a snake prepares his escape hatch

dana bash:	any chance joe lieberman would run [for reelection] as a republican [in 2012]?
joe lieberman:	i don't know what i'll run as. i like being an independent, so that's definitely a possibility, but i'd say that all options are open.
dana bash:	really?
joe lieberman:	yeah. it's unlikely that i would run as a republican, but i wouldn't foreclose any possibility ...

i'm shocked

... just shocked, i tell you, that lucy yanked the football away again:

in a move that senior leadership aides say has left them stunned, sen. joe lieberman (I-CT) has told senate majority leader harry reid (D-NV) that he will filibuster a tentative public option compromise unless it's stripped of its key component: a measure that would allow people aged 55-64 to buy insurance through medicare.

deep thought

if gore had won, we'd all be discussing the lieberman transition picks.

boy, was i wrong

i think atrios @ eschaton put it best today:

today is a lovely day to eat some shit.

(actually, it wasn't all that lovely where i live; it was cold and gray.)

yesterday i put together a tentative headcount on the lieberman vote, documenting as best i could the available evidence for each eligible voter's leanings. who would support the resolution? who had gone on record for joe? who had supported him in the past? long diary short: i couldn't put together more than 7 potential votes in joe's favor.

well, we can't be right all the time, but rarely am i this wrong. i'd misread just about everything.

but instead of trying to chase down all the possible explanations after the fact for why which senator voted the way he or she did, i'm singularly puzzled by just one question: what cards does joe have? i've yet to hear a completely satisfactory explanation for the vote. perhaps the bitter truth is that the explanation isn't satisfactory to anybody but joe.

like many, jonathan singer at mydd seems to believe that it was obama's nod to the senate helped swing the day for joe:

yet lieberman could make obama's life more difficult as an angry gadfly (a tom coburn, as it were) than he would as chairman of the homeland security committee — particularly if he owed his chairmanship to obama, which he does. under this rationale, obama will have an easier go in forwarding his legislative agenda in the senate with lieberman beholden to him than lieberman weaker, but mad at him.

the only problem i have with this explanation (not that i think it's necessarily wrong) is that, as we all know, lieberman's biggest crimes are deceit and disloyalty. as benjamin disraeli once remarked of a political opponent:

he is a systematic liar and a beggarly cheat; a swindler and a poltroon. he has committed every crime that does not require courage.

after all, didn't lieberman already owe obama his senate seat?

a top official on joe lieberman's 2006 senate reelection campaign tells me that lieberman's staff practically begged barack obama to come in and endorse him at a critical moment — requests that obama agreed to, helping lieberman minimize the damage from challenger ned lamont's recent entry into the contest.

apparently that favor wasn't big enough to prevent joe from campaigning against not only him, but every democrat.

perhaps saving lieberman's chair was obama's wish, but i just can't see what lieberman has to offer in return that doesn't require all of us having to trust him again.

all right, it's time for my shit sandwich. pass the condiments.

lieberman's fate: a preliminary headcount

tomorrow decides the fates of two senators, one a professed democrat, the other a republican. while ted stevens faces certain expulsion from the senate for his conviction on corruption charges, joe lieberman's fate seems less clear.

that the leadership wants to take joe's chairs from him seems clear. the chairs are joe's by default, if he wants them, which is what this whole hubbub's about. if the senate does nothing, he gets to keep them. no vote is required. this entire discussion would be moot. so by staging a vote, reid is making his intentions clear about removing joe.

like the president-elect, reid prefers little drama, which is why he privately offered joe lesser seats on other committees as a consolation prize for going gently into the night and not making a stink, especially in front of any cameras:

"if they aren't able to work something out satisfactorily, there will be a vote in the caucus." "that's lieberman's decision."

unfortunately, joe loves drama, especially when he's the center of it, so joe sent out an aide to the hartford courant to let everyone know not only that reid's deal was "unacceptable" but also to drop a none-too-subtle threat:

"sen. lieberman prefers to remain in the democratic caucus, however, he believes he should remain as chairman of the homeland security committee."

... a threat punctuated with joe's characteristic sanctimony:

[joe] "thinks that political retribution should not go ahead of homeland security."

joe lieberman: the sine qua non of homeland security. reading that really must have made harry very happy.

so joe's thrown down his gauntlet and forced reid's hand. it's all or nothing now.

harry, as promised, has thrown the question to the caucus. while the ballot is secret and makes each member's vote both unpredictable and unverifiable, i believe harry reid is no complete buffoon. every lawyer knows better than to ask a witness a question the lawyer himself doesn't already know the answer to. reid would have to be completely tone-deaf to his colleagues to stage a vote he knows he can't win. joe has few friends on his side of the aisle. out of 53 eligible votes, he needs 27. there will be no tie.

still, the exact nature of the vote remains up in the air:

still, as of now, it's still not precisely clear what exactly reid will throw over to his caucus to vote on tomorrow. last week leadership aides were adamant that the vote would be over his committee chairmanship. but it's now unclear whether reid will follow through on this specific vote or whether he'll ask the dem caucus to vote on a compromise or a lesser punishment.

but if the vote becomes a straightforward question of "does joe keep his chairs?", then here are the tentative votes in reid's corner:

1) the leadership (4):

reid: leading the move to dethrone joe

dorgan: "as a chairman of one of our significant committees in the senate, not just going off and supporting a presidential candidate of the other side but also criticizing the candidate on our side, and also involving himself in a couple of senate races on the other side. the question is, is that acceptable? the answer is no."

durbin* and schumer: "interestingly, people like dick durbin who is the first democrat in the senate — the first senator, and from Illinois, to support barack obama — is really loaded for bear about lieberman, he wants to kick lieberman off that chairmanship. chuck schumer, the head of the campaign committee likewise."

*durbin's reportedly been making noises in lieberman's favor:

durbin: [senate democrats should be] "gracious in victory" [toward lieberman]. "despite what sen. lieberman did in campaigning for sen. mccain, speaking at the republican convention, he has voted with the democrats an overwhelming percentage of the time."

... but has said nothing specific about his chair.

2) other vocal reid supporters (3):

leahy: "i'm one who does not feel that somebody should be rewarded with a major chairmanship after doing what he did." "i would feel that had i done something similar, that i would not be chairman of the senate judiciary committee in the next congress."

sanders*: "to reward senator lieberman with a major committee chairmanship would be a slap in the face of millions of americans who worked tirelessly for barack obama and who want to see real change in our country."

*sanders might not be allowed to vote.

carper: "there need to be consequences, and they cannot be insignificant." "many of my colleagues … are very angry with his criticism of sen. obama."

carper's statement is significant since he was reportedly one of four democrats lobbying on lieberman's behalf. i guess he heard something that changed his mind.

3) i think many of those who backed ned lamont against lieberman will likely back reid (16):

akaka*, boxer, cantwell, clinton, feingold, feinstein, harkin, kennedy, kerry, kohl, menendez, murray, stabenow, reed, rockefeller, wyden

*since akaka is reportedly in line for joe's chair, i think reid can count on his vote.

4) lastly, i think reid can count on the new incoming comfirmed members (3):

merkley, udall, udall

meanwhile, in joe's corner we have:

1) the following vocal supporters (2):

bayh*: "i think reconciliation is in order, not revenge or retribution." "i think we had to just let bygones be bygones."

*bayh was a lamont supporter.

dodd: [obama has] "talked about reconciliation, healing, bringing people together. i don't think he'd necessarily want to spend the first month of this president-elect period, this transition period, talking about a senate seat, particularly if someone is willing to come forward and is willing to be a member of your family in the caucus in that sense."

2) others reportedly making calls for lieberman (2):

salazar, nelson

3) others who supported lieberman against lamont (3):

inouye, landrieu, pryor

so the tentative vote count stands at reid (26), lieberman (7), unaccounted for (20).

even with a lot of unaccounted votes, the "temperature", as carper put it, is very chill towards joe. how many can he realistically add to his seven? not enough, i think.

i think he's gonna lose that chair.

joe ponders the palin pick

well, it's certainly been a tough week for gop-veepee-lottery-winner sarah palin. it's also been a tough week for her soul mate, former-pow-did-you-know-turned-maverick-presidential-also-ran john mcsame. (but we should all be happy that a guy his age can still find happiness so soon after the loss of another wife. what? you hadn't heard about cindy? tragedy. must've gotten buried in all the chatter about bristol, her baby and its father, all of whom i hear, are also having a tough week.)

it's also been tough on the republicans, what with their convention having not only a genuinely tough act to follow from across the aisle, but also with having to contend with the misdirected anger of the weather gods (thanks for nothing, stu!) and the restless ghosts of new orleans, who are surely making things tough for just about everybody on the gulf coast.

but just as surely as no one, absolutely no one, wants to end the war in iraq more than our erstwhile democrat joe lieberman (he just wants it to end in 2108, apparently), no one, absolutely no one, can be having a tougher week than the last honest man.

painfully, no doubt, after months of doing all the heavy lifting personally holding up mcsame's bearings in one hand, and with the other tirelessly slipping the knife, again and again, into his soon-to-be-former-caucus-mates, poor joe-just-can't-get-a-break-lieberman had to watch all his careful machinations upended and all his aspirations unceremoniously dumped into the comely lap of a bubble-headed upstart from that god-forsaken-frozen-backwater-three-electoral-votes-are-you-effin-kidding-me i-don't-wanna-be-a-state-of-alaska, of all places. and then, to top it all, having to dutifully take the stage in minnesota, not as a proud running mate on a winning ticket, but as an unappreciated z-list shill at the coming-out party for a modern-day wolf moose gal, in front of a scattershot crowd of dullards and ingrates. how truly bitter his words must have tasted.

but november is still a whole two months away, so joe will probably look forward to a little time away from the klieg lights. time enough for this sad little creature to crawl back to his den, lick his (self-inflicted) wounds (again!) and get back to work on that shrinking list of imaginary friends while thoughtfully fingering the well-worn blade on the only thing he can trust:

gollieberman: master has betwayed us! he wants the pweshuss all for himself! smeajoe: no, no, no! master likes us! master said so himself! gollieberman: master wants the palin! he wants to give it the pweshuss! our pweshuss! the palin must die! smeajoe: no, no! if we kill the palin, the master will hate us! the palin is pwetty — and we are not! and he won't give us the pweshuss! gollieberman: no ... we shan't kill the palin, but the palin is stupid! we are smart! we can twick it, make it twip and fall! make master look foolish! smeajoe: yesss ... yes! then master will hate the palin, and send it away! gollieberman: yesss ... then master will pay! like the democwatsss will pay! we will kill the master and take the pweshuss for us! then smeajoe will be the master!!

moose gal may have to watch her back ...

snark of the week

jim henley @ unqualified offerings:

the following appeared this week in the new york times, the washington post, slate and the new yorker in a parallel universe ... how i got it right: looking back at a time of justified opposition to a mad, violent enterprise so many publications have expressed such overwhelming interest in the perspectives of those of us who opposed the iraq war when it had a chance of doing good that i have had to permit mutliple publication of this article in most of the nation's elite media venues — collecting, i am almost embarrassed to admit, a separate fee from each. everyone recognizes that the opinions of those of us who were right about iraq then are crucial to formulating sane, just policy now. it's a lot of pressure, so please forgive anything glib or short you read herein: between articles, interviews, think-tank panels and presentations before government agencies and policy organs i'm not permitted to mention, i'm a little frazzled. on the bright side, and i can confirm that my experience has been similar to those of my fellow prophets, being the object of so much attention, being repeatedly quizzed by eager interlocutors on the same basic points, encourages one to distill one's thinking to its essence. as kenneth pollack asked me the other day, "what the fuck was so special about you, anyway?" "for one thing," i said, "i am not sprawled on a sidewalk next the mcpherson square metro station, hoping to cadge enough quarters to enjoy the rare treat of laundering the vomit out of the only shirt i own, praying all the while that decent people do not recognize me beneath the matted beard and tangled hair." "but my thigh hurts!" he said. "shut up," i consoled him, "or i'll kick it again." still he had a way of arriving at the essential question: "what the fuck was so special about me, anyway?" why did i have the sense to oppose the us conquest of iraq when so many of our great and good supported it? sometimes i think the other question is almost more interesting: what the fuck were those other people thinking? alas, answers to that one are hard to come by, since understandable shame has closed many mouths. so my own side of the story will have to suffice. why was i right and you, if you were a powerful politician or respected pundit in 2002-2003, wrong? some guesses follow. i'm really very bright. i don't like to brag, but my iq places me in the 99th percentile of americans. odds are, for instance, that i am smarter than you. and if i'm not, you're probably not that much smarter than i am. and even if you are, it would be unseemly for you to say so. what are you, stuck up or something? you aside, i'm certainly smarter than the president, or doug feith, or joe klein. i am seventeen times as smart as senator joseph lieberman. i am twenty-five hundred percent brighter than gop presidential candidate john mccain. my superior intelligence is a superficially plausible explanation, and i don't discount it, but two immediate objections suggest themselves. first, and less crucially, it simply raises another question: how did i get so smart in the first place? the shortest answer is, "because my parents were smart, and their parents were smart too." it's very hard to say why that matters: iq appears to be substantially heritable, but it's hard to disentangle the genetic component from the environmental nevertheless — i was reared by my parents, and not, as you know, by yours. if i'd been reared by yours i'd have gotten more toys as a kid. we were poor and you, somewhat spoiled. distressingly, there's no practical program for improvement there. "be smarter!" we might say to doug feith, "you'll make better policy!" but doug feith can't go back in time and be born to other people. but in light of the second objection to the "intelligence theory," that probably doesn't matter. second objection: you didn't have to be all that bright to oppose the iraq war in advance. heck, polls suggest that most americans were dubious about the idea until the war became obviously inevitable. real enthusiasm was confined to the elite media, the bipartisan defense-policy establishment and a bunch of republican quasi-intellectuals who had spent ten years casting about for different countries to have a war — any war — with. i mean, for crying out loud, at one point our rulers declared that saddam hussein might attack america with remote-controlled model planes. you didn't have to wait to bounce that one off the folks at your next mensa meeting to judge its likelihood. nor did you have to puzzle overlong, if someone tried to put that one by you, how much stock you should put in anything else that came out of their mouths. conclusion: my manifest intelligence was definitely not necessary to opposing the iraq war. it may not have been sufficient either. i wasn't born yesterday. i had heard of the middle east before september 12, 2001. i knew that many of the loudest advocates for war with iraq were so-called national-greatness conservatives who spent the 1990s arguing that war was good for the soul. i remembered elliott abrams and john poindexter and michael ledeen as the knaves and fools of iran-contra, and drew the appropriate conclusions about the bush administration wanting to employ them: it was an administration of knaves and fools. people will object that the project for a new american century had heard of the middle east before september 12, 2001 too, so just knowing some things wasn't enough. and hey, true, but if you read"warbloggers"back in 2001-2003, the thing that really jumped out was how new all this foreign-policy stuff was to them. people without much knowledge on the subject went looking for someone to soothe a very real hurt they felt in september 2001, and the first people they ran into were raving, nationalistic morons with a preexisting agenda, clustered around the wall street journal and the weekly standard. libertarianism. as a libertarian, i was primed to react skeptically to official pronouncements. "hayek doesn't stop at the water's edge!" i coined that one. not bad, huh? i could tell the difference between the government and the country. people who couldn't make this distinction could not rationally cope with the idea that american foreign policy was the largest driver of anti-american terrorism because it sounded to them too much like "the american people deserve to be victims of terrorism." i could see the self-interest of the officials pushing for war — how war would benefit their political party, their department within the government, enhance their own status at the expense of rivals. libertarianism made it clear how absurd the idealistic case was. supposedly, wise, firm and just american guidance would usher iraq into a new era of liberalism and comity. but none of that was going to work unless real american officials embedded in american political institutions were unusually selfless and astute, with a lofty and omniscient devotion to iraqi welfare. and, you know, they weren't going to be that. finally-er, being neither republican nor democrat meant that i wasn't unduly impressed when even tom friedman, or even some clinton administration hack, assured everyone that the tinpot ruler of a two-bit despotism eight-thousand miles away would and could destroy us if we didn't get him first. here there are a number of objections. all too many self-described libertarians supported the iraq war, with that noxious fervor for which we are notorious. these people were led astray by a combination of noble and base tendencies within libertarianism. saddam hussein was a vicious tyrant, after all, and some libertarians let a commendable hatred of tyrants overrule their common sense. some libertarians remembered that war involved guns, and lots of them, and figured it must be good. and many feared that if the united states did not go to war, it might make some hippie, somewhere, happy. the more telling objection is that you didn't have to be a libertarian to figure out that going to war with iraq made even less sense than driving home to east egg drunk off your ass and angry at your spouse. any number of leftists and garden-variety liberals, and even a handful of conservatives, figured it out, each for different reasons. this objection has the disadvantage of being obviously true. what all of us had in common is probably a simple recognition: war is a big deal. it isn't normal. it's not something to take up casually. any war you can describe as "a war of choice" is a crime. war feeds on and feeds the negative passions. it is to be shunned where possible and regretted when not. various hawks occasionally protested that "of course" they didn't enjoy war, but they were almost always lying. anyone who saw invading foreign lands and ruling other countries by force as extraordinary was forearmed against the lies and delusions of the time. it's a heavy burden, i'll admit. but the riches and fame make it all worthwhile.

damn

r.i.p. steve gilliard (1966-2007).

i did not know steve, but those who did say that his online papa-don't-take-no-mess analysis was matched only by his in-person charm. i agreed with a lot of what he wrote — and to that extent felt a certain kinship — and made reference to a number of his posts:

"we" are not amused

send in the clowns

a good old-fashioned space opera

my condolences to his friends and family.

send in the clowns

fmguru @ steve gilliard's news blog explains exactly why joe lieberman's newly released "sunset" ad is further evidence that his contentious "independent" senate bid is doomed:

lieberman's expensive consultant sucks ass. this is yet another reason why joe's campaign will sputter and die. all of the good political consultants and media people are already fully employed with '06 races. joe fired all his staff after the primary and went to hire a brand-new team. but august 9 is verrrry late in the season to be staffing up a political campaign. the people who are available are the political equivalent of the kids chosen last for the kickball team. i was briefly worried that joe was going to go out and get himself a team of ass-kicking, eye-gouging, race-baiting republican campaign consultants (you know, the ones that actually know how to fight and win elections, unlike the bob shrum all-stars), but then i realized that all of the a- and b-level gop talent was already busy with actual republican races. and there are plenty of democratic shops that won't touch joe with a 10-foot pole. so he's stuck sifting the dregs for his campaign staff. it's not even that the ad is terrible — it's that this ad was what they'd spent two weeks cooking up in their backroom. the [sic] spent a couple hundred thousand dollars making and airing this ad — this was their opening shot, their best foot forward. that's what so funny about this (well, that and the commo team's hapless response to people wondering how they got the sun to set over the southern coast of ct). it's proof that the entire lieberman campaign is being run by the political equivalents of larry, moe, and curly. i'm sure this same half-assery is replicated throughout the lieberman organization. you think these clowns will be able to put together a functioning gotv operation in 70 days, prep for a debate, organize campaign stops and appearances, or mail out literature to people asking for it? it's like the lieberman campaign should be followed around by caliope music wherever it goes. i'm reminded of two things: one is the famous film flub in john wayne's dreadful rah-rah vietnam pic the green berets, where the movie closes with the sun setting in the gulf of tonkin (nice trick, that), and the other is the half-assed, corner-cutting way they did their web operation in the primary. the sort of people who figure webhosts are all the same, so why not go with the cheapest one are the same ones who'll buy the first piece of stock footage they find on google. sunrise, sunset, who the fuck's gonna know the difference, right?

buh-bye, joe.

red alert

boys, it's time to duct tape the windows, strap on your diapers and man the keyboards — the islamo-irani-talibani-qaeda-o'fascists have taken connecticut!

chuck roberts, anchor @ cnn headline news:

how does this factor into the lieberman/lamont contest? and might some argue, as some have already argued, that lamont is the al qaeda candidate?

tony snow, press secretary @ the white house:

... the real question for the american people to ask themselves is, do you take the war on terror seriously? with all the developments around the world — and, if so, how do you fight it to win? there seems to be two approaches, and in the connecticut race, one of the approaches is ignore the difficulties and walk away. now, when the united states walked away, in the opinion of the osama bin laden in 1991, bin laden drew from that the conclusion that americans were weak and wouldn’t stay the course and that led to september 11th.

dick cheney, vice president @ the white house:

the thing that's partly disturbing about it is the fact that, the standpoint of our adversaries, if you will, in this conflict, and the al qaeda types, they clearly are betting on the proposition that ultimately they can break the will of the american people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task. and when we see the democratic party reject one of its own, a man they selected to be their vice presidential nominee just a few short years ago, it would seem to say a lot about the state the party is in today if that's becoming the dominant view of the democratic party, the basic, fundamental notion that somehow we can retreat behind our oceans and not be actively engaged in this conflict and be safe here at home, which clearly we know we won't — we can't be.

bill o'reilly, talking head @ the o'reilly factor:

i believe this is a chilling indication of what lies ahead in american politics. iran’s betting we americans have no will to restrain their jihad, and judging from the connecticut vote last night, they might be right.

cal thomas, columnist @ the washington times:

the narrow primary defeat of veteran sen. joe lieberman in connecticut's democratic primary is more than a loss for one man. it is a loss for his party and for the country. it completes the capture of the democratic party by its taliban wing. they used to be "san francisco democrats," a phrase coined by former u.s. ambassador to the united nations jeane kirkpatrick to describe the party's 1984 convention. but they have now morphed into taliban democrats because they are willing to "kill" one of their own, if he does not conform to the narrow and rigid agenda of the party's kook fringe.

joe lieberman, sore loser @ the new york times:

if we just pick up like ned lamont wants us to do, get out by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in england. it will strengthen them, and they will strike again. i'm worried that too many people, both in politics and out, don't appreciate the seriousness of the threat to american security and the evil of the enemy that faces us — more evil, or as evil, as nazism and probably more dangerous than the soviet communists we fought during the long cold war. how the heck can we be in a battle in which we are fighting as democrats and republicans against each other, when these terrorists certainly don't distinguish based on our party affiliation? they want to kill any and all of us.

post mortem

let us examine the corpse, shall we?

admiralnaismith @ mydd:

lieberman was the goliath candidate. when you're goliath, you win by being as gracious as possible, trying to keep the condescension out of your voice as you welcome the chance for an amicable primary contest and talk about how democracy is so wonderful and your little-known opponent has every right to run, and then you swamp him financially with positive, upbeat ads about your record, mentioning the "david" by name barely if ever. "goliath" wins popularity contests by being a gentle giant, not by being a brutal bully. lieberman didn't do that. he was fred sanford, clutching his chest and yelling "lamont! lamont!" every chance he got. he didn't even bother to hide his contempt for the democratic process as he screeched and raged at how this bloody peasant was daring to besmirch the divine right of incumbents. he publicly insulted not only the "david" but anyone who held "david"s views — which happened to be popular, majority views. and to cap it off, he unveiled his spoiler independent bid, stabbing his own party in the back before he had even had the primary. it was lieberman, and not lamont, who turned this race from nothing into a real contest, and then an upset.

thereisnospoon @ daily kos:

let's face some cold, hard facts, people. we didn't do this, because what we supposedly did was impossible to do — in any politcal climate. in one corner, you had a bunch of unpaid volunteers, internet rabble-rousers, and an inexperienced politician whose highest post had been county selectman. in the other, you had the three-time senator, former vice-presidential candidate, visible party statesman, bill clinton, hillary clinton, harry reid, barbara boxer, the other popular ct senator dodd, most of organized labor, the women's groups and the environmental groups, most of traditional democratic party support, paid lobbyist support, paid armies of gotv staff, the slick ad money, the top dlc consultants, and a 3 to 1 budget gap. i'm sorry. that's not david vs. goliath. this isn't even the nba champions versus a rec league team. that's more like an ant vs. my shoe. and the shoe lost. but then, the dlc is an old shoe — and the most politically incompetent shoe i've ever seen. the truth is that the dlc couldn't beat my dead great-grandmother. or yours. they couldn't beat their own shadow. so why did anyone think they could beat karl rove?

josh marshall @ time:

he's seemed almost militantly indifferent to the disaster iraq has become. and his passion about the war seemed reserved exclusively for those who questioned it rather than those who had so clearly botched the enterprise. his continual embrace of president bush — both literal and figurative — was an insult to democrats, the great majority of whom believe bush has governed as one of the most destructive presidents in modern american history. it's almost as though lieberman has gone out of his way to provoke and offend democrats on every point possible, often, seemingly, purely for the reason of provoking. is it any wonder the guy got whacked in a party primary? lieberman got in trouble because he let himself live in the bubble of d.c. conventional wisdom and a-list punditry. he flattered them; and they loved him back. and as part of that club he was part of the delusion and denial that has sustained our enterprise in iraq for the last three years. in the weeks leading up to tuesday's primary, a-list d.c. pundits were writing columns portraying lieberman's possible defeat as some sort of cataclysmic event that might foreshadow a dark new phase in american politics — as though voters choosing new representation were on a par with abolishing the constitution or condoning political violence. but those breathless plaints only showed how disconnected they are from what's happening in the country at large. they mirrored his disconnection from the politics of the moment.

juan cole:

first of all, the man was brain dead on the iraq issue. ... lieberman had bought into the rove master narrative. bush went to war electively, thus very conveniently making himself a war president and therefore above criticism. he got a second term that way despite having been among the worst presidents in history. lieberman ceded to bush a kind of invulnerability on the most important republican party snafu since its policies contributed to the onset of the great depression. why would a democrat do that? the answer is that on foreign policy issues, lieberman is a neoconservative, and supports the iraq project for the same reasons that douglas feith and paul wolfowitz (then number 3 and 2 respectively at the pentagon) did. ... lieberman may run as an independent, and we cannot know what will happen in that case. but for the reasons given above, it is important that he has been repudiated by democratic voters. the rest of the party now has a shot at taking the house, without risking having their colleague's pro-bush sanctimonies on iraq constantly thrown in their faces.

christy hardin smith @ firedoglake:

at some point, the folks who report on politics and the folks who run for office will wake up and understand that bloggers are merely americans who try to amplify the sentiment of thousands more just like them. and the overwhelming sentiment that i have been hearing for months and months is that people have had enough of the lies, the manipulation, the self-dealing, the egos, the idiocy, the selfishness, and the outright dereliction of duty and lack of accountability from so many in washington, d.c. in this rubber stamp republican congress … we’ve had enough.

time for a change, pt. ii

from ned lamont's victory speech:

this race started out as a dream, many thought an impossible dream, but thanks to all of you and thousands of citizens across the state ... we have a coalition that believes this is a time for change.

time indeed. couldn't have said it better.

time for a change

well, it's primary day in connecticut and the country finally gets to see if democratic and independent voters there want a new senator. although lamont has enjoyed an amazing 13-point lead in the polls over the last week, that lead was halved over the weekend, and polls have been known to be wrong anyway. lamont's "netroots" supporters have been careful to temper their enthusiasm, having bitterly tasted defeat too often before.

i've been trying to step back and look at the race in more fundamental terms, beyond the particular issues being argued in it. in most regular elections the voters are offered two choices: the incumbent or the challenger; the status quo or change.

and right now the entire country is disgusted with the direction the white house and congress has taken the country, and nowhere is that truer than in connecticut, one of the bluest of the blue states. the country is aching for change. it's a fundamental dynamic that seems only today to be getting the emphasis it really deserves:

americablog: people are frustrated. they're tired of the republicans and their arrogance, their failed policies, their incompetence, and their inability to learn and grow from their mistakes. that is why the blogs came about, and it's why we've been successful at getting a voice. we are tapping into that frustration and, yes, anger, and channeling it towards an effort to change things for the better. and that, my reporter friends, is what is happening in connecticut and across america. joe lieberman is a victim of the anti-incumbent, anti-republican times in which we live. he is not a victim of the peace movement. he is not a victim of the iraq war. he is part or the larger passion play that is taking place across the country against the incumbent party in power. republicans control the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the federal government. americans believe our country is heading in the wrong direction and we, rightfully, are finally holding those running the country accountable, in addition to those who enable and embrace them.

mydd: luis, a poll worker who came out for some fresh air, said "lots of democrats today!" — the polling place had separate doors for the republican and democratic primaries, and i could see fewer than 1 out of 10 voters were going in the republican door. luis said he's seen a lot of new voters and young voters today. "they want change."

for all his vaunted experience in politics, lieberman strangely has been either unwilling or unable to recognize or respond to that basic dynamic. he's lost touch with his own constituents. he's been taking them for granted.

this race shouldn't have been a contest. it's been lieberman's to lose all along, and he will. what finally convinced me was lieberman's last big media statement, his "closing argument", which he delivered as a speech on sunday in east haven.

in it he reiterated his record and ticked off his democratic bona fides. but not once did he say the magic words: i'm going to change.

lieberman insists that he's been good for connecticut for 18 years and connecticut needs him to continue to do what he's been doing.

he even insists that he hears the criticism:

what i will say is this: i not only respect your right to disagree or question the president, i value it.

but just how does he demonstrate that? he never explains how his constituents' views influence his behavior, if at all. i get the impression of joe patting a boy on the head, telling him, "i know you're upset — i really, really do — you just need to understand your daddy knows what's good for you."

so it comes as little surprise, according to markos of daily kos, that lieberman omitted these words from his planned ending for that speech when he finally delivered it:

if after hearing the truth about where i stand on iraq, you still want to cast your vote solely on that one issue, then i respect your decision.

lieberman apparently had second thoughts about legitimizing that rationale for the voters.

and when asked early sunday for his position on iraq by george stephanopolous on abc's this week:

gs:	you're right that iraq is the number one issue, there's just no question —
jl:	— there's no question about it and you see not only — you see it in the opinion polls.
gs:	and you said in the debate [with lamont on july 7] that iraq is better now than a year ago. do you still believe that?
jl:	it is better now ... it- it- it’s better and worse if you’ll allow me to put it that way ...

joe just can't let go of his support for the failed occupation. even while suffering the damage it's done to his career — which explains his fumbling bush-like doublespeak.

so joe's not gonna change his tune or his behavior, and he expects connecticut voters to simply accept that.

and they will, but only for a few hours longer.

a good old-fashioned space opera

"rally 'round me boys, we have the heretic on the run!"

this coming tuesday, a long-anticipated, closely-watched and hotly debated showdown will climax in connecticut, deciding not only the democratic nominee for senate (and the de facto next senator of the blue state), but also (in the words of one breathless pundit) for "the soul of the democratic party — and possibly the future of civility in american politics", as well as for the continued relevance of the "netroots", who have invested a great deal of political and emotional capital in the race.

of all the intense coverage of the impending shootout, the most entertaining analysis is being delivered by steve gilliard, who for the past month has been staging the unfolding drama in the brightly painted miniverse of the warhammer 40,000 fantasy wargame:

so why use this? because of a few reasons. one, the figures are widely available online, usually well painted, which makes great illustrations. two, it seems enough people are familiar with the back story so that using it as an allegory to describe joe lieberman's troubles makes sense. it may seem like gibberish to some, but it's really effective. the horus heresy, which has betrayal at it's [sic] core, seems to describe lieberman's predicament pretty well. three, there is no historical or social bias to the w40k world. if you use historical figures, all kinds of meanings can be inferred where there aren't any. so to depict lieberman as a ultramarine and lamont as a blood angel, with various other participants as members of space marine chapters is a wonderful way to take a lighthearted look at the politics of the connecticut race and not feed the need for lieberman's people to infer some insane bias against him. sure, there's geekdom involved, which is no handicap here, especially when jen painted a ton of ad&d figures, but it's also a way to express issues of loyalty and opposition in a fictional world where those are the defining characters. more than any other fictional setting, warhammer 40k is about the duty of citizens to the state and to each other and the value of loyalty.

while not myself familiar with warhammer, only someone who's never seen star wars or lord of the rings could be stumped its simple dynamics, which pit the loyal forces of the imperium (progressive democrats) against the corrupt gods of chaos (republicans and their enablers like the traitorous lieberman).

"defend the leader at all costs!"

the series thus far:

august 3 betrayal "chaos marines, follow me" august 2 chaos space marines to the front july 30 so what does the times endorsement mean? "boys, the imperium is with us, attack, attack, attack!!!!!!" ned lamont for senate: ny times "ned lamont. in his non blood angels uniform" july 29 lamont to get times endorsement "rally 'round me boys, we have the heretic on the run" july 23 about the lamont race "once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, or close the wall up with our blood angel dead" july 22 the last, desperate gasp "join us and fight the joerus heresy" defend joe "how dare anyone challenge the commander? if he makes an alliance with the chaos space marines, it is for our benefit." july 20 lamont in the lead "rally to me boys, rally to me. we have the heretic joerus on the run" chaos space marines for lieberman "we're for joe, why not you? chaos space marines for lieberman" july 19 all hail the joerus legacy "see how the robes feel, commander, come join the chaos marines, you want to be one of us, forget the imperium, come join us." joe's problem "who will stand with the commander?" july 17 nobody loves the commander any more "poor commander lieberman" july 15 about warhammer 40k and the space marines "blood angels for lamont" "ultramarine legion of lieberman" july 14 defend commander lieberman "commander lieberman" hosanna, someone gets it "ned's army of gentically mutated blood angel warrior-volunteers on the march" july 12 joe's problem "defend the commander at all costs" july 11 lieberman to form own space marine legion "so we fight with chaos space marines, we're still loyal" july 9 the fear of losing joe "the only people lieberman can trust, his legion of space marines" july 7 the lieberman lie "defend the leader at all costs" july 6 the lieberman conundrum "a party at war"

the new republicans: a taxonomy

(cross-posted at daily kos)

glenn greenwald's recent examination of president bush's supporters has gotten a lot of well-deserved attention on both the left and right wings of the blogosphere. some commenters have noted that glenn's characterization of bush's supporters fails to account for other bases or wellsprings of bush support, i.e., lust for power, wealth, etc., but i don't believe that glenn was attempting to be all-inclusive.

to that end i've assembled a brief taxonomy of the different species of bush supporter that i've observed. note that these classifications are not meant to be exhaustive or mutually exclusive; many republicans will fit easily into multiple categories. ultimately, there may be as many reasons rationalizations for supporting bush as there are bush supporters.

afterthought: anyone taking bets on how long before some snarky right-winger posts their own democratic taxonomy?

the new republicans: a taxonomy 1) republicanus cultus idolizes bush; disdains criticism and dissent of bush; will support any act of bush and entertain any justification of his actions. example: pat roberts 2) republicanus potentia seeks power; will support any act and entertain any justification that may increase or perpetuate their hold on power. example: tom delay 3) republicanus pecuniosus seeks wealth; will support any act and entertain any justification that may increase or perpetuate their fortunes. example: ken lay 4) republicanus bellicosus loves force; disdains diplomacy and dissent; will wield force as an all-purpose tool towards achieving their goals, as opposed to a means of last resort. example: charles krauthammer 5) republicanus imperiosus loves being number one; will not accept second place or share power; will not rest as long as any other power exists to thwart republican political supremacy or american international hegemony. example: john bolton 6) republicanus fundamentalis loves righteousness; disdains tolerance; will not rest until all others either submit to their moral yardstick or are annihilated. example: james dobson 7) republicana contraria hates liberals; will support any act and entertain any justification that may offend liberals; will categorically denounce any statement made by a liberal; will denounce as "liberal" anyone or any statement that criticizes or contradicts them. example: ann coulter 8) republicanus oportunitas a grab-bag of special interests; not staunch republicans, but will take advantage of any opportunity to further their own causes, which in the current political climate means supporting republicans. example: lobbyists 9) republicanus goldwaterus respects traditional conservative principles; respects rule of law; disdains waste and adventurism; now becoming increasingly disillusioned with bush; sadly, a dying breed. example: bob barr 10) republicanus democratus a wolf in sheep's clothing and/or judas goat; may fit within any of the other categories; registered or professed democrat. example: joe lieberman