No Room For Lieberman With The Democrats
Connecticut Democrat Brendan Loy on Lieberman's lost in the Democrat primary there tonight:
This is just one man's opinion in reaction to a primary, of course, but I think his sentiments will be echoed by a lot of Democrats around the country in the coming months and even years.
The idea that Joe Lieberman, a true-blue liberal in every sense of the word when it comes to most issues, has no place in the Democrat party is a testament to just how far the Democrats have shifted to the left. All Lieberman has done to warrant this exile is support his President on the war in Iraq and refuse to engage in the sort of nasty hyperbole his Dem colleagues have hurled at Bush in the last few years. That's it. On every other issue, from social security to the estate tax to taxes, Lieberman pretty much toes the Democrat party line. Yet because he dared to stray from that line on the war in Iraq he was cast out.
From a purely political standpoing, Lieberman was the Democrats' last hope for relevance in the post-9/11 world. As horrified conservative watch their Republicans approve of massive new entitlements (prescription drugs) and propose big hikes the minimum wage in an election year, the only thing keeping November 2006 from being an out-and-out bloodbath for the right is the insistence by Democrats to move their party ever further to the left on national security. If the idea of putting Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in charge of the war on terror didn't make a large cross-section of Americans want to hide in their basements and cry the Republicans would be in some serious hot water. As it stands now - breathless prognosticating from talking heads aside - the worst the GOP can hope for is losing a couple of seats in the House/Senate.
Seriously though, right now Lieberman should have been a guy the Democrats were spreading Presidential rumors about, not the guy who couldn't even get his party's nod for another run at his own Senate seat.
Lieberman may still consider himself a Democrat — he says that, if elected as an independent, he’ll vote to organize with the Dems, and I believe him — but the Democrats don’t consider Lieberman a Democrat anymore. That’s the cold, hard truth of today’s results. He’s been kicked out of the “big tent” because his loyalty wasn’t blind enough, because his conscience wasn’t pliable enough. He’s been replaced by the shiny new millionaire who said all the right things to win over the hearts and minds of the netroots. The war in Iraq is wrong, wrong, wrong; President Bush is bad, bad, bad; and Joe Lieberman is a traitor, a traitor, a traitor. That’s the undeniable message that Democratic voters from my home state have sent out across the land this fateful day.
Well, if there’s no room in the Democratic Party for Joe Lieberman, then there’s no room in it for me.
So I’m done. I’m out. See ya later. Sayonara.
This is just one man's opinion in reaction to a primary, of course, but I think his sentiments will be echoed by a lot of Democrats around the country in the coming months and even years.
The idea that Joe Lieberman, a true-blue liberal in every sense of the word when it comes to most issues, has no place in the Democrat party is a testament to just how far the Democrats have shifted to the left. All Lieberman has done to warrant this exile is support his President on the war in Iraq and refuse to engage in the sort of nasty hyperbole his Dem colleagues have hurled at Bush in the last few years. That's it. On every other issue, from social security to the estate tax to taxes, Lieberman pretty much toes the Democrat party line. Yet because he dared to stray from that line on the war in Iraq he was cast out.
From a purely political standpoing, Lieberman was the Democrats' last hope for relevance in the post-9/11 world. As horrified conservative watch their Republicans approve of massive new entitlements (prescription drugs) and propose big hikes the minimum wage in an election year, the only thing keeping November 2006 from being an out-and-out bloodbath for the right is the insistence by Democrats to move their party ever further to the left on national security. If the idea of putting Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in charge of the war on terror didn't make a large cross-section of Americans want to hide in their basements and cry the Republicans would be in some serious hot water. As it stands now - breathless prognosticating from talking heads aside - the worst the GOP can hope for is losing a couple of seats in the House/Senate.
Seriously though, right now Lieberman should have been a guy the Democrats were spreading Presidential rumors about, not the guy who couldn't even get his party's nod for another run at his own Senate seat.
