I Need A New Punch Line
I used to say in the land of the blind, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga is king – but Markos, man, you’re slipping! The title may yet belong to the wealthy abortion rights fanatic Jane Hamsher, who, in between kissing Arianna’s butt and rubbing shoulders with the beautiful people, manages to find time for this observation:
They must have some truly awful internal polling that tells Camp Lieberman the more people know about Lamont the more they like him, and some really first-rate consultants are no doubt telling Holy Joe to get out in front of this thing by painting Lamont as an angry liberal (and Lieberman’s favorite trick, after all, is using Republican memes). Trouble is, Lamont doesn’t come off as an angry liberal. So the more Joe raises his awareness, the more Ned gets thrown into the spotlight and what Ned needs more than anything right now is to become the focus of press attention.
Alternative explanation: Lieberman is telling the truth that he doesn’t like the tone of Lamont (he is, after all, sitting on 50+(!!!) point lead), and he’s painting Lamont as an angry liberal because all of his support comes from maniacs like you, Jane, and because he says things like this:
Lamont has blasted Lieberman for his support of the Iraq war, calling him, “Republican Light.” During his kickoff speech said that unlike the senator, he would never be called, “Bush’s favorite Democrat.”
Straight out of the Nutroots® playbook; bonus points for calling the Orthodox Jew Lieberman Holy Joe…
Hamsher’s silliness notwithstanding, I kinda-sorta understand the left wing hostility to Lieberman, at least theoretically. He’s far from the biggest apostate Democrat in the Senate — that honor would actually go to the Nelson twins of Nebraska and Florida, respectively. But where Nebraska is an overwhelmingly red state and Florida a somewhat reliable one, their apostacy is accepted as the price of getting a Democratic Senator elected in enemy territory. Senators from solid blue states like Connecticut, however, should be solid orthodox lefties.
And, really, what’s the cost of challenging him? Lamont may be a nobody, but its not like the Republicans fielded a credible challenger to face the eventual winner. If Lieberman wins the nomination he’ll cruise to a landslide victory in November — possibly by an even greater margin than what he gets in the primaries. If Lamont wins, then the general election will pitch a resume-free Democrat versus a resume-free Republican in a state Kerry won by over eight points.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Lieberman and admire his courage — and if I lived in Connecticut I’d probably even re-register Democrat to vote for him the primary. But the logic in trying to take him out is not lost on me.