Did I just call myself a rat? Yes, yes I did. (Does that phrase actually have a negative connotation vis a vis the rats, or only vis a vis the ship? Inquiring minds want to know!) [UPDATE: It seems to me, the connotation shouldn’t be negative. I mean, the rats are smart! If they didn’t abandon the ship, they’d die! Of course, they might die anyway, unless they can swim… but I am now officially thinking too hard about this…]
Anyway, it’s not just me and my mom and this guy. Lots of centrist Democrats are feeling unwelcome in the Democratic Party today. Weekend Pundit writes:
I polled a number of friends of mine in Connecticut — Democrats all — and with one exception, they all feel the Democratic Party has abandoned them or has been taken from them by fringe elements within the party. (Of course I take this with a grain of salt as most of those friends are moderate Democrats.)
I’m not sure that caveat is really salt-worthy, considering a party can’t win elections without its moderates. Here’s another disgruntled Dem:
I’m tempted, like Brendan Loy and his mother, to just file for divorce from the Democratic party, but I stubbornly (and perhaps futilely) cling to the hope that with my one vote I can save the party from itself. …
Like many conservative and centrist pundits, I tend to think that the Democrats are headed for a meltdown. They’ve thus far heroically resisted the efforts of the, er, saner portion of the party and chosen to swing further and further left into the land of hysteria—which is a great way to get elected and stay elected.
Indeed. (BTW, as noted earlier, you can add this and this blogger to the category of disgruntled-but-not-quite-deserting Democrats.)
Now we just need the Republicans to do something equivalently stupid (with wider implications than just a Michigan House race). Suppose, for example, George Allen outmuscles John McCain or Rudy Giuliani to win the 2008 presidential nomination, using some dirty tricks and insinuations that they’re not conservative/doctrinaire enough. The loser bolts, along with a lot of moderate Republicans. Then we could really get this centrist party — this “new politics of unity and purpose” — started. Bring it on!
[UPDATE: Andrew offers a compelling argument that my third-party dream is a vain hope, and that the real solution is to join the dark side GOP:
[T]he anti-Bush Leftist mindset comprises a solid 40% of the electorate, making it the single strongest ideology in America today. Conservatives and libertarians and their various stripes run about 30%, while the rest are somewhere in between. …
[T]he Dems are not going to die out anytime soon per your fantasies. The Left will be around for a loooong time; their propaganda, ideologies, and proponents are too well-ensconced in seats of power, whether in media and bureaucracies, academia, or the cultural elite. It also doesn’t help that secular progressivism is still the driving political force in Europe. …
You’re going to hate this answer like all hell, but the true answer is for people like you to join the Republican Party and help us weaken the Pat Robertsons, Tom DeLays, and George W. Bush’s of the party so that we can have a broad-minded coalition of people who largely agree on free-market economic principles, conservative fiscal policy, muscular, neoconservative-like foreign policy, and libertarian social policy. You’d have to sacrifice a few sacred shibboleths… but then again, so would we. For example, the Religious Right would have to decide the protection of Western culture and economy and the defense of classical liberalism is more important than minimizing the participation of homosexuals in American culture and society or achieving legislative prohibitions against abortion. In return, you’d have to abandon the precepts of Big, Helpful Government in the grand tradition of FDR and LBJ in favor of more market-oriented tax-and-spend principles. Neither sacrifice will be easy or painless, but they are both more probable, more possible, and more beneficial for America than your alternative dream of a dead Left and a “Third Way� centrist party to battle against right-leaning Republicans for control of America–a dream that is both seriously contra-ideological reality and probably less beneficial, because if moderates like yourself become the new dominant foe for the GOP, the Right will only go further to the right in contradistinction, to your chagrin.
Read the whole thing. No, really. It’s good — and he bashes Bush in it! Sorta. (For the uninitiated: Andrew was my “Republican friend” in college, when I was a more liberal Democrat, and more recently he was my Best Man. He’s also a long-time regular conservative commenter on this blog.)
That said, before I get Andrew’s hopes up too high… no, I’m not running out this instant and buying my Vast Right Wing Conspiracy membership card. I just said it was “compelling”; I didn’t say I agreed. Andrew’s arguments are often compelling, even when wrong. :) But certainly, this one is food for thought.]
In other news, Joe Lieberman’s website is still offline. I find this utterly baffling. Even though Kos’s allegation that Lieberman is only paying $15/month for bandwidth was inaccurate, and apparently Lieberman’s site really was attacked (as I suspected all along, despite Kos’s purported debunking) , I’m still not at all impressed with their web operation. How are you offline for two straight days — at such a crucial point in the campaign, no less?!?
If my website were down for that long, I’d be having a panic attack, and I’d probably have switched hosts two or three times by now, trying to find somebody who could get me back online immediately if not sooner — and all I lose is hits! Lieberman is losing potential votes and money! Think about it: how many people would have made a campaign contribution to Joe last night after hearing his speech, if his website had been online? I know I would have — and I still will, when the site comes back up. But plenty of others will doubtless forget about it, their attention grabbed by other things. Lieberman has lost the fleeting opportunity to get an untold number of “impulse donations.” He’s also losing the chance to get voters acquainted with his stances on the issues while this election is in the spotlight. Basically, he’s shooting himself in the foot by not promptly resolving this stupid website issue. At this point, I don’t care if it was “hacked”; it’s sheer incompetence that they haven’t been able to fix the problem, whatever it is, by now.
Anyway, Senator, if you’re reading this, seriously, if you want to use www.brendanloy.com/joe, just say the word. :)
Last and least, while we’re on the topic of my website (which we weren’t, really, but humor me), I need to do a bit of obligatory navel-gazing: yesterday was my second-biggest non-hurricane-related traffic day ever! I got 12,356 unique hits. And today is getting up there: 7,426 and counting.
Most of the traffic is thanks to InstaBoosts LXIII, LXIV, LXV (those two in the same Insty post, but different updates) and LXVI. But thanks are also due to Wizbang, the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, and many other bloggers who have linked to me today. Thanks, all!
Yesterday’s hit tally, by the way, is second only (among non-hurricane-related traffic totals) to February 3, 2005, when I got a traffic surge that was — ironically enough — also Lieberman-related, but not necessarily in a good way. That was the day that Wonkette linked to my post featuring video of the Bush-Lieberman kiss after the State of the Union Address — a kiss which gained notoriety among liberals, and ultimately became a theme of the Lamont campaign. Indeed, that old post has seen a resurgence of interest in recent weeks, as people, presumably anti-Joe folks, have Googled around looking for the video, and have found it on my blog. I feel bad contributing ammunition to their cause, but what am I supposed to do… send the old post down the cyber-memory hole? It’s not my fault they think “The Kiss” is somehow sinister. I just thought it was funny! (The post’s title was, “Marriage is between a man and a mensch?”)
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Categories: Joe Lieberman, Election 2006
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August 9th, 2006 at 7:35:00 pm
Wait…I feel a Right Wing Net Roots Movement sweeping the nation….Well, okay, not the nation but Brendan and a few friends… But I thought these guys were just outsiders, the net roots people “interfering”? (Let’s leave aside the fact that most everyone who voted in Connecticut’s primary WAS a Connecticut resident and a Democrat as the law requires, and let’s also leave aside that this was the highest voter turnout in a Connecticut primary ever– And that’s a BAD thing right? Don’t we want MORE people involved in the voting process? Damn net rooters gettin’ people involved!)
Damn carpetbaggers…
August 9th, 2006 at 7:37:46 pm
Was that comment supposed to be coherent, Mouse?
August 9th, 2006 at 7:52:08 pm
Not at all. I knew you just wouldn’t understand. :-)
By the way, funny thing about all this, you sound JUST as drooling and palatheringly obsessed about Lieberman and how the party has somehow done you wrong– even though no wrong has been committed– as you claim all the “KOS kids” and other “nut rooters” sounded before the primary.
You and others here whined and complained about those crazy nut rooters and you dismissed Lamont’s candidacy. You laughed at him.
Now you guys sound as “nuts” as you claimed the “nut rooters” were in the first place.
Anyway, that’s my opinion. :-) (Note: I didn’t used the word “liar” or “hypocrite” and I never said you WERE nuts, although it sounds like the hinges are under a lot of strain.)
August 9th, 2006 at 7:53:19 pm
Dammit, maybe “palathering” isn’t a word… :-)
August 9th, 2006 at 8:25:31 pm
…how the party has somehow done you wrong– even though no wrong has been committed
I didn’t say the party has “done me wrong.” I said the party and I have drifted apart over the years, such that we are no longer ideologically compatible. And I said I reached my breaking point yesterday when the party’s voters sent a message that moderates like me aren’t considered real Democrats anymore… and now the party establishment is lining up behind the carrier of that message (Lamont). I don’t understand what you don’t understand about this concept.
I’m not saying the Democratic Party has “wronged” me in some grievous sense, like a bunch of Democrats beat me up and took my lunch money, for heaven’s sake. I’m just saying I no longer feel welcome in their party, because they basically tarred and feathered a guy who is an honest centrist like me, and they tarred and feathered him for being an honest centrist.
Think of it this way. Suppose you really like Pepsi. And suppose you’re part of a political party that is somewhat divided over its colas, but most people in the party like Coke, and some are really militant about it; they think anybody who likes Pepsi is an idiot or evil. Generally, though, those who like Pepsi are pretty much tolerated by mainstream members of the party… until one day, the party’s “base” gets fed up, and leads a massive national campaign to vote out of office a Pepsi-drinking senator in this Coke-loving party, explicitly on the basis that he likes Pepsi and is therefore a traitor to the party and everything it stands for. They concoct all sorts of additional reasons why they supposedly want him out, but at the end of the day, it’s really all about his preference for Pepsi. And they succeed; they vote him out. The next day, the entire party establishment dutifully endorses Coke Guy, and all the other candidates in the party retool their campaign strategies to make sure they’re very vocal about how much they like Coke and hate Pepsi. Where does that leave you, as a Pepsi lover? Don’t you feel a bit excluded? Hasn’t your party effectively told you to get lost?
That’s basically how I’m feeling today. I really don’t understand why you don’t get it, except that you just don’t want to see my side of the story because you disagree with me about the core issue.
August 9th, 2006 at 9:28:18 pm
Good grief.
This is like reading a dimestore romance novel. Congratulations on your earth-shattering realization that it’s fucking stupid to vote a straight ticket rather than educating yourself on the merits of the candidates and voting for the best available option. Welcome to adulthood.
Lieberman lost because he’s been far too conciliatory to a president that has exercised something like 800 signing statements, authorized large-scale spying on American citizens, created farcical excuses to take us to war against an “enemy” that did NOT attack us on 9/11 while letting the true enemy go free, and to cap it off, has authorized torture in Eastern European gulags (you thought only Stalin and Hitler did that? Not anymore - the irony is almost paralyzingly painful.)
As a senior member of the Senate and VPOTUS candidate, LIeberman has been in a unique position of being able to TRY to CHECK this executive branch. He has failed to do so in any convincing fashion. So, it’s not hugely surprising that he came up short in what amounts to a performance appraisal for the last six years from his constituents.
What you’re seeing is not Bush- bashing, or Bush-hating, or some other unjustifiable juvenile tantrum. Our Constutional protections are being threatened on many fronts in this country as a direct result of the actions of this administration and the rubber-stamping of a Republican Congress; presumably, these CT voters recognize this even if you don’t and voted in what they felt was an appropriate manner to try to protect their freedoms and welfare.
Get over yourself, stop with the melodrama because you sound freaking ridiculous, and get out there and campaign for Lieberman if you feel so strongly about it. (Although you might want to comment on why precisely Karl Rove called the Lieberman camp to say “The boss wants to help. Whatever we can do, we will do” - kinda puts a screw in any arguments about Lieberman NOT being too closely affiliated with the Bush administration.)
August 9th, 2006 at 9:39:25 pm
Fortunately for this country, Senator Liebermann’s consituents get to decide who they want as their Senator in November … that’s when his “performance appraisal” will be revealed … that’s when his consituents will show real common sense …
August 9th, 2006 at 10:15:33 pm
Also, I don’t call a narrow CT primary defeat “a message that moderates like me aren’t considered real Democrats anymore.” Wait until things reach the national stage again and you’ll see the candidates sift out to a more moderate medium.
Put things in perspective a little more. Joe Lieberman is not the Democratic Party and to allow a primary outcome to be the final straw is, in my opinion, remarkably shortsighted. You may well have had reservations with the party all along, but this hardly seems like an end. If Democrats as a whole started to make substantial policy changes, etc. then I could see you justifying the split. At some point you’ll have to admit to yourself that this isn’t about you and the Democratic Party. This is about you and Joe Lieberman.
August 9th, 2006 at 10:38:46 pm
Hey looks like David Brooks has the same idea as you re McCain-Lieberman. That should be enough to convince you to abandon it.
August 10th, 2006 at 7:00:34 am
Great Blogs! Im not from Conn. nor a Democrat and find it interesting. I am a moderate and not confortable with either party. Never vote the party line. That is plain stupid. It was orginally designed because we were thought to be too stupid to make decisions. Conn. people made a decision, good for them. I like the Senator and admire someone who takes a stance and is willing to be judged for it. He is welcome to move to Jersey anytime. We already have plenty of rich businessman screwing up our state. Moderates stick together not with a party. Vote for our country and families. Screw the parties up and everyone vote for Lieberman now
That would even more interesting. Good Luck Mods!
August 10th, 2006 at 8:09:50 am
lthough you might want to comment on why precisely Karl Rove called the Lieberman camp to say “The boss wants to help. Whatever we can do, we will doâ€? - kinda puts a screw in any arguments about Lieberman NOT being too closely affiliated with the Bush administration.”
“Common sense,” you might want to get over yourself, pull your head out of your ass, and stop parroting whatever kos says. This story has already been debunked. Grow up and learn to think for yourself, you slow-witted tool.
August 10th, 2006 at 11:47:30 am
I know exactly what you mean, Brendan. I’m not quite ready to jump the ship (I’m a fool for a fool’s errand), but I agree that the Party has basically told the moderates that we’re not welcome. They sold out a decent man like Lieberman (whom I admittedly had some issue with in the past, before 9/11), for an untested rich elite, who embraces Pat Buchanan-style isolationism.
It’s going to be lonely, though. There aren’t sufficient words to describe how lonely being a pro-war Democrat feels right now.
August 10th, 2006 at 12:02:35 pm
Rafique - you actually don’t need to feel lonely - more an dmore of you are realising that there are a lot of you - and it’s just the current Democratic Party culture of tolerance-only-for-our-kind that has kept you all from expressing your well-thought-through true feelings …
Man - can you picture the coming-out party that could lead to ? WOW !
August 10th, 2006 at 2:36:45 pm
Rafique-
There’s a difference between being “pro-War” and “pro-debacle.” Iraq is a friggin’ disaster. Even if you were for the war in 2003, the total mishandling of it by Bush and the neo-cons has made it essentially unwinnable.
Up until the last election in Iraq I thought the U.S. needed to tough this out. I’ve always been critical of Bush’s reasons for going to war in Iraq, but once there I was of a mindset like Colin Powell - we HAVE to win.
But what if it has simply become unwinnable? Are you saying we should have continued the unwinnable war in Vietnam? How many more Americans would have died in Vietnam if we had done that? Would we have been there for 20 more years at the cost of 200,000 American lives with the same result?
It’s the same situation right now in Iraq. What do you actually think we will accomplish by staying? Have things improved over three years, or become drastically worse? Both in Iraq and with global anti-Americanism in general.
If we give the Iraq government one year to figure out what to do once we are gone, I think that is more than a reasonable way to get our people out of there. What are the terrorists going to do if they know our timetable? They are slaughtering people right under our noses now and we can do nothing to stop them.
We went there to get rid of Saddam. We have done that. It is time to bring our people home.
August 10th, 2006 at 7:47:46 pm
Nick,
Debunked? Really? Karl himself admits to calling Joe… but didn’t offer to help or get involved in any way??? Apparently you place a hell of a lot more faith in Karl Rove’s capability for honesty and selfless compassion than I do - how’s life under your rock?
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/situation.room/blog/2006/08/rove-called-his-friend-lieberman-on.html
August 12th, 2006 at 1:59:33 pm
Max,
Bush certainly has made mistakes- alot of them, but there has been real, verifiable progress made in Iraq.
Iraq is not Vietnam. Vietnam was a mess. Iraq’s a different story.
Saddam is gone, but if we don’t help the Iraqis stabilize the region, then the country is thrown into further chaos, and it’s all for nothing.
August 16th, 2006 at 11:20:28 am
By “Anti-Bush mindset” you mean “Pro-American”… just to enlighten you.