A target for mud.

[vakkotaur]

Sen. Lieberman lost the primary yesterday and has decided that principles are more important than staying in the club, er, Party. He isn't challenging the election results, demanding a recount or claiming fraud. He's going to run without all the usual backers is all.

I'm glad to be a distance away from that, as I expect it will get quite ugly. It probably already has. I expect accusations and revelations of dark secrets to fly. A few might even have a small degree of truth in them - things that were politely ignored or hidden away will now get trumpeted.

I can't say I support him, but I know I don't support his loud and shrill detractors in his own, or his former, Party. So I do admire his courage in taking the stand he is taking and offering a choice that likely would not otherwise be there in November. He's in for a rough time, knows it, and is doing what he's doing anyway.

Comments

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

See, I wish he'd just admit that he lost and bow out. All he's going to do is split the Democratic vote and make it more likely that a Republican wil take the seat.

Last I heard, the whole point of having a political party is so you can do more together than you can alone towards accomplishing your goals and getting your policies enacted. You support other members of the party.

The voters of the party pretty clearly said "no we want THIS guy cuz we don't like your support of the war".

But instead he's all "Nyah nyah I'll just take my ball and start up my OWN team and it'll be better than yours OMG!".

[michaelmink.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's extremely unlikely the GOP will take the seat. State Sen. Alan Schlesinger, the GOP candidate, is underfunded and pretty obscure. This is not 1970, when the incumbent Democrat (Tom Dodd, father of Chris) ran as an indpendent, split the vote, and allowed GOP congressman Lowell Weicker to win (the first and only GOP'er to win a Senate seat in Connecticut since 1956). (Weicker, by the way, was the guy Lieberman beat to take the seat in 1988.)

What it will come down to is Lamont v. Lieberman in an arena larger than the pool of Democratic voters. Lieberman will likely pull a large batch of GOP voters, and if he splits the independent vote, he could well win.

Remember, this was only the primary, not the general election. And it's the people of Connecticut as a whole that will pick who represents them. The Democratic voters may have spoken, but the folks who count -- everybody -- have yet to speak.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I keep forgetting that not all states have open primaries, so thanks for that response. While I'm not exactly thrilled with Lieberman (I listening to his speeches in the last presidential primary season and not caring for him even as a least bad choice among his Party) I do find myself somewhat hoping for his winning as an independent candidate. Mainly I'm hoping that such a thing would give the Democrats a much-needed dope-slap.

[foolscap001.livejournal.com]

Shhhh.... remember the classic Napoleonic advice: "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

Let the moonbats complete the job of destroying the Democratic party; then, I hope, people might move to a rational alternative to them and to the Republican party.

[foolscap001.livejournal.com]

I need to watch my language—I don't hope people move to the Republican party.

Maybe in 2008 I will actually do what I keep meaning to, namely try to insert a plank in the Republican platform supporting the teaching of the phlogiston theory in schools. (It would be a good bit of humor, but not a precise analogy, because the phlogiston theory was science—it just got blown away by a better alternative.) I'm a member of the Libertarian Party, but register Republican so I can go to the Republican caucuses and try to fend off the Republicans' version of the barking moonbats...and because Iowa won't let me register as Libertarian.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

They don't listen to me anyway, so I'm not exactly worried about that. I can't help but wonder what with the various comparisons to McGovern in how the Democrats are going (and some of this by folks on the left, gleefully agreeing) if they remember that the last time they pushed for a McGovern they wound up with a Nixon.

[nefaria.livejournal.com]

> Last I heard, the whole point of having a political party is so you can
> do more together than you can alone towards accomplishing your goals and
> getting your policies enacted. You support other members of the party.

The downside of that is you have to vote how your party leaders and whips tell you to vote, or you lose funding and support and end up in the gutter the next election cycle. The leaders and whips tend to be much further from reality than the average Congressperson, so you end up with political parties that move further and further away from what the public wants and voted for.

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

Oh, I am not denying that at all.

My complaint is that Lieberman is all about the party when it suits him but now that it doesn't he's gonna go form his own party. That's pretty tacky - to take all the advantages of party support and then not pony up when it comes time to support someone else.

[michaelmink.livejournal.com]

Query: how did you feel when Jim Jeffords, not 6 months after being re-elected on the GOP line, made a de facto switch to the Democrats? This after he had received substantial party support for re-election.

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

Don't know - never heard about the situation.

[foolscap001.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised—it was all over the media, because it shifted the balance of power in the Senate when it happened.

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

oh - THAT guy! (did not remember his name)

That's a little more complex - didn't he claim to make the switch over issues? Still not happy that he took money and turned his back but if you genuinely change parties over issues I can understand that.

If Lieberman had declared himself an independant candidate BEFORE losing in the primary, then I would be more likely to believe that it was over issues. But doing so after losing in the primary makes him look like a cranky old man and a sore loser.

[michaelmink.livejournal.com]

Jeffords made the *claim* it was over issues, but he was due to be rotated out of his committee chairmanship within his term, owing to GOP rules (which don't have a democratic equivalent). Jeffords was allowed to keep his chairmanship when he switched caucuses (formally an independent, he caucused with the Democrats). Like nearly everyone, he figured that the Democrats would gain in the off-year elections of 2002, which of course didn't happen, and that was that. Supposedly one factor why he didn't run for re-election this time around.

[thecanuckguy.livejournal.com]

Oh, you guys had a David Emerson down there, eh? (The "turncoating" was much quicker for him though)

[michaelmink.livejournal.com]

It was closer to that woman who was the popsie of another Tory, crossed the aisle, and became a minister to prop up the Libs, when Martin barely survived that no-confidence vote.

[thecanuckguy.livejournal.com]

Belinda Stronach.

As a fellow comedian here in Winnipeg puts it, in one of my favourite jokes of his, "You know, folks, I've been dumped before, but never in a way that affects the Canadian dollar!!"

[nefaria.livejournal.com]

Conservative democrats seem to be an endangered species, they keep getting weeded out. It's a shame really; I might have been a conservative democrat if they still had any influence.