I listen to Ed Schultz's radio show every day. Since I realized that there was an alternative in the area to
local right-wing gasbags, Big Eddie has been a fixture in my afternoon repertoire. Each day at 3 p.m., I look forward to his views on the issues of the day, from matters as pressing as Iraq to those as trivial as his many fishing trips. He confronts topics head-on, offering his many listeners a no-strings-attached chance to debate the host. His mic is open and so, typically, is his mind.
But I had to scratch my head yesterday when I heard Schultz say, about the race between Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont, "And I think what we're seeing here is a struggle. And I'm not in the middle of it. But for some reason, it just seems to me that the blogosphere is doing everything they possibly can to make life miserable for Joe Lieberman." To be sure, Schultz has some strong positions on the blogosphere. But you would never guess why he thinks the blogs are going after Lieberman.
Schultz
began Monday's show by responding to an R.J. Eskow
column on the Huffington Post taking the leftie talker to task for, in his view, adopting right-wing spin in support of Lieberman. Friday, Eskow paraphrased Schultz as mentioning that Lieberman voted with the Democrats 90 percent of the time, then asking "what is enough" for some people? A higher percentage? In response, Eskow said, "'What's enough' is whatever Connecticut's primary voters say is enough. Period. If Ned Lamont can convince a majority of primary voters on Aug. 8 that Lieberman doesn't represent them, for any reason - then that's enough. It's called 'democracy.'"
Schultz responded during Monday's monologue, maintaining that he hasn't endorsed either candidate in the race, also mentioning that, while he supports Lamont's views on redeployment, censure and North Korea, he did think that Lieberman defeated his challenger during last week's debate. To Big Eddie, this is about how big the Democratic Party's tent really is. It's also about his thoughts as to the netroots' motivation behind their widespread support for Lamont, whose surge has forced Lieberman to plan to abandon his party and run as an independent should the challenger win the primary. The motivation? 2004.
"This is all about Iowa and Howard Dean and how Joe Lieberman really, relentlessly went after Dean and the bloggers have never forgotten it," Schultz said, later adding, "He was aggressive. He went after Dean on every position. And the blogosphere obviously mounted the attack and the support of Howard Dean, obviously because he's a grassroots guy and he represents what he claims to be the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. ... But I think there's a little angst in all of those on the far left in dealing with the blogs and I believe it has morphed into something even bigger than that, to the point where 'It's all about Lieberman and we're going to prove it and we're going to do a get-back.' This seems to me to be a 100 percent get-back."
When I heard that, I did a double-take. Iowa? While Schultz is on the right side of things on so many issues, I found this lack of awareness stunning. How could someone like Schultz, who clearly has his finger on the pulse of many Americans, show such a tin ear for why many - including the blogosphere - oppose Lieberman. "We are not against Joe Lieberman because we are leftists who require ideological purity," as Cenk Uygur said so well. "We are against him because he aids and abets an out of control Republican Party." And Uygur, a true centrist Democrat, offered a very accurate assessment of why people like him, and many others, oppose Lieberman.
To Uygur, it's not just that Lieberman has sided with the right on the most pressing issue facing America. It's that the senator has carved out a niche of being the right's favorite Fox News Democrat. The same Fox News Democrat who parroted his right-wing friends when he said last year, "It's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge he'll be commander-in-chief for three more years. We undermine the president's credibility at our nation's peril." The same Fox News Democrat who appears alongside Sean Hannity nearly as often as does Alan Colmes. The same Fox News Democrat Ann Coulter wholeheartedly endorsed. Yes, the war matters. So does the Supreme Court. But it's about much more than that. It's also about Lieberman's willingness to give the Republican Party bipartisan cover for its disastrous policies.
Yet, to Schultz, pointing out our opposition to Lieberman brands us as a pack of wolves out to get the senator, doing so as revenge for the 2004 Democratic primaries. That, to me, is laughable. Schultz, whose show is a testament to vigorous debate, should recognize the blogosphere for what it is, not what it's not. We're not a nameless, faceless lynch mob out to settle political scores for our boss. We're part of the new face of American politics. We represent a new approach, an open-source philosophy that appreciates the impact an everyday, average American can have on the political process. A philosophy that respects the power a motivated group of these Americans can have when they organize behind their ideas. A philosophy that rejects the notion that the only acceptable conventional wisdom comes from inside the Beltway.
In fact, fuck the Beltway. Beltway thinking got us into Iraq and kept us there 2,500-plus deaths past Mission Accomplished. Beltway thinking has America locked in a staredown with Iran and North Korea. Beltway thinking has taken away our rights and has turned the government from our friend into our enemy. Behind this tragic transformation has been the Republican Party. And behind the Republican Party have been willing accomplices like Lieberman. If participation in my small corner of the blogosphere has taught me anything, it's that we no longer have to sit back and take it as people like Lieberman undercut the party while claiming to support it. We don't have to take it or leave it anymore. We don't have to buy the rocks with the farm. This rock, Lieberman's rock, is too big a boulder for our farm to sustain.
We're not trying to throw Lieberman under the bus, nor are we trying to shrink the size of our tent. We're also not taking our marching orders from the top, either from atop the Democratic Party or atop the blogosphere. No, we're fostering an open debate on the issues, the very type of dialogue Schultz champions. Why not get it all out there and let the people decide, something Big Eddie has said over and over? To paint this as an across-the-board personality attack against Lieberman is to insult the very motivations for Connecticut Democrats to support Lamont. To couch this election in those terms is to adopt right-wing frames and allow them to marginalize as extremists those taking part in a movement that embraces the best aspects of our democracy. It's too bad Schultz doesn't recognize that.