point to Democrats like Evan Bayh and Joe Lieberman as “good” Democrats.
I was (and probably still am) a moron.
jeffreyw
Never liked that slow talkin fucker-ever.
jeffreyw
Whiny prick.
jeffreyw
Lieberman, not you, John.
jeffreyw
Stop me before I comment again. LOL
Just Some Fuckhead
I can see the Bayh thing, cuz he has the whitemaleprotestantRepublicangoodlooks thing going on but Lieberman? C’mon, he’s totally weaselly and unlikeable. I mean, OLD JEWISH LADIES IN FLORIDA BROKE FOR PAT BUCHANAN rather than vote for the ticket with Lieberman on it.
General Winfield Stuck
Jeffrey said it all, and then some.:-)
Chuck Butcher
Well, John, there is some evidence that morons comprise about 22% of the voters because they learn nothing. I’m not sure where you’re going to wind up, but I’ve watched a rather “long strange trip” around here that shows critical thinking in operation.
I admit to wondering if you’ve sat down and tracked your evolution in your thinking? I don’t mean Schiavo, I mean the thinking processes.
valdivia
I hate his sanctimonious ass. And Bayh is a s mug idiot.
that is all.
Osceola
Actually those old Jewish ladies couldn’t figure out the butterfly ballot.
John, you can’t be a moran (not “moron”) because your wingnutitude was obviously not a terminal condition. Thanks be to Providence. Otherwise we wouldn’t have the Balloon Juice we all know and love.
bemused
I didn’t think much of Lieberman when he was Gore’s running mate when I wasn’t paying much attention to politics like I do now. My gut instincts were right. He’s a slimeball.
asiangrrlMN
The Dems don’t want to strip Joe-the-weasel-Senator of his chairmanship because then he would go to the Dark Side and caucus with the Republicans. Then, so the story goes, we would have 59 seats instead of 60. Here’s my question.
Isn’t that what the fuck we already have? Seriously. Would it be that much harder to turn Snowe (yes, there’s a pun in there somewhere) than to get Lieberman’s vote? No. I don’t think so. So, I’m not seeing the upside to keep Joe ‘on our side’ as it were.
Annie
@jeffreyw:
LOL
Just Some Fuckhead
We lost her when Erick Son of Erick melted her with rock salt. If only our forces had been able to marshal her into an ice cream truck and take her to the North Pole. If only.
Ed Drone
What I don’t understand is that Lieberman doesn’t get any grief for opposing health care reforms that include a public option at the same time his wife is a lobbyist for insurance corporations!
Isn’t that prima facie evidence of a conflict of interest? Why is he given so little grief for this? Huh?
Ed
Corner Stone
@jeffreyw: Nailed it.
Oh…you mean *Lieberman*?
Chuck Butcher
There are ways to deal with the pricks. Yes, I’m tired of it.
Kiril
Yeah, I used to follow links here from other blogs sometimes when you were awful. I was just remembering this post from Fafblog and clicking over here and looking around back in 2004, so I decided to go back and read your archives from 2004. I shouldn’t have done that.
Gravenstone
Don’t stop at stripping Holy Joe of his Chair, strip him of all his committee seats, and his freaking seniority. He changed party affiliation so he should have lost it then, but got the fucking sweetheart deal to retain it. Let the fucker caucus with the Republicans, he would lose basically all of his leverage and all the little things that make him so attractive to his business overlords. Without any more pull than a singular, discredited vote he would fall off the face of the political earth. And then if there is any justice in the world, he would be sent packing by his oft betrayed constituents in 2014.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Osceola:
They’re all dead now so we may never know the real truth.
The Dr
I firmly believe if you haven’t looked back at your life and thought, at least once, “I was a moron” then chances are you still are a moron.
Liberty60
To John-
But see, I was a wingnut BECAUSE of moderation (not necessarily centrism).
Conservatism for me means caution, moderation, skepticism of grand solutions, doubt about utopian perfection, a belief in our fallibility and need for constant course corrections.
The conservative movement today has fallen in love with ideology, and become as doctrinaire as the Left was in the 70’s; They treat ideas like supply side and free market capitalism with an unquestining reverence, the way Leftist would quote from the Little Red book.
Their “centrist” worldview has that same crazed triumphalist tone to it, the way they scorn nuance and moderation, and see everything in terms of absolute good versus incarnate evil.
I think Obama personifies the conservative soul more so than any of the Tea Party.
demkat620
@asiangrrlMN: I agree. You want to energize the democratic base, kick Holy Joe to the curb.
He’s gotten to full of himself. Let him go sit in the republican caucus and be irrelevant for the next two years.
demkat620
@Gravenstone: 2012. He’s up in 2012.
jl
@Gravenstone: Sounds like a plan to me. I hope something like that threat is made in the back rooms. Essentially, that threat is grabbing Lieberman by his money bags. You are right, his rich pals would not longer want to play with him and he would have a sadz.
Gravenstone
@demkat620: *shrug* I was thinking he got re-elected (to his Party of One) in ’08, my bad. Amazing what a little blind fury will do to memory and math skills.
MikeJ
WTF? As doctrinaire as when Scoop Jackson was in the Senate and Jerry Brown was gov of California?
Sorry. Both sides do it is bullshit. The left has never been both as powerful and stupid as the right have been for the last twenty years.
valdivia
totally OT but Mrs O looks great tonight for the state dinner. Making us proud as FLOTUS.
Steph
He had me with “joementum”.
The guy is swimming in health care campaign contributions. He’s corrupt to the core.
gocart mozart
Apparently 29% of Americans think that, which means that Sarah Palin polls one point worse than human papillomavirus. It’s also one more data point for the surprisingly robust John Rogers theorem.
gocart mozart
block quote fail.
Just Some Fuckhead
@MikeJ:
I think he was talking about when Jimmy Carter was elected president from Soviet Georgia and the media changed Democratic colors to red for election coverage. I still hide under my desk when I think about it.
Jay B.
@MikeJ:
No kidding. The Left of the 70s — as distinct from Liberal Democrats or the Democratic Party or even Democratic Socialists from the Mike Harrington mold — was doctrinaire. they couldn’t have been further from governance. The Right equivalent of today IS the GOP.
margaret
There was a time when I voted Republican almost exclusively, though that ended around 1994 when I saw the batshit crazy encroaching on the party. Recently I have been more allied with Democrats so as to oppose said batshit crazy but ultimately they are much too corrupt establishment for me as well. The thing is, there are issues on which I am left of almost every Democratic lawmaker and issues in which I was right of almost any Republican, (I say “was” because obviously they only stand in opposition these days, without principle). BOTH parties can be summed up in one phrase: Self Interested. Most of them are no longer interested in effective governance or public service, they are merely interested in holding power for power’s sake. As long as the Republicans stay batshit crazy, (as they undeniably are), we have no alternative to the Democrats and that’s bad for the nation, bad for the world and bad for everybody but the politicians and their patrons. It’s got to end.
John O
Why doesn’t Larison get more attention from the “intellectual” GOP? The man pushes every conservative button I have, and I once considered myself a swing-vote, a person who usually voted third party when I didn’t know or care about the difference between the “major” players. Now I won’t ever possibly vote for another Republican in my lifetime, because they are letting Beck, Limbaugh, Palin, and [insert moron here] run the place.
John, don’t underestimate your transformation. It isn’t an easy thing to do, especially politically.
demkat620
@valdivia: Wow, I love the gown. She looks amazing.
valdivia
@demkat620:
yes and there is a pic of the two of them looking at each other with real sparkle in their eyes for each other. so cute.
the tent where the party is happening is seriously beautiful.
bernard
doctrinaire as leftists. boy is that an oxymoron. oh i wish, please Santa, Mr. Easter Bunny!!! if only the leftist could do anything in unison. lol
ellaesther
I’ve long said that the biggest problem with extremists is that they make lesser nutjobs look reasonable by comparison (well. That and they sometimes kill people. But you know, absent violence…).
I first said this about Meir Kahane and Geula Cohen in Israel in the 80s (yes I’m old, and my references are obscure. What’s your point?), and it has never stopped being true.
People like Lieberman need the teabaggers, because next to a man holding a gun and suggesting that it’s time to water the tree of liberty, Ol’ Droopy Joe looks like the very paragon of moderation.
Again, I ask, as a Jew: Can we please (pretty please?) throw Joe Lieberman back?
bernard
we have no alternative with the Democrat party. Republican lite. tweedle dee and tweedle dum.
Painting America… by the numbers.
Wile E. Quixote
Osceola
That’s what Lieberman wants you to believe. In reality those old Jewish ladies looked at the ballot and said Gore, he’s so stiff, but Lieberman? Oy, such a putz he is. I’ll vote for the Irishman, I don’t know anything about him but he’s probably a drunk so he can’t cause that much trouble.
demkat620
@valdivia:It all looks so cool.
He looks good in tux too.
ellaesther
@valdivia: The FLOTUS looking lovely and she and the POTUS gazing at each other in love?
BRB!
/scuttles off to the Goggle.
valdivia
sorry for another OT but Huckabee the dumbass says Palin has more executive experience than Obama. Huh? By 2012 he will have been president of the US for 4 years and Palin will have more experience than him? A not half term governor of Alaska??? Today Obama has more experience than that twit. How can anyone let these idiots make statements as these?
margaret
@bernard:
The American one party system, yep. :\
ellaesther
@demkat620: Oh man, they are lovely aren’t they? (And my, but they do tower over their Indian guests…!)
Oh President Obama. Promise me your Presidency will ultimately look as good as you do tonight!
charles johnson
“I was (and probably still am) a moron.”
Well, I can devise a quick and dirty test for that.
Beginning at zero, award yourself ten points:
1) if you say ‘conversate’ instead of ‘converse’.
2) if you say ‘optics’ instead of ‘appearances’.
3) if you say ‘concern troll’ instead of ‘disingenuous’.
4) if you must always attach ‘all over again’ to any use of the phrase ‘deja vu’.
5) if you’ve ever RickRolled anyone.
6) if you’ve recently said, “Let’s unpack this a bit”.
If you scored over 30 points, you are a moron. Or at least a douchebag. Whichever.
valdivia
@ellaesther:
in case you don’t find it, here in the top post.
http://mrs-o.org/
John O
@valdivia:
Reality is gone, valdivia. For a whole bunch of people in this country.
I suppose the good news, in the long run, is that everyone can see it.
gogol's wife
I was in the cafeteria of the American Embassy in Moscow in fall 1988 when I found out from a bulletin board that Joe Lieberman had defeated Lowell Weicker for senator from Connecticut. My stomach turned over. I went straight to the Lenin Library and wrote Weicker a letter telling him how sorry I was (and he wrote back a personal reply, thus deeply impressing my Russian friends). Little did I know then that twenty-one years later Lieberman would still be making me sick to my stomach.
valdivia
@ellaesther:
@demkat620:
yeah, we have a very hot president. :-)
John O
Thanks for the re-link.
Yes, that is a handsome couple. And the good news is that neither seems to be a robot nor moron.
asiangrrlMN
@valdivia: OK, I am much more into this topic tonight. I looked it up, and holy shit do we have a dapper-looking first couple. They look so freaking hot together! Nice!
valdivia
@John O:
If they can say something like that *now* as if he has not been president and no one will counter it, I really weep for my country….
demkat620
@valdivia: She looks great, he kinda looks like Urkel, wondering how he got so lucky.
They are such a cute couple.
asiangrrlMN
@valdivia: OK. I was looking at the wrong pic–in which she still looked fab, but this dress is AMAZING! She’s gaaaawgeous. And the way she and the prez are looking at each other…AWWWWWW! They make a great couple.
valdivia
@asiangrrlMN:
yes aren’t they doing us proud looking hawt and also totally aware of what entails being good hosts? Mrs O is wearing a dress by an Indian American designer. Diplomacy–this is how it is done.
John O
It’s really embarrassing, v, but like I said one can only hope the fact everyone has a microphone for the stupid the stupid will eventually lose.
It really just depends on how old you are, I think. I’m of the age where hope is thin, in large-scale terms.
valdivia
@demkat620:
well I am totally signing up for that kind of Urkel… ;-)
Just Some Fuckhead
Dean is laugh out loud hideous filling in for Rachel Maddow.
valdivia
@John O:
from your words to the FSM’s ears.
John O
I wish it weren’t so, valdivia.
J
Leelee for Obama
Forever and twelve days, the only reason I still get mad at Al Gore is that he made it necessary for me to vote for that goniff. When Joementum showed up here in West Palm in 2004, and told the Bubbes they should ask John Kerry about his stand on Israel before voting for him-I nearly burst several blood vessels!
I HATE him, and I don’t say that easily.
asiangrrlMN
@valdivia: That’s great about the dress. I am so proud of our first couple.
@valdivia: Agreed. Where can I get me one?
Anne Laurie
Hey, by “Villager” lights, that makes the Liebermans the perfect power couple. No matter whether the Connecticut voters do their duty or not, Hadassah is secure in her lobbyist position; and even if some portion of the K Street Kollective becomes temporarily radioactive, Joe’s got his Senate seat. No fear that the Liebermans will suddenly have to decamp, leaving a trail of empty dinner seats and unreturned cocktail-party obligations behind! Even the most risk-averse Washingtonienne can count on them to be available for a “some of my best friends” slot at the drop of an invite, or at least an honorarium.
Digby is right: The Village centered physically inside the Beltway and philosophically inside the 1950s has made itself the biggest threat to the American way of life since the Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight.
Brian J
It’s not his grating, holier-than-thou personal style. It’s not the fact that his interests seem more aligned with big business than with anything or anyone else. It’s not even that Lieberman is being a dick to Democrats and has been for a long, long time.
What’s really irritating to me is that he’s given a platform as if he’s some really independent, trail blazing thinker and leader, when in reality he’s becoming little more than a fluffer for the Beltway establishment. There’s certainly nothing particularly wrong with believing something. I may disagree with it, but that doesn’t mean he’s not allowed to hold certain opinions. But the idea that he’s anything but a shill propagated by the media is just offensive.
RareSanity
@bernard:
Ok…I can’t do it. I can not allow this tripe any further.
The word “Democrat” is a noun. The possessive form of that noun is “Democratic”. So when referring to the collection of self described “Democrats” in their self named party, use the possessive form of the noun, DEMOCRATIC!
You’re not making some witty, insightful political statement, you’re parroting some wingnut talking point and sounding like an idiot doing it.
What a tool…
John O
I hardly think Obama perfect in terms of the policies he’s prioritized and the vigor he’s gone in on (most, not some) policies, but the Obama family is certainly perfect looking, and I’m just not sure we could’ve gotten a better person for these times.
He can’t go as far left as he would like to. It’s impossible in this media (therefore cultural) climate, as this and hundreds of other blogs have demonstrated over and over again.
I think he would agree with me that he is the tip of the spear, as it were, and the ship of state turns quite slowly in chronological time when it has to go 1800.
John O
Sorry, bad HTML. 180 degrees.
John O
@Brian J:
Nor his “Alf’s Dad’s” voice.
You are exactly right. Joe has nothing to tell me anymore, but he sure seems fascinating to the Village Idiots.
Mike in NC
The night is young, so this is a cue for B.O.B. to post one of his addled racist comments. Something disparaging about Indians and Africans would be typical.
valdivia
@John O:
seconded.
asiangrrlMN
@Just Some Fuckhead: I meant to say, that’s fucking funny.
@John O: Thirdededed.
josefina
Lieberman has always been the bog-standard NE politician: ix-nay on the orals-may, and totally in the tank for home-state corporations. He thinks he’s progressive because (unlike historical NE patrons) none of his current corporate sponsors would ever consider mangling small children as a direct cost of doing business.
Pretty Boy Floyd said, “Some rob with a gun and others rob with a pen.” Lieberman would never countenance actual, direct child-mangling. Given enough funding cut-outs, however…
Then after 9/11, Lieberman became one of Michael Bérubé’s “yoostabees”—”I used to be a Democrat but after 9/11 I’m offended by Chappaquiddick.” But unlike most of the yoostabees (Instapundit, LGF, blah blah), Lieberman is in the US Senate and can actually do real damage, and he shows far more interest in advancing his own interests over representing his constituents.
tl;dr—Any politician is a venal, self-serving jackass. Lieberman’s venal, self-serving jackassitude is a couple of orders of magnitude beyond the norm.
I was (and probably still am) a moron.
No doubt. “Moron” is the default setting for H. sapiens sapiens. The best any of us can do is a) realize that, and b) keep questioning things, lest we end up strangled in a moronic ouroboros.
Brian J
@josefina:
Those guys used to be Democrats?
John O
Gotta call from the Dan Seals (IL-10, the “moderate” Mark Kirk’s district) campaign today and told them that Dan was too smart and nice for today’s politics, which was to say I really would be satisfied if he won, but he wasn’t getting my time until he renounced his (at least one) mentor, one Joe L., (D-BigHealth).
We had a good long conversation, in which our young idealist pointed out it would be electorally stupid to dis Joe in a heavily Jewish district. (He didn’t say that, but he may as well have.) Which is politically true by CW standards. I’m not sure. It’s a pretty educated district, too.
I said (and I’m paraphrasing again), “I don’t care. If he wants to be my leader, he needs to be a leader.”
MBSS
palin/dobbs 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/25/nyregion/25dobbs.html?hp
JK
Fuck this miserable cocksucker Joe Lieberman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJTJbqKuDDM
JK
@MBSS:
I don’t think so. Dobbs was interviewed recently on the Today Show and revealed that he wasn’t in love with Palin.
Palin/Bachmann 2012
Dumb and Dumber
Ignorance is Strength
Sly
Bayh is not a problem as far as I can tell. He really wants to be President some day. Filibustering any HCR will kill his chances in any Democratic Primary, unless they start having them on the planet Giedi Prime.
His bluff should have been called, publicly, months ago. But no one ever bothered asking Democratic Senators who wanted to fuck everything up if they would filibuster the final product if they weren’t allowed to fuck it up, so….
Lieberman has stood four-square against any kind of meaningful HCR his entire career. If Reid or Durbin were counting on his vote, then they’ve been drinking the same koolaid they’ve been trying to pass off to the party base.
Liberty60
@MikeJ:
When I say Left, I don’t mean the center/ liberal Democrats; I mean the real, actual Leftists most of whom were on the fringes of the Democratic party, or left to join the Greens and Socalist Worker party of the time.
Jerry Brown and Scoop Jackson are far left, only in the fevered imagination of Bill O’Reilly.
John O
@Sly:
Right, Sly. All even “young” (like the Senate’s) boys clubs are the same. They get rich, they get powerful, and they get arrogant.
Seems to me our FF’s had this figured out, but their flaw was in assuming, as any normal human being would, that there would be people at least as smart as they were 250 years from now.
Cat Lady
@John O:
I agree with this completely, and I think that’s why he was elected- his intellect and his cool calm disposition shone above the others when the shit was figuratively hitting the fan. I’m a very left progressive, but above all it’s his pragmatism and rationality and the ability to self correct that is the rarest quality in a leader, and which I admire most. His cool demeanor while under constant attack for not being everything to everybody is remarkable and my respect for him grows every day even though I realize he’s not going to make me perfectly happy by providing me with my progressive paradise tomorrow complete with a pony.
I also remember every fucking thing about the last 8 years of Bush, so as an O-bot, I’m not going to criticize him for anything.
simonee
You know what’s funny? When I looked back in your archives randomly some time ago to see how crazy you were back in the day, I came across a post in praise of Democrats like Evan Bayh and Barack Obama– you said that these two are the future of the Democratic party.
So I guess, even though you were a moron, you were pretty right on.
josefina
@Brian J:
So they said, c. Iraq invasion. As did Mr. Sad Fedora and the other luminaries behind PJMedia.
John O
@Cat Lady:
Yep. Tough place to govern. Especially inheriting a friggin’ mulit-front nightmare.
les
@Liberty60:
Good enough. Then you must realize that your comparison of “the doctrinaire left” to the right is, um, lessee, um, stupid in the extreme? You, along with the ignorati of the Village, want to draw an equivalence between an ignored fringe and the leadership of the repub party. Jeebus, try joining us in the real world.
Comrade Jake
If Lieberman votes against cloture for health care, the Dems should absolutely strip him of everything and anything. If they don’t do that, then they are truly spineless.
By the same token, people who wanted him stripped from the beginning have to admit that the Dems would have zero leverage now had they done that. At least now they have something they can take away.
Johnny B
If I heard him correctly, Howard Fineman on Countdown tonight said he’s been talking to Lieberman and his staff and that, under no conditions, does the Senator intend to vote in favor of health care reform (public option or no). If true, can someone please tell me why he’s still in the Democratic caucus? As soon as the Democrats pass a public optionless health care bill (or fail in the effort), Lieberman needs to be removed from the caucus. If they do not do so, I will never provide a dime to a Senate Democrat again.
MBSS
@simonee:
john cole wasn’t crazy back in the day. wesley clark does look like heaven’s gate leader, marshall applewhite:
https://balloon-juice.com/?p=2770#comments
Nick
@asiangrrlMN: optics…since his antics, Lieberman has actually gotten MORE popular in Connecticut…simply because he hasn’t lost any Democrats he already has and Republicans like him more. The only people who hate him in Connecticut are liberals, who do make up the plurality of voters, but not a majority.
Throwing him out of the caucus gives him more attention. He’ll park his ass on every talk show complaining about Democrats’ partisanship. He’ll go back to Connecticut and whine about how the mean liberals forced him into the minority and now he can’t deliver for the state like he used to…and everyone in the state who isn’t a Lieberman-hating liberal (who are, unfortunately, the majority of the state) will believe him and feel his pain of being mistreated by the mean liberals for being “his own man”
In the end Lieberman is going to be a pain no matter what, and the better choice is to not make him more of a martyr than we did in 2006.
Nick
@Johnny B: in fairness, Robert Byrd filibustered a major piece of a Democratic President’s agenda…and he ended up being majority leader.
John O
@Johnny B:
Right on, JB.
There aren’t many politicians out there who could throw ol’ Joe under the bus with quite the aplomb and “respect” with which Obama could do it. “For the good of the country” and all.
Just go all in, talk about Joe’s wife’s job and Joe’s donations from BigHealth, and say he’s in the way.
Clears the way for the Senate to emasculate Joe in every way, and would show at least one rapt viewer that the Dems weren’t going to spend the rest of my life being pussies.
les
@Nick:
You make sense. Which leads me to think, the Dems should fuck him with a rusty spoon. Connecticut is lost–I mean, I read you to say Joementum is back no matter what–so send a message to the rest of the caucus; get the fuck in line if you want the goodies. I get that we’re not part of an organized political group, to rip off Will Rogers, but there should be some consequence to fucking over the country.
Nick
@John O: This is why I can never be a politician. I would not have been able to sit on a Sunday morning show with Lieberman without at some point asking, on live TV, how Hadassah is enjoying her job at Hill & Knowlton doing PR for Big Pharma?
and then I’d probably be blasted all over the news for being mean to good ol’ Joe.
John O
I’m not sure you’re reading the zeitgeist perfectly, there, Nick.
Granted, it’s a tough needle to thread in terms of political optics, doing that on national TV, but if you got it right people would dig it about now, I think.
Grayson is doing all right, and I think the shiv could be sunk a lot subtler than Grayson does it, with equal impact.
Sly
@Comrade Jake
Stripping Lieberman of his chairmanship would only serve to make the Senate leadership look petty. Despite the catharsis it would justifiably entail for the party base, it was never actually a smart move. Still isn’t.
Lieberman’s sole value to the caucus is that he was their 50th vote to put Reid in the majority leader’s seat and a host of other Democrats (most of which are good, if not decent or tolerable) in committee chairmanships back in January of 2007. They just don’t want to admit it.
He’s an obstacle until 2012. If he decides to run again, the only thing preventing Blumenthal from kicking his ass is whether or not the current AG wants Lieberman’s job.
John O
@John O:
“With all due respect Senator Lieberman, how could the love of your life’s financial interests NOT influence your vote much less your personal leanings on the issue?”
My problem is that I would want to add, “Especially, you know, as a JEW?” to make it funny, and then I would be on someone’s hit list.
Johnny B
@Nick:
Please tell me that my future does not include “Majority Leader Joe Lieberman.”
les
@Sly:
I dunno, you say that like it’s a good thing. Isn’t there a Dem senator who has the balls to match Pelosi? Near as I can tell, Reid is in the process of losing HCR in the Senate.
Nick
@les: The consequences are usually primary challengers where applicable. That’s what happened to Lieberman, he got a primary, but it backfired. Had Connecticut had a sore loser law preventing Lieberman from running as an Indy, he’d be a lobbyist now and Senator Lamont would be pushing for the public option.
And even when primaries happen, we usually don’t know about any institutional support for them. In 1966, LBJ was secretly supporting a primary to Virginia Senator A. Willis Robertson over his opposition to civil rights. He never made it known though until after the primary was over and Robertson lost…but that primary was also pursued by LBJ because William Spong could beat Robertson as Virginia Democrats were beginning to move to the left on the civil rights issue.
You do notice how Arlen Specter has become a very loyal Democrat with a primary challenge…and even though the President supports Specter openly, Specter still changed his voting record . We may one day find out Obama’s support for Specter was conditional. That’s not something we would know now.
In some places though, primaries don’t fly. Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson cannot be primaried. Blanche Lincoln may be able to if Bill Halter runs (and can win) but it’s possible this seat could be lost either way. Notice LBJ didn’t support primary challenges to J. William Fulbright in Arkansas or Richard Russell in Georgia or Robert Byrd in West Virginia…a pro-civil rights Democrat just wouldn’t win there, nor would one have won a general election. For all we know right now there are operatives in the White House polling Halter vs. Lincoln and Halter in a general to see if a primary is a viable option. This is not something we’d ever know, but is the only way to get leverage over someone.
So the end result might be trying to win them over with carrots or compromise. It may mean screw Lieberman and go for Snowe and Collins (which would probably end up netting Lieberman too)
Nick
@Johnny B: No, but you get the point.
If you threw out every Democrat who ever held up a piece of the Democratic agenda, we’d have like 10 Democrats.
Even Feingold screwed the Democrats at times…he’s screwing them now with climate change.
John O
Not this one though, Nick. Historical bulls**t.
Joe is perhaps my most hated politician. At least the GOP is too stupid to know better.
Nick
@Sly: Blum definitely wants his job. He’s been waiting for a Senate seat for over a decade and he was salvating over Lieberman’s seat when Joe was on the 2000 ticket.
The question is can Blum win? If he can, he runs. If it’s close, he doesn’t…and I wouldn’t hold out the possibility that Lieberman can get reelected. Unless Obama is reelection by Reagan/Nixon margins, Republicans are gonna turn out in droves in 2012 to try to defeat him.
Nick
@John O: mine too, upon hearing his sudden opposition to healthcare a few weeks back, I was talking to a friend of mine who works for Senator Menendez and promptly told her to tell her boss to deliver and rather vulgar message to Lieberman…but it is what it is, he’s liked to way too many people in Connecticut.
I was living in Connecticut in 2006 and worked on Lamont’s campaign…but even on the campaign, I had my doubts that the primary was a good idea. It had been annouced weeks earlier that Lieberman may run Indy if he loses the primary and I think that cost Lamont votes because a lot of Democrats said “well then fuck it, Lamont won’t win anyway”
Sly
@les
In terms of short term gain, it was a good thing. But all the “He’s with us on everything but the war” obnoxium was complete BS, and they knew it.
That’s what I take issue with. Lieberman is a known commodity. People who gasped when he announced his intention to filibuster final passage of HCR were just being ignorant of who he is and who he represents. Which has been, is, and always will be Joe Lieberman.
If Reid and Durbin hadn’t taken that into account, along with his long-standing opposition to anything that might jeopardize the profits of his benefactors (and his wife’s employers), than replacing them as Majority Leader and Whip would be far more effective in terms of actually achieving legislative victories than kicking Joe Lieberman to the curb. That latter has no practical value, and I say this as someone who did not vote for Gore in 2000 on the sole basis of who he chose as his running mate.
Morbo
@asiangrrlMN: And they do dap; that was so much fun watching heads explode when they did that.
Lieberman needs to schedule a date for the White Phosphorous Health Spa. It would be only fair thanks given all the policy he has supported over the years.
Sly
@Nick
Last I checked, Blumenthal had close to an 80% approval rating across the board (which is really, really, REALLY rare for a state officer) and would beat Lieberman by nearly 30 points. This was back in February though, and I wouldn’t know where to look for more recent numbers. I don’t think Lieberman’s numbers have gone up since then.
And once again, I think the news of a Republican resurgence happening within the next fifteen years (at least) are grossly overrated. Party membership and fundraising are at record lows, and have been for the past two years. Something like 8% of Hispanic voters view the GOP favorably. The only functioning political apparatus the party has, really, are the Teabaggers. And no movement’s influence has been more overrated since the Anti-Masonic Party.
Obama and the Democrats would have to purposely fuck up the country in order for them to make any serious gains. The problem lies, as usual, with the rent-a-politician depot that is the United States Senate, and legislative politics does not lend itself very well to a national campaign.
John O
Another thing I told the Seals staffer was that he (Seals) would be a fool not to run on national issues right now, which pounding Joe would create.
Our good staffer disagreed.
I guess this is why I’m not Shrummy or B. Buchanan.
Ed Marshall
I taught ESL in college to mostly Arab exchange students right around election 2000. Talking to them was an enlightening experience and the majority of them were excited about Bush because the Clinton administration was universally loathed. He had gone in front of the Knesset and declared that he was willing to pick up a rifle and die for Israel (he couldn’t be bothered with Vietnam, but he was a professed martyr for Zionism). Gore/Lieberman was just nauseating and the hope was that Bush and his Saudi sympathies would be a tonic for a poisonous bunch of Israelicentric ME experts that characterized the end of the Clinton years. Obviously it didn’t work out for anyone involved.
However, I can count at least nine times over the last couple years that someone asked me who Gore’s VP candidate was and when you tell them Lieberman they get this disbelieving look in their eye for a second. “That joker was on the ticket?!?!” Yeah.
For all the trouble GW Bush was, Lieberman probably would have been the nominee in 2008 if Gore had won in 2000 and survived 2004. Think about that for awhile.
asiangrrlMN
@Morbo: Yeah, terrorist fist jab. Forgot that. Sigh. So many offenses, and so little time.
Lieberman: I hear the reasons for not stripping him of his chairmanship and whatever else, but I have reached the point of, WTF? What else does he have to do to prove that he has no allegiance to the Democratic Party? Yes, Dems will not go for the Democratic agenda every time as a policy (we are the big tent party, after all), but honestly. If someone is against universal healthcare in some form, he/she is not supporting the basic Democratic tenet. And, I think if the Democrats could be disciplined about the message they send out on why they are stripping Lieberman, it could be a win for them. I know, big if.
And, just fuck Joe Lieberman with a rusty pitchfork a hundred and eleven billionty ways of Sunday. To me, he epitomizes much of what is wrong with our political system.
Brian J
@Ed Marshall:
I’ve thought about it. My next question is, was he always like this, and it just wasn’t seen at first, or was there some fundamental change in his thinking? The latter is possible, and perhaps even the more likely answer, even if his thinking is now entirely fucked up by our standards.
@Sly:
I’m not sure Republicans turning out in droves in 2012 to a greater extent than Democrats turn out for Obama is going to make a difference in Connecticut. Are there a lot of wingnuts hiding in the state? If so, it might make a difference, but if not, local conditions will likely be paramount. And as you said, Blumenthal is very popular.
Brian J
@Johnny B:
I’m inclined to agree with you. Unless there’s some massive benefit to be had by keeping him in there, it’s only fair that his ass gets booted if his default position is a no vote on a signature Democratic issue.
Liberty60
@les:
Oh, relax. No need to get upset. The doctrinaire Left of the 70’s (the Greens and remnants of the SDS) are in fact analogous to the GOP today.
The doctrinaire Left could only respond to every problem with tired cliches from the New Deal; the GOP can only quote Reagan at every opportunity. The 70’s Left was hostile to new ideas, wedded to outmoded slogans.
That the rightist fringe has managed to capture the GOP is the point; they are killing what remains of reasoned conservatism, smothering new ideas in their crib, because they are wedded to dogma.
For instance, Bruce Bartlett has proposed raising revenue via a VAT; he is ignored by the GOP, even though is was a champion of supply side and an advisor to Reagan.
They see every adversary as the Evil Empire, and can only shout triumphalist Cold War rhetoric against even Osama Bin Laden and Hugo Chavez.
John O
@Liberty60:
Well said.
Bartlett is not the only one. My original question on this thread asked why Larison didn’t get more loving in GOP sanity circles.
Granted, it’s a narrow field.
Chuck Butcher
@Liberty60:
You’re a pretty funny guy, picking up a tremendously thin slice to call the doctrinaire left. Ofcourse you’re also the nimrod who seems to have all he knows of the left come from his Republican coloring book comic. The Little Red Book for crying out loud.
Not to put too fine a point on it, there was the CPUSA at that time and SDS never claimed to be Democrats. You talk as though these people left the Party – they fucking laughed at it. You suppose Chicago 7 were all about getting somebody elected?
The radical left never saw the Democrats as anything other than plutocratic tools – and maybe now you’d like to explain just how fucking stupid they were?
Sly
@asiangrrlMN: I’d say him leaving the Democratic Party is proof enough that he has no loyalty to it. There doesn’t need to be much else, no?
If that doesn’t suffice, he stabbed Gore in the back during the Florida recount. On national television.
But this has (or had) less to do with party loyalty and more to do with the workings of the Senate. Lieberman offered Reid and Democratic Senators with seniority the post of Majority Leader and various committee chairmanships, respectively, and got his Democratic challengers legs cut out from under him in 2006 and chairmanship from which to direct pork into his state. That’s all it ever was. Threatening Lieberman behind the scenes that he’ll lose his chairmanship is one thing, but so long as Reid would rather maneuver around issues that Lieberman is intractably wingnutty on than look bad by publicly ousting him, talk of actually doing it is pure bluster.
What does Lieberman have to do to get his comeuppance? Caucus with the Republicans. He’ll do it if it is advantageous to his personal interests, but the Republicans would have to take ten Senate seats first. And that ain’t happening anytime soon.
Reid and Durbin have basically one option: Don’t count Lieberman toward 60 votes for any major piece of progressive legislation (aside from EFCA, which Lieberman supports). They basically have to get his vote from one of the Nice Ladies from Maine.
@Brian J: It does if enough Republicans come out in support of Lieberman and not enough Democrats and Independents come out in support of Blumenthal. If that happens, Connecticut becomes redder than Utah. In other words, it’s not happening. The only question is whether Blumenthal runs. If he runs, he’ll likely win. The irony is, the more brazenly self-serving Lieberman becomes, the more CT Independents will start disapproving of him.
maus
hooray for the opinion pages and beltway pundits that shape “America”‘s idea of right and wrong.
Chuck Butcher
I don’t live in CT and having an opinion of an electorate with which I’m unfamiliar would be stupid. I do know that electorates generally respond to the bacon being brought home. There are over 50 reliable Caucus votes and that is enough to strip any earmark or amendment that Lieberman offers out of a bill. They can send him to CT completely empty handed for at least the next couple years. They have the ability to politically gut him like a rotten fish.
They can play clubby little twits or they can get serious, make him that offer, vote how you want on the bill after it comes to the floor or explain yourself to CT. They can make him useless to any lobbiest.
Johnny B
@Nick:
I’m stunned by the masochism that being a Democrat entails. And I don’t have any leather chaps, either.
I’m not sure how you pass a legislative agenda, however, when the party spends most of its time negotiating with people who want you to fail. I suspect that the Republicans will have an easier time passing their agenda in 2011.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
There is no such thing as a centrist in the real world. I mean, I’ve never met one. The only places these beings exist are pockets of DC and NYC, and if you added up all the Liebermans and Broders in America I doubt it would come to 0.1% of the entire population. As such, centrism is the real fringe philosophy.