UPDATE: Blogometer posted the version of this I sent to them. You can see it at the link below.
In this recent post to the Hotline Blogometer, the author accuses Markos of hypocricy in his support of Lamont against Lieberman:
"The larger lesson Markos took from the story is that Dems ought not sacrifice winning candidates to the whims of single issue groups.
There's just one problem. Substitute "Iraq" for "abortion" and "CT" for "RI" and suddenly Markos becomes everything he hates about the Democratic Party."
I don't know if or how Markos will respond, but as this seems like an accusation directed at the whole Netroots left, I felt moved to respond...
Here is the email I wrote to the Blogometer:
I don't know how Markos will resond to your assertion that he is applying an Iraq litmus test to all Democrats, in contradiction of his "big tent" Democratic philosophy. But here is my personal response: What makes Lieberman so hurtful to the Democratic party is not his stance on the Iraq war. Other Democrats like Hillary Clinton have a similar stance on the war, and they do not attract the ire that Liberman does. We may disagree with Clinton on this issue, but we're not funding a primary challenger or otherwise trying to get her out of the Senate.
The reason Markos, myself, and other members of the progressive movement want to take Lieberman out is that despite his voting record, he often offers the Republican extremists "bi-partisan" cover, and says things like "we [Democrats] undermine the president's credibility at our peril." This propagates the ludicrous Republican meme that it is somehow wrong to criticize Bush. He, on the other hand, is often heard criticising Democrats, and seems more concerned with ingratiating himself with the administration than with the Democratic party. He hasn't even agreed to support the winner of the Democratic primary if it isn't him! He has been unwilling to rule out running as an Independent agaisnt the Democratic candidate. That is why we don't like him. Not because he fails some issue-based litmus-test that we're secretly holding everyone to.
To futher illustrate this point, I offer the example of Senate Minority Leader Harrry Reid. Ideologically, he's more conservative than the Netroots Left would like, and as far as I know he's more conservative than Lieberman. But he's in the tent because he's been willing to fight the Republicans. Not as much as the netroots left wishes he would, but we know but he's on our side. We don't have that confidence in Lieberman, and there's no reason a Sentor from blue-as-it-gets CT shouldn't be a reliable Democrat, both in voting record and in public stance.
No matter how big we make the tent (and I think it should be big), we can't include someone who is taking an axe to the tent itself! And Lieberman has been willing to do so with staggering regularity. The common thread that unites the candidates supported by the Netroots is that they're proud to be Democrats.
-Zachary Drake
zdrake on DailyKos
http://zdrake.blogspot.com/