Matt Stoller's brother is a comedic screenwriter. I didn't know the talent
ran in the family.
Lieberman soon arrived in his charmless bus, which is inexplicably called 'Joe's Tomorrow Tour' in some strange ode to Epcot. I expect if you enter the bus, you can take a guided tour of an odd and dated vision of the future, where children from all over the world will live in undersea caves and space ports, though weirdly enough there aren't cell phones or the internet [...]
After all the politicos had spoken, Lieberman finally stepped up to the mike. Lieberman's speech was bad, weird, listless, and angry. He said that there are two big lies in this campaign. The first is apparently that Lieberman is not a Democrat. For the record, we call him George Bush's favorite Democrat, though we tend to acknowledge that he's a Democrat. After repeating the the mean liberal voices he hears in his head, Lieberman said something along the lines of 'I'm a Democrat, I believe in human rights, in government working for the people, etc.' What's hilarious about Lieberman's point is that he not only violated campaign speak 101, which is that you don't repeat your opponent's attacks on you, but he actually invented a new attack line and used it on himself so he could deny it.
The second big apparent slap is even weirder. 'The other big lie in this campaign is that I am George Bush.' With special emphasis, Lieberman said slowly, 'I. am. not. George. Bush.' How do you even respond to that? It's like Lieberman is running against the Chewbacca defense. He's just picking facts about himself, not positions or anything like that, just simple human facts, and saying that we are lying about them. Here's a three line play I wrote to illustrate the dynamic:
Enter Joe Lieberman, stage right
Lieberman: My opponent says I am made of wax. I am not made of wax, that is a total fabrication!
The world: What are you talking about?
awkward pause
The End
In the rest of his speech, Lieberman referred repeatedly to his work in the 1960s marching and registering voters in the South. Even this didn't work, since most people in the semi-crowd weren't actually alive in the the early 1960s. At a certain point during the anecdote, one of his staffers shouted out derisively 'Where was Ned?' Lieberman grinned and said 'That's a good question, where was Ned?' While not a devastating blow, it does seem reasonable to wonder why Ned Lamont wasn't in the South in the early 1960s registering voters like Joe Lieberman was. Apparently, Ned's lame excuse is that he was in elementary school.
The whole thing is a riot. Now Stoller wrote that there was about 75 people there, with 30-45 of them being paid staff, band members, politicians, and political operatives. I wondered if Matt had exaggerated the patheticness of the event, but it turns out he might've overestimated the number of Lieberman supporters, as a more journalistic accounting of the event by Paul Bass suggests.
Joe Lieberman failed to attract even a dozen genuine neighborhood supporters to an anemic reelection campaign rally in his New Haven hometown's Dixwell section Monday.
Meanwhile, the Connecticut Bloggers' Kiss float was part of the drama, as two cops acted as Lieberman thugs and tried to get the vehicle out of sight of Lieberman's "rally". Both Stoller and Bass recount the event. Stoller:
After we got to the address of the event, a bunch of cops came up to us and said something to the effect of 'you're not driving that thing around here, right?' And we were kind of dumbfounded, since it's a public road. After some discussion, we saw that the next door over there was a house with a Ned Lamont sign on it and we asked if we could park in the driveway. The girl who answered the door said yes.
We parked it in the yard.
The cops didn't like this very much, since the float was in full view of the event. The cops started arguing with us, and said that what we were doing was criminal trespassing, and we needed to leave immediately. I was in a bit of shock because I'm not used to cops yelling at me, but Ed was a lot cooler headed, and pointed out that we had gotten permission from the homeowner. Several police officers stood around sort of growling, while one of them confronted the girl at home. When she said that we had permission, the cop demanded she get her mother on the phone. The cop and the mother talked for a few minutes, and I was getting ready for us to go, but the cop suddenly said 'you have permission to stay here'. Go Mom!
And Bass:
A reporter -- me -- happened to be watching and taking photos. [Officer Herb] Sharp ordered me to leave the area. He claimed (falsely) that I was in his way. (I was standing behind him.) He said I was "interfering." When I refused, he told me to speak to his supervisor, Sgt. Anthony Duff. Duff came forward and denied that Sharp had told me to leave, only to stay out of his way. Sharp proceeded to knock on the door of the home and speak to two teen-aged girls. Their mom wasn't home. One of the girls went to take away the Lamont sign from the front yard.
I asked Sgt. Duff why the display couldn't remain parked in the yard. He responded that the police had previously worked out security arrangements with the public-housing complex's management. (The area was festooned with Joe Lieberman campaign signs, including some held by members of Sgt. Duff's family.) "Our job here is to keep the peace," Duff sasid. Why can't tenants allow someone to park in their driveway? "There are teenagers here. The head of the household isn't here," he responded. One of the teen-agers called her mom. Her mom said yes, she was happy to have the pro-Lamonters' display in her driveway.
Duff relented.
So quite the event -- no one shows up to his big event other than the hired help, a bunch of politicians, and maybe 12 community members, while Lieberman's campaign got two cops to act as his personal thugs.
Man, remember when I talked about Lieberman's campaign turning the corner? His field team may or may not be as good as advertised (we'll find out in a week), but the rest of his operation is still misfiring badly. Remember, Team Joe has the same Democratic establishment on his side that has led to the current dearth of Democrats in DC.
Update: See Ned on the Colbert Report.