Wednesday, August 09, 2006

A Win For Lamont & Connecticut, A Selfish Display By Clueless Joe

Well, if you're one of the many supporters of Ned Lamont who spent the night hoping and praying he would win the Senate primary in Connecticut, your hopes and prayers have been answered. Lamont won last night's primary, by a margin of 52 percent to his opponent's 48 percent.

That's a comfortable four point lead, and strong enough to send a clear message to those politicians who betray the needs and wishes of Americans by supporting George W. Bush and his enablers in Congress.

Unfortunately, Lamont's victory wasn't enough to send a message to one selfish, pig-headed imbecile who has proven time and again that he just doesn't get it. Joe Lieberman is working to meet today's deadline to get on the November ballot as an Independent.

And thus is the clueless incumbent's selfishness revealed, demonstrating for the umpteenth time that he is out of touch with voters. Lieberman falsely claimed he was a "good Democrat," but he has proven otherwise--first by betraying Democratic principles to side with Bush and the Republican Party on critical issues, and now by telling Democratic voters in his home state that he doesn't care about them, their wishes or their ideology; that he's running to keep his Senate seat even though they told him they don't want him in office anymore.

Except it's not Joe Lieberman's Senate seat anymore, not in any way that counts. Voting Democrats in Connecticut made it clear that they are tired of watching Clueless Joe betray their principles and their party, and they want someone else--Ned Lamont--to have a go at it. If Lamont proves inadequate over the course of his six year term, then voters will replace him just as they did their current senator.

But I really kind of doubt Lamont will make the same mistakes Joe Lieberman did to alienate the majority of his constituents. And to be blunt, the outgoing senator (after November) can only hurt the party he has betrayed and walked away from by staying in the race.

In a three-way race Republicans hope Lieberman will draw away enough Democratic and Independent votes from Lamont to squeak their own candidate, Alan Schlesinger, into office to take a critical Senate seat and solidify the GOP's stranglehold on that body. Of course, if the incumbent stays in the Republicans may pull Schlesinger in favor of a stronger candidate who can pull off that task. All because of Joe Lieberman's selfishness and cluelessness.

Republican Joe needs to wise up and recognize that it was his own shift to the far right and his own ambitions that did him in as a politician. The majority of Democrats in Connecticut realized long ago that their senator had chosen to distance himself from them, and walk away from their values. They don't want Social Security gutted in favor of private accounts only affordable to people with money to burn; they don't want rape victims told they "can always take a short drive to another hospital" if the one they go to for treatment denies them the medication they need to prevent an unwanted pregnancy; they don't want someone who will block a filibuster needed to keep a fascist off the Supreme Court; they didn't want the federal government interfering in the Terri Schiavo case; and they don't want their kids kept in Iraq to kill and die in a pointless, fucked up war that itself was begun on a stack of lies and greed.

Yet on all those issues and more, Joe Lieberman stood with the Republican Party and against his own constituents.

Ned Lamont's campaign may have started out as a "single-issue" race. Maybe. I have my doubts about that. But it grew to be much more than that. It became about showing Joe Lieberman that he is out of touch with Connecticut on a host of issues important to its citizens, and that if he won't get back in touch and represent their values then he needs to go. But as usual, Lieberman hasn't the courage to face the facts. He is allowing his own selfishness, ego, and moralizing self-righteousness to damage the party he claimed to support and be a part of. The only one fooled by Joe Lieberman's "I'm a good Democrat" rhetoric was Joe Lieberman.

Hopefully, Democratic leaders in Washington will recognize it's more important to keep Connecticut's Senate seat in party hands than to risk losing it to a Republican just to placate Joe Lieberman's selfish pride.

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