Lieberman: What Does It All Mean?
Joe Lieberman seems assured of losing on Tuesday, and that possibility has the national press in a tizzy. Everyone's trying to figure out what the primary defeat of a senator revered inside the Beltway means.
Writing in the Boston Globe, David Greenberg says that it's not the bloggers who are beating Lieberman, it's the fact that both parties have become more ideologically rigid, and Lieberman's adherence to principle has made him "a party of one."
Writing in the
subscriber-only New Republic, Peter Beinart argues that
"in the '90s, Lieberman proved a crucial check against his party's worst instincts. In the Bush era, by contrast, he has proved a poor check against the GOP's." Beinart also mentions that he went to Yale, and he likes Lieberman because, when Lieberman voted for the first Gulf War in 1991, his house was picketed by lefties, whom Beinart thought were wrong.
Meanwhile, in the New York Post, Lieberman himself continues speaking in that pathetic self-pitying tone he's adopted recently, which only makes the smell of defeat cling to him like the smell of sickness in a hospital ward.
According to Lieberman, "What I didn't calculate was that I would have not just an opponent but a very rich opponent . . . and that allowed him, in my opinion, to distort and smear my record." Lieberman added that there's "too much, really, hatred on the blogs," although he admitted that he doesn't really read them.
Well, let's discuss. In reverse order.
First, Lieberman's cry against Lamont's wealth is silly. Connecticut is a very small state. You can drive from top to bottom of it in about 90 minutes, assuming there's not too much traffic around New Haven or on I-95 near New London, where the highway becomes a two-lane road and the folks visiting Mohegan Sun create far more traffic than there used to be. (Sigh.) Running a campaign in Connecticut is not expensive, as far as these things go, and a three-term senator should have no problem raising abundant sums to fund such a campaign.
What Lieberman really means is that he didn't expect to have a credible opponent, that he assumed the advantages of incumbency would scare away plausible challengers. This is about the best argument for rich people getting into politics that I can think of; these days, they're about the only ones who can unseat incumbents like Lieberman, who act like it's an offense against the world if someone dares to actually run a serious campaign against them.
As for "the hate" on the blogs...that is just too pathetic. Coming from a man who has, when necessary, played some of the nastiest politics since Lee Atwater, this lament is literally incredible. I've seen Lieberman talk a lot about "hate" and how awful the blogs are. I've never heard him give a single example.
Peter Beinart makes an interesting case, but ultimately I think it's wrong. Or at least his conclusion is wrong. I like the idea that Lieberman was a check on Democratic goofiness in the '90s—although that sanctimonious speech he made about Bill Clinton was truly hideous—but that he has failed to challenge the GOP's worst instincts in the '00s. It's a little stronger than that, actually; Liebeman has promoted some of them.
To me, that's an argument against a Lieberman victory. Democrats should be fighting the Bush administration, not cozying up to it. But somehow Beinart comes to the other conclusion. Perhaps it's because the experience of seeing protesters scarred Beinart; New Republic editors (and Washington journalists in general) are uncomfortable with popular participation in politics. Protest makes them uncomfortable. They don't know how to report on it, and they certainly don't understand it. Beinart, whose liberalism has more than a little Ivory Tower quality to it—he's a smart guy, but sometimes you feel like he lives in a study, and he's always neat—wouldn't understand.
David Greenberg is also a very smart guy, and he happens to be a friend. I haven't read his book on Nixon yet, but everyone says it's very interesting. Here, though, I think he's wrong. As are all of the pundits who are saying that the fight against Lieberman shows how dogmatic leftie Democrats have become.
Here's why.
I've heard people who support Lieberman making intelligent cases, and people who oppose him making intelligent cases. That's the thing about Lieberman; he's taken so many different positions, you can, as a friend of mine likes to say, argue it round, or you can argue it flat.
To inside-the-Beltway journalists, who think everyone should be more reasonable, and who distrust emotion, this flexibility is evidence of Lieberman's principle.
But to Connecticut residents—and though I don't live there now, it's my home state, I went to college there as well, and my parents still live there—Lieberman's Devo-esque politics ("you've got me jerking back and forth") aren't evidence of principle, but evidence of opportunism.
For a while, Lieberman's centrist positioning did strike Connecticut voters as principled. After all, they did elect him three times, so it's not as if he hasn't done well in Connecticut politics. The state has a history of electing centrist pols (although congressmen from the cities, like New Haven and Bridgeport, tend to be more leftie). Remember, Lieberman won originally by running against a liberal Republican, Lowell Weicker, whom Lieberman mercilessly caricatured as fat and out of touch.
But we are, I think, at a moment in politics where voters on both sides feel that the country is seriously fucked-up—and that the Bush administration (remarkably, even more than Osama Bin Laden) is the reason why. If you're a Republican, you—well, I don't know what you do exactly. (In the Washington Post, E.J. Dionne argues that you're imploding, and that conservatism is dead.) In all likelihood, you stay home this November.
But if you're a Democrat, you want people in office who are going to fight for you—who recognize that the Bush Administration has done a miserable job of governing, and won't hesitate to say so, and present a constructive alternative.
That's not Lieberman, and that's why he's going to lose on Tuesday. No matter what all the Washington pundits have to say about it.
