I feel sick.
I'm sweaty, chilly, and vaguely dizzy. Is it the clams I had for dinner last night?
No.
It's the Lamont/Liberman race.
You might say I'm reversing myself as it was only a few weeks ago that I was arguing we were overblowing a primary at the risk of losing out on the republicans we should be attacking. And to an extent, I still believe this is a valuable warning and something we can't risk down the road.
But right now I get it. I get how important this is. The light went off. This race is everything.
What Joe Lieberman represents is the entire last decade of government failure in one person. He merges two disparate strains of failure:
1. Republican pretend patriotism -- the jingoistic nonsense that led us to make the greatest foreign policy blunder since Vietnam.
2. Democratic Party capitulation and beltway isolation that serves K-Street and views regular Americans as plebes to be manipulated at certain points, but otherwise are too stupid to know what's good for them.
Lieberman mixes the worst of both worlds, and this is why he inspires such passionate desires to remove him from office permanently.
I've watched the hate spewers on right wing radio defend Lieberman like he's one of their own and it dawned on me just how crucial he's been as an apologist for republican failure over the past six years.
I watched VH1's "I Love the 90s" and there was Joe Lieberman, all sanctimonous bluster and condescending superiority, back in 1992 lecturing us on videogame violence. How telling is it that Joe's concern for the violence in "Mortal Combat" was more passionate and involved than his concern for dead American soldiers in Iraq?
I've watched Joe Lieberman sell out Bill Clinton in 1998, acting as if Clinton's moral failings were worthy of deep reproachment while ignoring a four year campaign of deception by George W. Bush surrounding the Iraq war and WMD evidence.
I've watched Joe Lieberman sell out Al Gore while keeping his senate seat in the most pathetic roll over for an election hijack from a supposed "opposition" party candidate in a move that makes Smithers on "The Simpsons" look assertive.
I get it.
I get why Lieberman is everything that's wrong in politics today. And now I'm invested in this race with a passion I haven't felt since Kerry almost took out Dubya. And I'm terrified that I'll feel as devastated as I did that night when BushCo used Blackwell to shut down Ohio and coast to reelection.
I felt like democracy was dead.
I felt like the pundit class had gotten so good at clouding debate and confusing the low-information public that elections were now a farce and a fraud, with Fox News, talk radio and Sinclair Media Group playing their collective Pravda roles in guiding the sheep towards maximum "profit" while raiding the till and destroying our once functional government.
And I'm terrified I'm going to feel that way again.
Now before you shout at me to "volunteer" or "contribute", please know that this diary is only a personal one. We discuss the ground game in other threads. Let this one be a personal moment of reflection. I only want to open up and express my feeling at this instant in time. If not for the members of DailyKos than for myself. My potential giddy thrill at seeing Ned Lamont come from nowhere and enter the United States Senate. My potential revulsion at having to stomach another six years of Joe Lieberman.
This election is everything.
It is a referendum on this failure of a war that not even four years of pretend patriotism and propaganda on Fox News can convince a majority of Americans was worth fighting.
It is a referendum on incumbency and whether or not Senators deserve King-like lifetime appointments.
It is a referendum on whether or not the wingnut noise machine can continue to scare Americans into voting the way they want them to.
It is a referendum on failed democratic party politicans of yesteryear -- whether we want spineless capitulators or fighting dems who will take this country back from the authoritarianism quasi-Fascist impulses we are currently self destructing with.
This may sound grandiose and hyperbolic, but it is a referndum on whether we can steer the ship away from the iceberg in time or not.
I need a sign. Any sign. I need to believe Americans won't continue to drink from the cup of divisiveness and jingoism and fear and self-destruction that leads us to continue to elect vapid frauds and self serving fools. I need to believe in 2006 we'll take back the house and maybe the Senate too, and in 2008 we'll elect a real president and not a childish dressup clown who starts wars based on his "gut."
I need to believe.
And so I'm terrified. That's all I wanted to say.
That, and GO NED.
