Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Clearing the decks
Why getting rid of Joe Lieberman helps, not hurts Democrats in November
Joe Lieberman, charming and urbane within the beltway, brusque and tone-deaf to his constituents, is getting a lesson in democracy and how new media can erode the power of incumbency. Centrist democrats and pundits are concerned. Faux-mournful Republicans bemoan the loss of tolerance for other viewpoints in the Democratic party, a concern that somehow doesn’t extend to apostate Republican Lincoln Chafee’s tight primary race against a movement conservative opponent in Rhode Island. The anti-war left senses a epoch shifting moment.
Joe Lieberman’s defeat in the Connecticut Senate primary signals the consequences of defying the majority, not the wrath of militant leftists. The New York Times got it right by endorsing Ned Lamont in the contest, but only days earlier, it incorrectly reported that the country is more divided over the question of Iraq than it was over Vietnam. This is entirely incorrect. The same distinct minority of people continue to support the misguided war in Iraq and its dilettante architect, George W. Bush. The rest of the country has been convinced for months of its monstrous foolishness. Connecticut is simply a microcosm for the rest of the country. It will be a tough year for anyone who both supported the war and blithely insists that nothing is the matter with its execution. Among Democrats, Mr. Lieberman is not alone in voting for the war, and he is not alone in demanding that it be seen through to the end. But he is alone in suggesting that everything is going peachy over there.
Therefore, the removal of Bush apologist Lieberman does not threat Democratic electoral prospects, it heightens them. Disapproval of Bush and the Iraq war are consensus opinions. Because the anti-war movement has from the beginning embraced the troops and made a cornerstone of its opposition to the war abhorrence of American casualties, Vietnam era divisiveness has been avoided. The deranged minority is not anti-war, it is pro-war.
The perplexing thing is that the punditry has such a hard time seeing this. Perhaps it is generational. The desire to analogize Iraq to Vietnam is overpowering and, given the senselessness of the conflict and tragedy of dead and maimed soldiers, understandable. But the situations are different indeed and the positions of the parties different as well. When Jonathan Alter points to Nixon’s assent as being the result of over-eager and ideologically purist anti-war protesters, he only gets half the story. Yes, a divided Democratic party did not help matters. But Nixon was running against eight years of Democratic rule and the mismanagement of a failed war. He promised to end the war. And he surely benefited from his association with the eight years of prosperity under Eisenhower. In many ways, he deserved to win. (He benefited as well from white backlash to the Civil Rights Act.)
Democrats today, collectively, have much more in common with Nixon than Hubert Humphrey or the Democrats of ’68. They were callously tossed aside after a good eight years of prosperity and confront a party that squandered its majority in a failed war.
Perhaps the punditry sees something of itself in Lieberman. Beset by bloggers, held shockingly accountable for past mistakes, and their once comfortable position threatened by an ever shifting, amorphous, rude group of people with no respect for authority.
Because the conventional wisdom is wrong, pundits, leftwing activists, and Republicans risk taking the wrong messages from Lieberman's defeat. Pundits will decry the ascendancy of an intolerant fringe, leftwing activists will strut their new found muscle, believing that it harkens a mandate for a generally left agenda, and Republicans will decry the loss of diversity in the Democratic party. No of this is right. Lieberman’s defeat is a victory for the vital center, which agrees that the war in Iraq was a horrible mistake that should be remedied as best and as quickly as possible. That vital center has no time for politicians who live in a fantasy world.
Joe Lieberman, charming and urbane within the beltway, brusque and tone-deaf to his constituents, is getting a lesson in democracy and how new media can erode the power of incumbency. Centrist democrats and pundits are concerned. Faux-mournful Republicans bemoan the loss of tolerance for other viewpoints in the Democratic party, a concern that somehow doesn’t extend to apostate Republican Lincoln Chafee’s tight primary race against a movement conservative opponent in Rhode Island. The anti-war left senses a epoch shifting moment.
Joe Lieberman’s defeat in the Connecticut Senate primary signals the consequences of defying the majority, not the wrath of militant leftists. The New York Times got it right by endorsing Ned Lamont in the contest, but only days earlier, it incorrectly reported that the country is more divided over the question of Iraq than it was over Vietnam. This is entirely incorrect. The same distinct minority of people continue to support the misguided war in Iraq and its dilettante architect, George W. Bush. The rest of the country has been convinced for months of its monstrous foolishness. Connecticut is simply a microcosm for the rest of the country. It will be a tough year for anyone who both supported the war and blithely insists that nothing is the matter with its execution. Among Democrats, Mr. Lieberman is not alone in voting for the war, and he is not alone in demanding that it be seen through to the end. But he is alone in suggesting that everything is going peachy over there.
Therefore, the removal of Bush apologist Lieberman does not threat Democratic electoral prospects, it heightens them. Disapproval of Bush and the Iraq war are consensus opinions. Because the anti-war movement has from the beginning embraced the troops and made a cornerstone of its opposition to the war abhorrence of American casualties, Vietnam era divisiveness has been avoided. The deranged minority is not anti-war, it is pro-war.
The perplexing thing is that the punditry has such a hard time seeing this. Perhaps it is generational. The desire to analogize Iraq to Vietnam is overpowering and, given the senselessness of the conflict and tragedy of dead and maimed soldiers, understandable. But the situations are different indeed and the positions of the parties different as well. When Jonathan Alter points to Nixon’s assent as being the result of over-eager and ideologically purist anti-war protesters, he only gets half the story. Yes, a divided Democratic party did not help matters. But Nixon was running against eight years of Democratic rule and the mismanagement of a failed war. He promised to end the war. And he surely benefited from his association with the eight years of prosperity under Eisenhower. In many ways, he deserved to win. (He benefited as well from white backlash to the Civil Rights Act.)
Democrats today, collectively, have much more in common with Nixon than Hubert Humphrey or the Democrats of ’68. They were callously tossed aside after a good eight years of prosperity and confront a party that squandered its majority in a failed war.
Perhaps the punditry sees something of itself in Lieberman. Beset by bloggers, held shockingly accountable for past mistakes, and their once comfortable position threatened by an ever shifting, amorphous, rude group of people with no respect for authority.
Because the conventional wisdom is wrong, pundits, leftwing activists, and Republicans risk taking the wrong messages from Lieberman's defeat. Pundits will decry the ascendancy of an intolerant fringe, leftwing activists will strut their new found muscle, believing that it harkens a mandate for a generally left agenda, and Republicans will decry the loss of diversity in the Democratic party. No of this is right. Lieberman’s defeat is a victory for the vital center, which agrees that the war in Iraq was a horrible mistake that should be remedied as best and as quickly as possible. That vital center has no time for politicians who live in a fantasy world.
