Archive for the 'Joe Lieberman' Category

• Lieberman's acolytes in the Connecticut legislature seeks to regulate political blogging. The proposed legislation is so unconstitutional it's laughable, but can you expect anything less from the professional thugs and liars in the Lieberman crowd?

  Connecticut bloggers should target these officials in primaries. Every last one.

• The Philly Daily News polls 2008 general election matchips with Giuliani, Obama, Clinton, and McCain going up against each other. The verdict? Republicans win (PDF) all four matchups.
• The Politico let itself be used by Dan Gerstein to settle old political scores.
• Who knew that Keith Olbermann was killing Democracy?
• The Internet kills.
• James Cameron says he found the Jesus family grave.
• What was the first thing bought on eBay?
• NJ-Sen: With Lautenberg's numbers not looking great (as with the numbers for every single politician in New Jersey), let's encourage Republicans to sink a new round of millions into a state that they simply will not win.

For reasons completely unclear to just about any thinking person, the Wall Street Journal has again turned over some of its op-ed real estate to Lieberman. On Iraq. Because he has such a good track record on that topic. Let's revisit December, 2005:

Does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq? Yes, we do. And it's important to make clear to the American people that the plan has not remained stubbornly still, but has changed over the years.

Here's Lieberman today:

What is remarkable about this state of affairs in Washington is just how removed it is from what is actually happening in Iraq. There, the battle of Baghdad is now under way. A new commander, Gen. David Petraeus, has taken command, having been confirmed by the Senate, 81-0, just a few weeks ago. And a new strategy is being put into action, with thousands of additional American soldiers streaming into the Iraqi capital....

The new strategy at last begins to tackle these problems. Where previously there weren't enough soldiers to hold key neighborhoods after they had been cleared of extremists and militias, now more U.S. and Iraqi forces are either in place or on the way. Where previously American forces were based on the outskirts of Baghdad, unable to help secure the city, now they are living and working side-by-side with their Iraqi counterparts on small bases being set up throughout the capital.

It's a new plan! A good plan! Even better than a plan, it's a strategy! But still, for Lieberman the worst that can happen already has:

Two months into the 110th Congress, Washington has never been more bitterly divided over our mission in Iraq. The Senate and House of Representatives are bracing for parliamentary trench warfare--trapped in an escalating dynamic of division and confrontation that will neither resolve the tough challenges we face in Iraq nor strengthen our nation against its terrorist enemies around the world.

The loyal opposition should apparently be like good children, seen but not heard, in Joe's world. On the most important issue facing this country in decades, Lieberman thinks Congress should continue in it's rubber-stamping ways. Cuz that's got us so far in the past four years.

The so-called "liberal" New Republic is now cutting back publication to every other week, yet another sign of its inevitable death.

I mean, how can the editor of the magazine that supposedly covers politics get this simple observation so wrong:

Mr. Moulitsas, [Franklin Foer] said, “is waging a war for ideological purity.”

I'm waging a war against out-of-touch DC-centric "punditry" that gets the biggest issues of the day wrong. Anyone who follows this site or politics with any modicum of attention will know that Jon Tester, Jim Webb, Patrick Murphy, Jerry McNerney, Gary Trauner, Jay Fawcett, Joe Sestak, Ned Lamont, Ben Chandler, Stephanie Herseth, and all the other Democrats we've supported with money and moral support are all over the ideological map.

If I'm waging a "war for ideological purity", I'm doing about as good job of it as the New Republic is of running its magazine.

Luckily, I'm not. And TNR has still lost half its circulation in the past six years.

How can we forget TNR's rabid support for the Iraq War? Or such foresight as its hilarious endorsement of Joe Lieberman in the 2004 presidential primaries as the party's future?

The deep irony of Lieberman's campaign is that many Democrats view him as timid. But how much courage does it take for Dean to throw red meat to the party faithful? The Democratic Party is racing back to the '80s, with interest groups enforcing litmus tests on everything from partial-birth abortion to steel tariffs, and party activists dangerously out of touch with a country that feels threatened by terrorism, not Donald Rumsfeld. Dean has helped create this mood of self-righteous delusion, and his competitors have, to varying degrees, accommodated themselves to it. Only Lieberman--the supposed candidate of appeasement--is challenging his party, enduring boos at event after event, to articulate a different, better vision of what it means to be a Democrat. Three years ago, that vision seemed ascendant. Today, it is once again at the margins. It may take years, or even decades, for Democrats to relearn the lessons we thought, naïvely, they had learned for good under Clinton. But one day, Joe Lieberman's warnings in this campaign will look prophetic. And the principles he has espoused will once again guide the Democratic Party. It will be the work of this magazine, to whatever small degree possible, to hasten that day.

What's that about "ideological purity"?

WaPo:

The Army's highest-ranking officer said Friday that he was unsure whether the U.S. military would capture or kill Osama bin Laden, adding, "I don't know that it's all that important, frankly."

"So we get him, and then what?" asked Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the outgoing Army chief of staff, at a Rotary Club of Fort Worth luncheon. "There's a temporary feeling of goodness, but in the long run, we may make him bigger than he is today.

Anyone want to hazard a guess as to why it "emboldens the enemy" in Iraq to say we're going to require that troops we send there have adequate armor and training, but it's "bold leadership" to say we just don't really care all that much about eliminating bin Laden?

Remind me, which one of these enemies "followed us home" again?

Now, has he got a point? Sure he does. Al Qaeda is bigger than just Osama bin Laden. And, as the article notes:

Schoomaker pointed to the capture of Saddam Hussein, the killings of his sons, Uday and Qusay, and the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as evidence that the capture or death of al-Qaeda's leader would have little effect on threats to the United States.

You have to admit, there's an element of truth to that. Of course, it's an element of truth that someone we know was ridiculed for making... three years ago:

Anti-war candidate Howard Dean said Monday "the capture of Saddam has not made America safer," directly contradicting President Bush and drawing the wrath of two Democratic presidential rivals.

And let's just be clear about what that says up there. It says two Democratic presidential rivals joined in bashing Dean on that point. And they were?

A forceful proponent of the war, Sen. Joe Lieberman, said Dean is in a "spider hole of denial," a reference to Saddam's ignominious hideout and Dean's assessment of the capture's impact.

[Sen. John] Kerry said the front-runner's speech "is still more proof that all the advisers in the world can't give Howard Dean the military and foreign policy experience, leadership skills, or diplomatic temperament necessary to lead this country through dangerous times."

Only one of the above Democratic rivals has come to see the error of his ways since then.

The other, of course, is no longer Democratic.

The front page of today's Washington Post features a long lamentation for poor, embattled Ellen Tauscher. Tauscher, who represents a solidly Democratic district in the Bay area, is a classic case of a Democrat who is out of touch with her district, and has become one of the top targets for a primary challenge in '08.

Tauscher was reelected with 68 percent of the vote, but she said she takes this threat seriously; she has already used it in fundraising appeals. And though she has always highlighted her independence -- shortly before the election, she warned Democrats not to "go off the left cliff" -- she's now emphasizing her party loyalty.

She was once the only California Democrat to oppose Pelosi's campaign for leadership, but she now marvels that the speaker's performance has been "absolutely perfect -- and she looks so beautiful doing it!" Tauscher's Web site no longer features photos of her with Bush or Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), who lost a Democratic primary of his own last year but won reelection as an independent.

Those photos survived in Google's cache; bloggers have dubbed one shot that appears to show Bush's hand on Tauscher's thigh "The Caress," an allusion to "The Kiss" -- video and photos showing Bush embracing Lieberman after the 2005 State of the Union address -- which dogged the senator in his fight against insurgent Ned Lamont. Tauscher donated and has helped raise a total of $2 million for Democrats over the past decade, and since 2003 she has voted with her party more than 90 percent of the time. This year, she has marched in lock step with Pelosi. But to Net-roots sites such as Daily Kos, Firedoglake, and Crooks and Liars, she's Lieberman in a pantsuit.

"I don't think it's a fair comparison," Tauscher said. "My colleagues look at this and say, 'If they're going after Ellen Tauscher, holy moly!' "

Marching lock step with Pelosi is a start for Tauscher. But scrubbing her Web site of pictures with Joe and Bush doesn't really answer the point of whether she's really representing her constituency, and how she is reacting to a potential primary challenge.

Here's the big question. Is Tauscher going to run against us, as she appears to be doing by fundraising using the threat of the netroots, or is she going to take this threat as wake up call to evaluate whether she's faithfully representing her constituency? When she does a gut check, will she end up being a Joe Lieberman or a Jane Harman? At this point, if her reaction to being challenged is any indication, she's leaning toward the former.

Let's review Tauscher's record here:

In 1996, Tauscher ran for Congress as a pro-business, pro-environment, pro-military centrist against Bill Baker, a conservative Republican she portrayed as too far right for his suburban swing district. Pelosi supported her, and she won. But when Pelosi ran for whip, Tauscher supported moderate Hoyer, a close friend. And later in 2001, Tauscher accused Pelosi and her allies in the California Senate of redrawing her congressional district as payback. The new district was much more Democratic, which made it a safer seat for the party, but not necessarily for Tauscher -- unless she followed Pelosi's lead.

That's why Kos has promised "a vicious fight for her seat." He's often portrayed as a raving ideologue, but he's really a savvy strategist; he has no problem supporting conservative Democrats in conservative districts, such as new Rep. Heath Shuler (N.C.). But he sees no need to tolerate a DLC type in Tauscher's district, where Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) received 58 percent of the presidential vote in 2004. And he said that primaries are the only way to force incumbents with safe seats to pay attention to constituents.

"We're creating real democracy," he said.

As we tried to do in Connecticut. While we didn't get rid of Joe Lieberman, we helped to effectively marginalize him. He's now stuck to a failed and disastrously unpopular president, and is in a no-man's land of politics--useless to the Republicans because he won't support many of their pet causes, and a pariah in his own party. Contrast that to Jane Harman, as Markos does in this story:

But Kos points to Harman as a perfect example of how the Net roots can keep Democrats in line. He said Harman used to be a constant irritant, a go-to quote for reporters looking for a Democrat to tweak liberals -- until she had to fight off a primary challenge from the left in 2006. "She's been great ever since," he said. Now Harman even writes on the liberal Huffington Post blog.

Kos can imagine a day when Tauscher still holds her seat but is no longer distasteful to the left. "That's what victory would look like -- a more responsive representative," he said. So when Tauscher praises Pelosi as "perfect on substance, perfect on optics," it's hard to know if that's a result of personal evolution, political trends, or blogospheric pressure, but it's music to Kos's ears. It's helpful to Democratic leaders, too.

If Tauscher takes this challenge to heart, and becomes more responsive to her district, then it would truly be a victory for the everyone, us, her district, and Tauscher herself. That's real democracy.

Some may know of the old advertising slogan "I'd Walk a Mile for a Camel." Well, how's this for a political ad: "I'd Walk Three Miles to Support a Stupid War":

Lieberman is a strong adherent to his Orthodox Jewish faith. He does not work on the Sabbath, which begins at sundown Friday and ends at sundown Saturday. If an important Senate vote fell on the Sabbath, Lieberman would walk three miles to cast his vote. He never campaigns on the Sabbath and regularly misses Connecticut's state Democratic nominating convention, even when he is a candidate, because it falls on the Sabbath. He supports allowing a moment of silence in public schools.

Joe Lieberman wouldn't campaign for President on the Sabbath.  Fine, I have absolutely no problem with that, and I respect anyone who abides by what they believe are the obligations of their religious faith.  But isn't it revealing that Joe Lieberman wouldn't campaign to win the presidency on the Sabbath, but a few minutes ago--remember, it is the Sabbath--Lieberman voted against cloture in the Senate and thus against permitting a vote on a resolution repudiating the President's plan for a military surge in Baghdad, a strategy which is supported by almost nobody except a few neocon and Republican dead-enders?.  

Oh well, I guess one might say that sooner or later he was going to have to vote to say he believes in George Bush and Dick Cheney's war.  When it comes to affirming your support for more death and destruction and damage to our national security, if not now, when?