Surprise, surprise. The New York Times has apparently sent some reporters out of their castle keep into the hinterlands to question the serfs - and they reported real answers, not the fictional news narrative that so often passes for news these days. Today they have a report on what is happening in Connecticut between Sen. Joe Lieberman and his Democratic Party challenger, Ned Lamont.
The general national news narrative for weeks has been that Lamont is leading a challenge of rabid and nasty bloggers and Democratic anti-war protestors against a senior Democratic Senator who refuses to kowtow to the rigid mold these insurgents wish to wrap around the Democratic Party. Today's NY Times report gives a much more nuanced and, in my opinion more accurate, description of what is going on.
Describing Lieberman, the NY Times says "He is in his 18th year in the Senate, where he has prided himself as being moderate, collegial and willing to work with Republicans. He has built the kind of seniority that often leads lawmakers to consider themselves invulnerable. [Snip]
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and one of Mr. Lieberman’s closest friends in the Senate, called him “one of the most decent men I have ever known."
This description confirms my impression of Joe Lieberman. Having never met him, or even anyone who knows him personally, all my information comes from the media. But the climate in Washington and in American politics nationally has changed a great deal since the Republicans have taken over. Lieberman has not. He is still trying to be a nice guy to everyone, Democrat or Republican, and the Republicans have been happily using his blindness to the changed political environment.
More from the Times: "Mr. Lamont and Mr. LiebermanÂ’s critics on the left say he is out of touch with his party, especially but not solely on Iraq, and cannot be trusted to advance what they say are core progressive values.
“Many Democratic activists and bloggers have concluded that some of the party’s most visible scars are self-inflicted,” said Ari Melber, a former staff member for Senator John Kerry’s presidential campaign who writes regularly for The Huffington Post, a Web site with political commentary. “When prominent Democrats regularly capitulate to Republicans, they undermine the rationale for an opposition party. Lieberman is seen as the serial offender.” [Underlining mine - RB]
Mr. Lieberman, who seemed slow to recognize the seriousness of Mr. Lamont’s challenge, also appears taken aback by the ferocity of the onslaught, particularly from liberal blogs. To Mr. Lieberman’s camp, the bloggers embody what his longtime friend Lanny Davis calls “the demonizing, hating, virulent, character-assassinating left of the Democratic Party.”
Mr. Lieberman began, “Some of the vituperations, some of the extremity of the language and anger,” before his voice trailed off. He paused for a second and started again: “They’re describing a person who is not me."
It looks to me like they are describing a person who Joe does not recognize as being who he is, and using tough political techniques to convince Democratic voters that really is who Joe is. In fact, Joe's failure to recognize that many Democrats do see him as an untrustworthy turncoat who prefers Republicans to Democrats and regularly stabs Democrats in the back merely shows how out of touch he is with the current national political environment. I also think that Joe Lieberman has set himself up by thinking that it really is all about him and who he is personally, and as a result he is unable to recognize how his behavior reflects poorly on other Democrats when he appears to be sucking up the President Bush and the Senate Republican Leadership while attacking his fellow Democrats.
The level of Joe's shock at the effectiveness of the Lamont campaign is a gauge of how much Joe and his supporters really are out of touch. One example of Joe's "out of touch" has been how poorly he and his campaign have responded to being effectively attacked. They seem to be blindsided. They never saw it coming and they are reacting angrily rather than intelligently.
Did they really weigh the damage they were inflicting on Joe Lieberman when he announced that if he loses the primary election to Lamont he will run as an Independent candidate? That decision clearly proves that Lieberman is ready to stab the Democrats in the back any time it is to his advantage.
When Lieberman was first elected Senator in 1988, loyalty to the Democratic Party was not a significant quality demanded of all Democratic candidates for office. It is now that the Democrats are a minority party nationally. Joe rather clearly has felt that his three terms as a Senator and running as the Democratic candidate for Vice President in 2000 has insulated him from such considerations.
I'm not sure whether the next Senator from Connecticut will be Lamont or Lieberman, but whoever it is, the message to Democratic office holders and candidates that loyalty to the Democratic Party has become a strong criteria of who will represent Democrats in the House and Senate.
The message to the voting public will be that Democrats do stand for something, and that they will pull out the stops to fight for what they stand for.
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