By his friends you shall know him.
I don't feel terribly sorry for Joe Lieberman as he faces defeat in the Conneticut senate primary tomorrow, but I do wonder if anybody in Lieberland has paused to think about how jarring it is that Lieberman's two Big Media defenders on the eve of the contest are Robert Kagan and Martin Peretz, both making about the worst possible cases (though in slightly different ways) that could be made for Lieberman before a Democratic primary.
Peter Beinart, characteristically, made a better, less hysterical defence of Lieberman recently:
To be sure, Lieberman's record in the '90s was not flawless. Some of his aisle-crossing--his support for capital gains tax cuts, for instance, and opposition to the expensing of stock options--was indefensible. But, on balance, his Clinton-era heresies--many of which became the heresies of Clintonism itself--left liberalism in a far stronger position at the end of Clinton's presidency than it had been at the beginning.
Does this matter? In a way, that's the question at the heart of Lieberman's reelection struggle. 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. While, in the Clinton era, he was often prophetic in recognizing the threat to liberal values posed by enemies overseas, in the Bush era he has been slow in recognizing the threat to liberal values posed by adversaries at home.
Fine, but it's all moot, isn't it? Lieberman could have made these arguments himself -- forcefully if he believed them -- and the liberals who support him could have echoed him strongly and created a counter-narrative to the sometimes ugly and unfair blogospheric-grassroots anti-Joe cacophony. But that didn't happen. As Mark Schmitt, Jason Zengerle, Charles Pierce and other commentators with varying degrees of sympathy have continuously pointed out, Lieberman ran a terrible primary campaign. And not just in terms of raw tactical and strategic incompetence (like say the recent Canadian Liberal national campaign.) Lieberman ran a positively alien-like Democratic primary campaign, with little or nothing for the Beinarts and Zengerles of the world, his honest liberal and neoliberal defenders, to latch onto and make resonate. Into that bemused void flowed Peretz and Kagan and Marshall Wittman to sound their angry, out-of-touch death knells for a Democrat.
There's a special kind of cluelessness at work here and it's got nothing to do with the "angry left" or the "sensible center". So long, Joe.
Peter Beinart, characteristically, made a better, less hysterical defence of Lieberman recently:
To be sure, Lieberman's record in the '90s was not flawless. Some of his aisle-crossing--his support for capital gains tax cuts, for instance, and opposition to the expensing of stock options--was indefensible. But, on balance, his Clinton-era heresies--many of which became the heresies of Clintonism itself--left liberalism in a far stronger position at the end of Clinton's presidency than it had been at the beginning.
Does this matter? In a way, that's the question at the heart of Lieberman's reelection struggle. 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. While, in the Clinton era, he was often prophetic in recognizing the threat to liberal values posed by enemies overseas, in the Bush era he has been slow in recognizing the threat to liberal values posed by adversaries at home.
Fine, but it's all moot, isn't it? Lieberman could have made these arguments himself -- forcefully if he believed them -- and the liberals who support him could have echoed him strongly and created a counter-narrative to the sometimes ugly and unfair blogospheric-grassroots anti-Joe cacophony. But that didn't happen. As Mark Schmitt, Jason Zengerle, Charles Pierce and other commentators with varying degrees of sympathy have continuously pointed out, Lieberman ran a terrible primary campaign. And not just in terms of raw tactical and strategic incompetence (like say the recent Canadian Liberal national campaign.) Lieberman ran a positively alien-like Democratic primary campaign, with little or nothing for the Beinarts and Zengerles of the world, his honest liberal and neoliberal defenders, to latch onto and make resonate. Into that bemused void flowed Peretz and Kagan and Marshall Wittman to sound their angry, out-of-touch death knells for a Democrat.
There's a special kind of cluelessness at work here and it's got nothing to do with the "angry left" or the "sensible center". So long, Joe.
1 Comments:
You feel sorry for Joe the same way you can feel sorry for Scoop Jackson or Hubert Humphrey or Lyndon Johnson. Progessive domestically but wacked when it came to foreign politics.
Imperialism is the Republican party's strong suit since World War II. Democrats have either half-heartedly or ham-handedly followed where the GOP has stomped.
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