Today's NYT op-ed by Paul Krugman, "Don't Make Nice," is a general message to the Democratic Party about how foolish and irresponsible it has been under current one-party rule for Democratic enablers of the radical Bush agenda to try to reach across the aisle to their current Republican counterparts. But the hidden memo is aimed right at Joe Lieberman and at those Connecticut voters who still believe that when the other party is trying to dismantle the Constitution, squash every principle of fairness, and chip away at every New Deal policy that helps provide economic security for the working/middle class that Democrats hold sacred, that Joe's brand of "bipartisanship" is a virtue and not the betrayal it really is.
Now that the Democrats are strongly favored to capture at least one house of Congress, they're getting a lot of unsolicited advice, with many people urging them to walk and talk softly if they win. I hope the Democrats don't follow this advice -- because it's bad for their party and, more important, bad for the country. In the long run, it's even bad for the cause of bipartisanship.
The message is not that Democrats should be mean and uncooperative with those on the other side who genuinely seek compromises that can more the country forward. The problem is that the current Republican Party, and especially this Republican White House, simply don't function in any manner in which true bipartisanship can we worthwhile.
The reason we have so much bitter partisanship these days is that that's the way the radicals who have taken over the Republican Party want it. People like Grover Norquist, who once declared that "bipartisanship is another name for date rape," push for a hard-right economic agenda; people like Karl Rove make that agenda politically feasible, even though it's against the interests of most voters, by fostering polarization, using religion and national security as wedge issues.
As long as polarization is integral to the G.O.P.'s strategy, Democrats can't do much, if anything, to narrow the partisan divide.
The truth is that we won't get a return to bipartisanship until or unless the G.O.P. decides that polarization doesn't work as a political strategy. . . [so] the best thing the Democrats can do, not just for their party and their country, but for the cause of bipartisanship, is what Truman did: stand up strongly for their principles.
But Joe Lieberman just doesn't get it. He continues to claim that he and only he can be trusted to reach across the aisle to form bipartisan alliances that can benefit the country. Yet Lieberman's record shows that he can't be trusted on the precise issue he has made central to his campaign. He can't be trusted, because the very policies on which Joe has played this role have been ones in which he didn't just reach across the aisle while holding firm to principles; instead he betrayed those principles and stepped across the aisle to join the other side on some of the worst foreign and domestic policy disasters of our life times.
Joe's is not a record one can be proud of. From his blind support for the mindless and catastrophic Bush war in Iraq, to his unquestioning support for the ill-fated Iraeli incursion into Lebanon and dragging our feet on a ceasefire that would stop the killing and the destruction of Lebanon, to his votes and continuing defense of the corporate tax give-aways of the Energy Bill, to the corporate give-away to lenders over consumers in the Bankruptcy Bill, to his dissembling support/opposition to privatizing Social Security, to his missing the votes that might have closed the Medicare donut hole or allowed the government to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices, to his unconscionable vote for the bill to legalize Bush's detainee torture programs and repeal the rights of habeas corpus, to his "I voted for Alito before I voted against him" flip/flop, Joe Lieberman has enabled the worst elements of the radical Bush agenda.
This is not "bipartisanship," because Joe didn't get a thing back from the other side, let alone hold to his principles. Instead, he just joined the other side, and betrayed Democratic principles, and the nation's better interests, at every turn.
Ned Lamont understands this. He's exactly where Krugman thinks Democrats ought to be - not some extremist, as Karl Rove and Cheney want to portray him. Lamont is a threat to the Rove/Cheney/Lieberman mindset precisely because they know his positions are right in the mainstream of the country, and exactly the opposite of where Lieberman has been.
It is astonishing that much of the Connecticut press is still giving Joe Lieberman a free pass on what ought to be an albatross rather than his principal merit badge. But it's just possible that the media are starting to catch on, especially now that they are looking closely at Lieberman's financial disclosure statements, which show just how much of Lieberman's current campaign is being financed by the same corporate interests that wanted the Energy bill, the Bankruptcy bill, the Medicare drug bill without negotiated checks on prices, and worst of all - the war lobby - whose multi-billion dollar contracting scams will doubtless dominate Congressioinal hearings and the media for the next several years. We're only now starting to see the tip of that corrupt iceberg. Yet Joe's views on all these issue are not the views of Americans let alone the progressive state of Connecticut. From Krugman:
American voters deserve to have their views represented in Congress. And according to opinion polls, most Americans are actually to the left of Congressional Democrats on issues such as health care.
In particular, the public wants politicians to stand up to corporate interests. This is clear from the latest Newsweek poll, which shows overwhelming public support for the agenda Nancy Pelosi has laid out for her first 100 hours if she becomes House speaker. The strongest support is for her plan to have Medicare negotiate with drug companies for lower prices, which is supported by 74 percent of Americans -- and by 70 percent of Republicans!
What the make-nice crowd wants most of all is for the Democrats to forswear any investigations into the origins of the Iraq war and the cronyism and corruption that undermined it. But it's very much in the national interest to find out what led to the greatest strategic blunder in American history, so that it won't happen again.
What's more, the public wants to know. A large majority of Americans believe both that invading Iraq was a mistake, and that the Bush administration deliberately misled us into war. And according to the Newsweek poll, 58 percent of Americans believe that investigating contracting in Iraq isn't just a good idea, but a high priority; 52 percent believe the same about investigating the origins of the war.
Krugman's got it right. Joe isn't "bipartisan," he's an enabler of the worst of the current regime, and it's hurting the country. It's time for Joe to go.