“Dead With Ned”
By amba | Related entries in Elections, Foreign Policy, General Politics, The War On Terrorism, WarMincing no words, Jacob Weisberg in Slate opines that, contra all the triumphal Kos crowing, Ned Lamont’s victory in the Connecticut senatorial primary bodes very ill for the Dems:
This is a signal event that will have a huge and lasting negative impact on the Democratic Party. The result suggests that instead of capitalizing on the massive failures of the Bush administration, Democrats are poised to re-enact a version of the Vietnam-era drama that helped them lose five out six presidential elections between 1968 and the end of the Cold War. [...]
The election was about one issue and one issue only: the war in Iraq. [ ... ]
Lieberman’s opponents are not entirely wrong about the war. The invasion of Iraq was, in ways that have since become hard to dispute, a terrible mistake. [ ... ] The problem for the Democrats is that the anti-Lieberman insurgents go far beyond simply opposing Bush’s faulty rationale for the war, his dishonest argumentation for it, and his incompetent execution of it. Many of them appear not to take the wider, global battle against Islamic fanaticism seriously. They see Iraq purely as a symptom of a cynical and politicized right-wing response to Sept. 11, as opposed to a tragic misstep in a bigger conflict. Substantively, this view indicates a fundamental misapprehension of the problem of terrorism. Politically, it points the way to perpetual Democratic defeat.
Say it, brother. Read it, guys. Weisberg runs through the remarkable parallels to the Vietnam era (right down to the presence of Lamont’s great-uncle Corliss as a supporter of George McGovern), and concludes:
Whether Democrats can avoid playing their Vietnam video to the end depends on their ability to project military and diplomatic toughness in place of the elitism and anti-war purity represented in 2004 by Howard Dean and now by Ned Lamont.
The day after the airplane terror plot was foiled, a Connecticut friend of mine who voted for Lamont said to me plaintively, “They [the Bushies] are so lucky!” Meaning that real-world events keep oh-so-conveniently playing into their political hands. It’s the emotional logic that, one step further along, fuels the conspiracy theories: somehow Bush and Blair must have orchestrated the timing of this terror bust to smack down the surging peace movement. Alas, this is the worst kind of wishful thinking. The threat is real. The Republicans aren’t manufacturing it, they’re capitalizing on it because the majority of American voters have the good sense to recognize that we are at war. The only way for Democrats to win national elections is to vow to win the war by fighting it smarter, better, and wiser. The war cannot be wished away.
UPDATE: OMG, I hadn’t read Cicero’s post, below, until after I wrote this one. Case . . . In . . . Point.
This entry was posted on Friday, August 11th, 2006 and is filed under Elections, Foreign Policy, General Politics, 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 11th, 2006 at 7:09 pm
Well, firstly, Weisberg should have posted this disclaimer, like he did in 2004:
“I’ll acknowledge a longstanding soft spot for Lieberman. I have this feeling partly because I’m closer to his views on most issues than I am to any of the other candidates’, but also because unlike most of my friends who find him cloying and sanctimonious, I’ve always found him witty and disarming. Remember his convention speech in 2000? Lieberman was the perfect tummler for Al Gore, who turned out to be the real drag on what should have been a sure-fire Democratic ticket.”
http://www.slate.com/id/2094064/entry/2094088/
Perfect tummler? Lieberman was so lame, especially in the discussion with cheney, that he lost precious votes for the ticket. Soft spot, shmoft shmot, Weisberg should at least try to cling to the truth.
Secondly, how sane is an editor who one psychoanalyzed Hillary based on her iPod list? http://www.slate.com/id/2142359/
That must have been a frist, it’s as crazy as brain diagnosis via TV.
Lastly, why listen to this guy now when he has a record of changing his mind completely only a few moinths later, like he did in Jan. 2004?
“For my part, I have indeed changed my mind this week. I no longer think I was correct to support Bush’s invasion of Iraq last March. That’s hard for me to say, since as I noted at the outset, I’ve itched to depose Saddam Hussein by violent means, since 1991. But Bush was the wrong president to do it, and last year was the wrong momentâ€â€?based on problems I didn’t perceive clearly enough because of my impatience to see our unfinished business in Iraq finally completed.”
http://www.slate.com/id/2143331/
Hey, generally, we expect editors of a reputation like Weisberg’s to know what they are talking about. But in this case his ‘soft spot’ for Lieberman may turn out to be a solid log in his eye.
August 11th, 2006 at 7:15 pm
Btw, imho Centrists will end in the trash can with Lieberman :P
August 11th, 2006 at 9:48 pm
This article and all articles in the main stream press seem to neglect the facts in order to fuel the war machine in America ! These being that as signatories to the Project for a New American Century ,the majority of Bushes cabinet stated in plain terms that they planned to invade the Middle East ,pre 911 ,in order to control the worlds largest oil supplies ,and thus establish American global dominance .Also that the 911 commission stated unequivocally that Iraq had NO CONNECTION to Al Qaeda ,which desired an end to secular governments in the region ,of which saddams was one .In a poll of 100 terrorism experts 84 said as a result of US foreign policies under the Bush administration the US is far less safe today .
August 12th, 2006 at 9:20 am
robert meichtry: “.Also that the 911 commission stated unequivocally that Iraq had NO CONNECTION to Al Qaeda”
“Responding to a presidential tasking, Clarke’s office sent a memo to Rice on September 18, titled “Survey of Intelligence Information on Any Iraq Involvement in the September 11 Attacks.” Rice’s chief staffer on Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, concurred in its conclusion that only some anecdotal evidence linked Iraq to al Qaeda. The memo found no “compelling case” that Iraq had either planned or perpetrated the attacks. It passed along a few foreign intelligence reports, including the Czech report alleging an April 2001 Prague meeting between Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer (discussed in chapter 7) and a Polish report that personnel at the headquarters of Iraqi intelligence in Baghdad were told before September 11 to go on the streets to gauge crowd reaction to an unspecified event. Arguing that the case for links between Iraq and al Qaeda was weak, the memo pointed out that Bin Ladin resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Finally, the memo said, there was no confirmed reporting on Saddam cooperating with Bin Ladin on unconventional weapons.”
http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch10.htm
This sounds a bit more nuanced than your description – sounds more like “there was some evidence, but it was far from conclusive”. Is there somewhere else in the report that you’re referring to?
August 12th, 2006 at 9:23 am
Poor rationale in this article. The fact is we’re suffering from the “politicized right-wing response to Sept. 11″–that’s God’s honest truth, in my opinion. In fact, I think we’re going about this entirely the wrong way, as do many security experts. We’ve crippled the organized Al Qaeda; continuing our “War” only strengthens and motivates individual cells that are harder to track. This is an article written to self-congratulate the war mongers.
August 12th, 2006 at 10:26 am
OK, every poll we see indicates dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq, with the number getting larger with every poll. Yet Republicans and “centrists” keep spouting this conventional wisdom that the only opponents of the war in the Demmocratic party are a lunatic fringe that is out of touch with America, and that running in opposition to the war is a death knell for the Dems. I’m curious as to where this wisdom comes from. I think a lot of people are looking at this like it’s still 2003. The Democrats don’t have to present a step by step plan to end the war. Why should they? The Republicans certainly haven’t. But it’s clear from the polls, and I think this will be borne out by polls in the next week or so that show the expected bump for Bush after the UK arrests fails to materialize, that the voters have wised up to the fact that the Democrats couldn’t do a worse job than the current crowd that has made a total hash of the situation, and that they might as well see what new leadership can do.
Articles like Weisberg’s reflect that DC consultant mentality, in which the Republicans have everyone cowed and fearful of looking like a “cut and runner.” The fact is that the voters are away ahead of those guys.
As for Lieberman, it may have been a one issue race to the rest of the country, but for anyone who actually pays attention to what the voters in Connecticut were saying, it was way more than one issue. And the notion that opposition to Liberman was based on his support for the war is pure Republican spin, which Weisberg repeats as gospel. There are other Democratic senators who support the war, and they haven’t attracted the kind of opposition Lieberman did. It was his undermining of the party, his siding with the Republicans on key issues like the bankruptcy bill (and please don’t give me that 90 percent BS. The vast majority of the votes in the Senate are not contentious or split on party lines. It’s the few key votes that matter) and his willingness to criticize his own party for opposing a Republican President. Not to mention his “Joe first” attitude, exemplified by the way he ran for VP and Senate at the same time. People around the country didn’t pay much attention to that, but Dems in Connecticut haven’t forgotten his willingness to throw away their vote and hand his seat to the Republicans, just to advance his own interests.
I understand the Republicans spinning this. It’s the lapdogs in the press who dutifully repeat the spin who are demonstrating once again how out of touch they are. They’re the last group that is still intimidated by the White House.
August 12th, 2006 at 11:16 am
From the quoting, “The problem for the Democrats is that the anti-Lieberman insurgents go far beyond simply opposing Bush’s faulty rationale for the war, his dishonest argumentation for it, and his incompetent execution of it.”
Sorry, what? Straight from the top ten Repub talking points, American voters are now considered “insurgents”. Does that mean our government is going to have to quell the insurgency?
When a majority of voters changes a political path, it is not an insurgency. It is called democracy.
August 12th, 2006 at 11:17 am
It’s funny that security experts were brought up because their opinion never gets heard. There was this massive, comprehensive poll about almost all aspects of politics last year that was very interesting because it was broken down by profession. The two most ironic things I found were that across the board, scientists and “religious leaders” (it didn’t have a more specific description) were by far the closest to each other in what they thought compared to the general populace, and that the worst ratings for Iraq and how the war on terror was being run came from international security experts. Unfortunately I’ve never read a comprehensive report on what security experts think is making us safer or not — the closest stuff comes on http://counterterrorismblog.org/
August 12th, 2006 at 11:25 am
It’s amazing how the media has glommed onto the current GOP talking points on Lieberman – that this was all about Bush and the war, rather than about Lieberman simply being out of touch with those who voted for him. Lieberman not only scolded his Democratic constituents for criticizing Bush policies on the war, but:
- His was one of the most vocal votes in favor of the Schiavo bill despite disapproval by 76% of Americans (which had to include his own constituents).
- He has favored school vouchers, and also flip-flopped on them.
- He voted for an end to debate on the most dangerously conservative Supreme Court justice appointments.
- He did the same for the bankruptcy bill, despite the statistical fact that most middle-class Americans declare bankruptcy because of overwhelming medical bills, not because of too many vacations to Aruba on their Visa card.
- He supported the energy bill that provided big subsidies to big oil, which is reaping shamelessly big profits right now.
- He voted in favor of Alberto “Torture is Okay” Gonzalez, Michael “Heckuva Job” Brown, and Condoleeza “Secretary of War/Peace – Same Thing” Rice.
- He supports free trade agreements that benefit foreign countries more than American workers.
- He has indicated he might favor Social Security privatization.
Does this sound like a Democrat? And the fact that his candidacy was endorsed by neoconservative extremists like Hannity, Coulter, Limbaugh, DeLay, O’Reilly, et al., should be the most telling of all.
It wasn’t *just* about the war.
August 12th, 2006 at 11:35 am
I do agree it wasn’t all about the war, and I had no idea Liberman stood for all those things! I don’t know if I support him too much anymore now but I won’t support Lamont either. Lamont is moderate on other things but he seems way too liberal on the wiretapping issue. Most democrats are mad about it not being legal, Lamont makes it seem like he is totally against it but I am not too sure. I don’t think this was too much of a signal of what’s going in the democratic party, I mean look at the McKinney race. Far Right-Conservatives keep talking about this meaning an end to moderates in the democratic party but what about Joe Schwarz’s loss and Lincon Chaffe and his dwindling support? I supported Schwarz and Chaffee is a big favorite of mine along with Snowe and McCain, does their lack of support send the message that moderates are not welcome in the republican party?