The national effort to purge Lieberman from the Democrats

Over at New Donkey.com Ed Kilgore laments the ~national~ effort by progressive Democrats to remove Joe Lieberman from the Senate. Here's Ed's take:

if Connecticut Democrats want to replace Joe Lieberman with Ned Lamont or anybody else, that's fine by me. It's the national effort to dump Joe, evidenced by the heavy involvement of national organizations like MoveOn and Democracy for America, that's objectionable. And as Chris knows, much of the progressive blogosphere is nearly as obsessed with the Lamont candidacy as it is with delivering a Democratic Congress this November, for reasons that have zippo to do with the vindication of the sovereign rights of Connecticut Democrats to choose whomever they want

I disagree sharply with Ed. Joe Lieberman is not just another local Democrat. I am from Texas, and I seem to have seen Joe's face on TV nearly as much as I have G. W. Bush's face. Usually Joe is being as irritating as Bush is. He is one of the few truly national Democrats, particularly since he ran for Vice-President with Al Gore. Joe needs to learn to support the other members of his party if he expects support from the national party.

I see the effort to remove Joe as chastisement of an erring national "Democrat." His errors are more than just state-wide and restricted to Connecticut. After November he'll either be gone or he'll have learned a big lesson about when to keep his mouth shut. Frankly, from what I have seen of his campaign, I don't have a lot of hope for him learning. Ed, as a DLC'er, won't like it, but this is an effort to move the party to a more Progressive position and away from trying to be Republican-lite.

Since 2000 the Republicans have gone over a cliff, all together, like a raging herd of Lemmings. The DLC is attempting to find a moderate position between the Republicans and the Democrats, but as they head over a cliff there is no distinction between moderate lemmings and extremist ones. The moderate lemmings just go over the cliff a little later than the extremist ones do.

The Democrats need to find our own way and quit trying to ape the Republicans. The national effort to remove Lieberman will be a rather graphic lesson on this subject.