Lieberman's Waris a long article that just came out. The most interesting tidbit is this:
The good news for him is that Bill Clinton, whom Lieberman was quick to attack after the Lewinsky scandal, has agreed to come to Connecticut this week to try to shore up Lieberman's Democratic credentials. (Though Hillary won't support Lieberman as an independent, she's the one who arranged her husband's visit after Lieberman cornered her on the Senate floor and asked for her help.) "Clinton is Mr. Democrat, the last great successful national Democratic leader," says Lieberman with relief. "I think he will be very important to any Democrats who may be troubled by the allegations that Lamont is making."
When Lieberman was busy back-stabbing Clinton, did he really believe Clinton was the 'last great national democratic leader'? More on the flip.
For Lieberman, it's all about power and ego.
But when Susan Voight, the New Haven Democratic chairwoman, brightly complimented the senator on a recent union endorsement, he couldn't help but think of the endorsements he hasn't gotten. "There are people who really disappoint you, you trusted them, you thought they were friends," he said quietly. "Then there are the people who don't forget you."
"For Joe, this is the perfect storm," says one prominent Connecticut politician. "He's on the wrong side of most Democrats on the big issue of the day, Iraq. And he's spent years going around the country making speeches and not coming home. People would have put up with Joe on the war, but they needed to hear him."
Lamont has taken advantage of such sentiments. His campaign manager, Tom Swan, sent him off to 50 small towns in Connecticut this winter, all the places that hadn't seen Lieberman in years. It was a smart gambit, and at the Connecticut Democratic Convention in May, Lamont won 33 percent of the vote--he only needed 15 percent to get on the ballot--which gave him instant credibility
More evidence on Lieberman's ego and poor judgement...
Lieberman fretted for weeks about the decision to go independent. One adviser tried to talk Lieberman out of it, worried that the ploy might alienate rank-and-file Democrats who would perceive him as dissing his party. But his son and confidant Matt, 36, the headmaster of a Jewish day school in Atlanta, urged him to go for it. "My father's in a fight," Matt said, "and he'll do what he needs to do."
As Lieberman headed off to make his announcement on July 3 in front of the State House in Hartford, an aide told him, "I don't know if this will kill us or help us." Lieberman just smiled in reply. Many years ago, as a teenager waging a successful run for high-school class president, he printed up posters showing him crouched on his parents' roof with the slogan VOTE OR I'LL JUMP. And so he jumped.
"Joe bolting the party is a stark admission that things have gone terribly awry in Lieberman land," says George Jepsen, a former Connecticut Democratic Party chairman who backs Lamont. A Democratic senator from another state said disapprovingly, "Look, you're part of the Democratic Party or you're not. Once you move away, you're making yourself more important than what you're supposedly doing. Is it more important for the individual to be in the Senate or the ideals and principles you represent?"
It's interesting to hear what was the tipping point for Lamont to jump in this race. I almost forgot Lieberman's another sin - this Terri Schiavo insanity...
Lamont, who contributed to Lieberman's presidential campaign in 2003, says that it was a series of eureka moments that made him decide to run against him. Event One was turning on Meet the Press in March 2005 and hearing the senator solemnly insist that the government was right to intervene in the fight over removing Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. Lamont was appalled.
Event Two was Lieberman's gung ho Iraq-war op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last year, which presented a rosy picture of progress (satellite dishes on the roofs!) and criticized Democrats who focus on how Bush took the country to war rather than being "concerned" about succeeding there. "I called all the political guys I knew in the state and said, `One of you guys ought to run,' " Lamont recalls. "People told me, `It's impossible. If you feel so strongly, you do it.' "
His wife, Annie, was caught off guard when, in late December, "Ned rolled over in bed and told me he was thinking of running." They stayed up most of the night talking. Annie, who has three children with Ned and is a longtime partner of the venture-capital firm Oak Investment Partners, was worried about the loss of privacy--"Your first reaction is to be ill"--but she gave him her blessing.
As Lieberman loyalist and former Democratic Party chair John Droney says dismissively, "He's a well-intentioned rich fool. Just because his great-granddaddy made a lot of money and he went to Exeter and Harvard, suddenly he wants to sit on the Armed Services Committee?"
Lamont can come across as a bit naïve: Asked what he hopes to accomplish in Washington beyond bringing troops home from Iraq, he enthuses, "If I could be on one committee that makes a difference, it would be education. There are too many good jobs leaving the country." But he says he's doing his homework, consulting with former Reagan Pentagon official Lawrence Korb, a host of analysts at the Brookings Institution, and even failed Democratic presidential contender Mike Dukakis. "I'm trying to expand my reach the best I can," he says. "Let's face it, the Democratic Party in Washington, D.C., is not setting me up with briefing papers." Korb, now at a left-leaning think tank, the Center for American Progress, believes Lamont is up to the job. "Ned's a very quick study, he asks a lot of probing questions." And Korb can't resist adding that he briefed Lieberman on defense, too, shortly after the senator was elected eighteen years ago. "The first time I went to see Senator Lieberman, he wasn't up to speed on weapons issues."
Give me a fucking break. Do you really believe Lieberman can tell cannon from missile? I highly doubt it. He's too busy boozing with insurance tycoons.
What's fanned the flames of this party alienation is Lieberman's perceived closeness to the president. The photo of George Bush embracing the senator and kissing him on the cheek after the January 2005 State of the Union address has caused Lieberman endless grief. Lamont's supporters have created buttons featuring the kiss with the caption TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT. "Bush's idiotic embrace of Lieberman has given a distorted picture of their relationship," says Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic and a longtime friend of the senator. "A kiss is just a kiss, but this was not a politically astute move."
Lieberman says Bush was simply saying, "Thank you for being a patriotic American," in response to Lieberman's willingness to stand up in support of Bush's comments about the war while his Democratic colleagues stayed glued to their seats. "It's a silly business in that session, so childish: One side stands, the other doesn't," Lieberman says. In any case, "I don't think he kissed me." The truth of his relationship with Bush, Lieberman says, is that "we're not close.
Those quotes from Leon Wieseltier are extremely interesting. It seems to me Lieberman and his DLC cabals really have some sort of secret alliance with George Bush.
Then the final nail in Lieberman's coffin, he's still repeating those tiring 'democrats are weak on defense' right-wing talking points.
In his mind, he is not just fighting for reelection but for the soul and the future of the party--and therefore the fight must be won at any cost. "What kind of Democratic Party are we going to have?" he asks. "You've got to agree 100 percent, or you're not a good Democrat?" In his view, Lamont is not suitable for office not just because he has no experience on the Hill, but also because he's a polarizing figure who will push the Democrats further into the margins. "Unless the party has room for people like me," continues Lieberman, "unless the party begins to redeem some public confidence on issues of national security, we're not going to elect a Democratic president or Congress ahead."
Lieberman says the absence of weapons of mass destruction has not changed his feelings about the rightness of the U.S. invasion. "Saddam was a mass murderer, he invaded two neighboring countries, he supported terrorists, he had a plan to dominate the Middle East and control oil prices. We are better off with Saddam gone," he says, noting that he also backed the American march to Baghdad in 1991 in response to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. "I supported the overthrow of Saddam before George Bush was president."