I'll remove this diary if it is a repeat. Just tell me. Tried a search without a hit. Major noob here. This is David Brooks tonight on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer on the Lieberman-Lamont debate.
Lehrer: Do you agree it's a national race now David? And there's more involved here than just Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont?
Brooks: Yeah, this is what we're going to have for two years. We're going to have independents, whether it's Joe Lieberman in Connecticut, or nationally Hillary Clinton or John McCain or Rudy Giuliani, who are sort of centrist heterodox members of their party fighting the hard cores. And Joe Lieberman...
Lehrer: Some on the right. Some on the left.
Brooks: Right. And this is a precursor for what we're going to see nationally. This is Joe Lieberman, who has been bipartisan, but who has been a strong liberal, who's got the endorsements from the Human Rights Campaign, from Planned Parenthood, who has a Christian Coalition rating of zero. And he's being challenged as not a liberal. And I think the reason he was so aggressive, and I agree he was tremendously aggressive; I was surprised by how aggressive he is. He's saying to himself: I've been a liberal for 35 years. I was in Mississippi marching 30 years ago. And this guy comes in and tells me I'm not a Democrat... I'm not a liberal? So I think he's highly agitated and angry.
He's also agitated and angry, and anybody would be, by the vitriolic and vicious attacks he's withstood for the past two or three years, which can't be repeated on the television. He's been the subject of an internet assault which is unprecedented. So he's a guy who's pretty energized.
Lehrer: What has he done to Democrats who want to be the next President of the United States and making a decision about whether they support him now, whether they support Lamont, whether they're going to support the nominee if Lamont happens to beat Lieberman and Lieberman goes as an independent?
Brooks: Well he's made life difficult especially for Hillary Clinton. Because in my conversations --we're talking about the netsroots [sic], who are the real problems for Lieberman, people generated by the Daily Kos and other web sites-- I find privately most of the Democrats despise those people because of the way they practice politics so viciously that they don't want to get in the crosshairs. And they don't want to offend the liberal base of primary voters. So they want to support Joe Lieberman, but they don't want to get in the crosshairs. So a few have come out, Barbara Boxer, Joe Biden, couple others have come out strongly for him, others, Hillary Clinton has sort of been on both sides, others just won't commit.
It's interesting for me as a political novice to ponder how Brooks might consider that his commentary would be received as ringing with verisimilitude (even for one who has not followed the ongoing exchange here on dKos). He really must be living in his own world.