Lamont Wins: Political Strategy Implications
By Daniel DiRito | Related entries in Elections, Foreign Policy, General Politics, Polls, The War On Terrorism, WarOne thing is for certain about gambling…once the dice have been cast, it is impossible to withdraw one’s bet. Like it or not, the Democratic Party, by proxy, may have placed it’s November election bet three months early in the state of Connecticut. While the Democratic voters of Connecticut have spoken…which is as it should be…they may not have the final word on the fate of their candidate or their Party…though they may well have written the script.
Thought Theater has cautioned that a high profile national effort to unseat Joe Lieberman could well provide Republicans with an opportunity to spin the midterm election as a choice between anti-war, anti-moderate leftward change agents or middle of the road pragmatists focused on a resolution in Iraq that prevents a further acceleration of instability and a heightened security threat at home.
Some might argue that this would be a false choice…and while that may be a plausible argument, it may not be one that can win the support of a majority of voters. Let me offer an elaboration to explain that possibility. I expect Republicans to immediately challenge Ned Lamont, and by association the Democratic Party, to outline their position with regards to Iraq.
In the last week Jim Dean, a Lamont supporter, was unable to clarify the conflicting answers previously provided by Lamont. The uncertainty on that issue provides an opening to question if the candidate…and some within the Party…have simply used the issue for political gain. Unfortunately, the fact that the Democratic Party has failed to offer and Lamont has struggled to endorse a cogent position on Iraq will allow Republicans to spin the Connecticut outcome in one of two ways. First, some background from the transcript of the August 6th. Meet the Press discussion that points out the uncertainty of both the Democrat’s and Lamont’s Iraq position:
To read the full article at Thought Theater, link here:
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 9th, 2006 and is filed under Elections, Foreign Policy, General Politics, Polls, The War On Terrorism, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 9th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
I think any attempt to portray Lamont as representing the Democratic Party should fail on the logic, just as any attempt to portray, say, Lynn Westmoreland as representing Republicans should fail. He is one candidate. That’s all.
The problem with Democrats on Iraq — a problem that Republicans are increasingly encountering themselves — is that they are of divided opinions about the proper course in Iraq. So you’re probably not going to see some official, unified Democratic position on the war. Most Democrats — indeed, most Americans — agree that the war was a mistake. But there’s no consensus on what to do about it now that we’re there.
That doesn’t mean that Democrats don’t have opinions, or ideas, or plans. It’s just that they have different opinions, different ideas, different plans.
To me that’s the best possible Democratic response. “Stop looking for a party-level dictate; look at each individual candidate’s position.” It lets them continue to blast the GOP for getting us into this mess, and individual candidates won’t have to contend with the baggage of a party-line position.
August 9th, 2006 at 8:45 pm
I’m hoping this situation has the positive result of sparking a healthy debate about how we are going to deal with not only Iraq, but with the dysfunctional Arab/Islamic society as a whole. Lets face it, any religious-based society that glorifies hate, death and outright murder, brainwashes young kids that this kind of attitude and behavior is acceptable, riots over harmless cartoons, thinks beheading and mutalation of bodies is a wonderful thing, threatens to wipe the Jews and their nation off the face of the earth, offers brutal punishment for heresery against their religion, keeps their women as second class citizens (denies education and voting rights), forces their woman to walk around covered head-to-toe, finds honor killing of women acceptable, and sits on top of the mother load of oil but have a large part of their population uneducated and destitute, that is a truly dysfunctional society.
This is such a total opposite to the ideals of the democratic party, not to mention the rest of the civilized world. OK, how do we deal with that? I’m anxiously awaiting a realistic and sensible plan from any political party.
August 12th, 2006 at 8:48 am
Republicans like to say that the Democrats don’t have a strategy because it implies that the Republicans do have one. The Republicans pretty much have fear mongering and xenophobia but has anybody heard a of their plan? It’s non existant. They do have constantly shifting goals: WMD’s, regime change, democracy; all those things have been “accomplished”. The Republicans (and some Democrats) are certainly right about one thing: if the US military pulls out too soon, all those “accomplishments” will vaporize.