This morning my right-winger uncle back in Missouri forwarded me an article saying we here in CT were "wackadoos" for voting out Joe Lieberman, and attacking left-wing blogs. I penned a response to him and realized that it encapsulated my feelings on this race, about blogging, and about politics in general. I post it here for you to enjoy. (My first diary, btw!)
I don't really want to get into this with you, because I don't think I'm going to change your mind and you are DEFINITELY not going to change my mind, and I'm glad you don't think I'm a wackadoo and we can still love each other.
On the other hand, I've been working my ass off for Ned Lamont for months now, and I am disappointed to hear you just repeat a bunch of right-wing talking points that have little to no basis in reality. So I guess I'll just go through all your e-mail and answer stuff one by one.
First, that you don't get the disdain I have for Joe Lieberman. I could (and have) write pages and pages about this, but I guess I'll just respond to the "one issue" comment. In the first place, this one issue (and I assume you're talking about the war here) is a huge issue. Recent polls show dissatisfaction with the war between 66% and 80% nationwide, and in the Democratic party here in CT, the Q-poll released on the day before the primary showed that, while 36% of Lamont supporters said the war was their main reason for supporting him, 54% said it was just one of many reasons.
I fall squarely in that 54%. A) The war is terrible. I hate it. I hate what Bush has done to this country, and to our standing in the world with his horrible, failed foreign policy. I hate that Joe Lieberman is such a fan of the war. B) The war itself is not just a single issue. It's not a single issue to the 2500 soldiers dead or the thousands of Iraqi civilians. It's not a single issue when we're spending $250,000,000 a day on it while my students don't have books to read that aren't falling apart and while Jennifer has to borrow money from me to go to the doctor because we are the only industrialized nation left in the world without universal health care. C) I hate Joe Lieberman's longtime stance on censorship (cheerleader for the PMRC, idiotic comments about rock music, etc...this is one thing I would think you might agree with me about). D) I hate Joe Lieberman's support for vouchers and for the No Child Left Behind act. E) I hate Joe Lieberman's vote for cloture on the Alito nomination. F) I hate that Joe Lieberman said that it was okay for hospitals not to provide emergency contraception to rape victims because it was "just a short ride" to another hospital. G) I hate that Joe Lieberman has never answered any of my numerous letters to him. Republican senators in Missouri used to answer my letters, at least to say thanks for writing. Joe and his office were so smug and arrogant that they felt they didn't need to listen to or care about his constituents anymore. H) I hate that Joe Lieberman takes so much money from lobbyists for pharmaceutical companies and big energy conglomerates. I) Speaking of which, I hate that Joe voted for Dick Cheney's energy bill.
Okay, I feel like I could go on, but that's a start. Oh, but I forgot your assertion that Joe has a "high liberal rating" in the Senate. The stat about voting with Democrats 90% of the time is bogus. Take, for instance, Joe's vote on Clarence Thomas. Joe left the room, waited until it was clear his vote wouldn't matter, came back in, and voted against Thomas's appointment. This is just one example of the way Joe makes sure his votes won't hurt his "liberal" record before he takes them. It's his way of being politically expedient without compromising his love for conservative issues. Look at Alito: It cost him nothing to vote against Alito...the nomination was in the bag. But when it really mattered, when the Democrats were putting together a filibuster fight, he not only refused to filibuster, but was the only Democrat to vote for cloture (to finish the argument and put it to a vote). Right there it would have cost him nothing just to keep quiet. Instead he undermined what the Democrats were doing.
Okay, next: about blogging. Do you really read the blogs? The liberal blogs are NOT, as the crazy conservatives would like to think, some big monolithic enterprise steamrolling through the internets. They are, instead, like the conversation you might have in your living room, but instead they take place online. Are they powerful? Sure. Do the candidates for office have any control over them? Not at all. I blog. I have probably said things like, "Joe Lieberman is a douchebag" or "Joe Lieberman can suck it, and here's why." Is this vitriolic? Sure. I do feel angry with Joe. I don't hate him personally, though, I'm just being irreverent and angry. But let me ask you this: who goes on national media and says things like that Bill Clinton and Al Gore are fags? That we should bomb U.N. headquarters? That we should kill all muslim leaders and convert them to Christianity? Ann Coulter said those things. On MSNBC and nationally syndicated columns. Or, hey, about Pat Robertson saying that me, as a feminist, and my gay friends are the ones to blame for 9/11? Markos Moulitsas (dailyKos) never said anything remotely as offensive as these things about any conservative leaders, not in his blog diaries or in the many media outlets he's been recently invited to. Michael Moore has never said anything like that, nor has Al Franken. Most of this "vitriol" you read on blogs are in the comments sections, just the living room conversation, not the main diaries.
Next: Jane Hamsher. I met her at a few events while she was here covering the senate race. She's smart and I love her blog, firedoglake. I think the blackface thing was in extremely poor taste, but I refer you to the above paragraph if you really want to talk about poor taste. The Lamont campaign came out strongly against that and it was only up for like 10 minutes before she took it down. However, I've got to say as an English teacher that we must not be doing our jobs if the American public can't detect satire any more. Just look at the people who think Stephen Colbert is for real. It's out of control. The press took the blackface picture and ran with it, but nobody is reporting on the reason she put that up, which was part of a commentary that Joe Lieberman's campaign was the one distributing race-baiting flyers and making disgusting, smarmy, baseless accusations against Ned. Sean Smith, Lieberman's campaign manager, said they were going for the "low-information" voter, and then turned around and pulled that shit in the inner cities all over CT. Who's racist? The guy who was rich and belonged to a country club in a town where no black people live, or the guy who thinks so little of African-Americans in CT that he basically called them stupid and then tried to trick them into believing smarmy lies?
About anti-semitism: I haven't read anything on the blogs against Joe because he's Jewish. Maybe because he's so pro-Israeli, but those are two very different things. I can support the Jewish people while not supporting the policies of Israel. But that's not even Ned Lamont's opinion, he's completely behind Israel. Neither he, nor Joe, made that an issue in the campaign, because it wasn't. I just want to reiterate, though, that being against Zionism and extreme right-wing Israeli hawkishness is not anti-semitism. While working for Ned's campaign, I met and talked to a lot of Jewish people across the state who were unhappy with Joe. I don't have any numbers, but I would bet Ned won the Jewish vote here yesterday. Jews in CT are, by and large, liberals. They are against the Iraq war and many of them are not too happy with Israel right now either. Many of my Jewish friends, while of course feeling strongly about Israel's existence and place as their homeland, have not supported the Likud party or right-wing Israeli politics ever. Israel is a country, just like we are, where people have differences of opinion.
Anyway, I couldn't disagree with you more that Ned Lamont's victory is a self-inflicted wound for the Democrats. I believe strongly that it was a much-needed shot in the arm, a "Nedrenaline" boost, if you will. We had larger voter turnout yesterday than in the presidential election. People in CT are engaged in the debate now, and that is good, no matter who wins. Attending the Lamont victory party last night, I couldn't stop crying from excitement and sheer hope, a thing I haven't felt about my country in a long time. Because that's what it's always been about for me, since I was a little kid listening to racist jokes and watching my gay friends get beaten up in the parking lot behind Hillsboro High: hope. Hope that things could change, that people could be nice to each other, that people could take care of each other and that the world might be a better place. Since then, I've settled here in the Northeast where at least I haven't had to deal with that kind of overt hatred anymore, but I've seen my country handed over to people who've done nothing but drain my hope with every day they've been in power. I've watched the bloated bodies of babies floating in floodwaters from Katrina. I've watched brave soldiers come home in boxes or wheelchairs. I've watched my students turn to selling drugs in the inner cities because there are no jobs to be had and my best efforts at giving them a quality education are undermined at every turn. I've watched the rest of the world turn against us and I've watched as my own government tries to destroy every right I hold dear: free speech, freedom from search and seizure, my right to choose what happens to my own body, and, as Joe is trying to steal from me in this election, my right to choose my own leaders and participate in the democratic process.
So, I hope this helps explain some of my feelings about Ned Lamont and about politics in general. I know we differ on the issues, and that's cool. But you can't possibly believe that my efforts were not 100% sincere in this campaign. All my political views are personal. They are based on my deeply held beliefs about what we humans are put on this planet to do. I believe our purpose is to be good to each other and to keep growing and learning. This translates into beliefs about equal rights, education, health care, foreign policy, and basically everything. The Democrats share (or should, anyway) my ideology on those things. So I fight for them. And I fight for my own beliefs within that party. That's why it was time for Joe to go. Joe fought for one thing: himself and his powerful position in Washington. He didn't care what I thought anymore. Ned does.