What the Lieberman Loss Is and Isn't

One collateral casualty of the Lamont victory will be Mark Warner. Connecticut Democrats rejected acquiescent, hollow centrism on Iraq when they rejected Lieberman's active defense of Bush's war, his fetish for executive power, his barely disguised contempt for dissent. It was getting out of the mushy middling that won the Repuiblicans the House in 1994.

What it is not is some kind of quasi-Green Party hijacking of the Democratic Party. Lieberman was rejected by mainstream Democrats, not for voting to authorize the War, but for something far worse: his growing, moralistic egoism, his unwillingness to stand up to the Administration in the middle of a national crisis of government as well as war policy, his persistent running from hollow center to hollow center to avoid tackling tough problems. Votes like his support for the Schiavo legislation were not important, but they were symbolic of his disconnect from core Democratic party principles - worse is the tone, and now actions in his Independent bid, that suggest that Democratic primary voters had no right to reject him.

The Lamont victory clarifies the range and message of the will of ordinary Democrats on Iraq: the Bush Administration endlessly dissembles, misleads, and botches policy. The consensus position is to stand up to them, force a real plan to win or get our troops out, not apologize and shuffle our feet and kvetch into our sleeves out of a sense of self-preservation and a dirty conscience.

Our near-term case is that electing a Democratic Congress will improve our national security: we will challenge Bush when he's wrong, which is always. Lieberman's defeat clarifies this. Hilary's tardy and almost hypocritical but fairly effective attack on Rumsfeld, is fine, because it is simply what needs to be done. Lieberman made no such efforts, and did his best to block criticism of Iraq policy.

Here is, I believe, a consensus Democratic position on the war:

Our national security suffers every time the Republican Congress lays down for an incompetent Administration. Republicans have proven not only inept and making and conducting war, they have weakened our nation's military position, nearly destroyed its diplomatic position, and thereby weakened America's ability to defend ourselves against real terrorist threats, which of course they have done everything to spread. The only possibility of winning in Iraq is clearing out neo-con ideologues and making adaptive, practical, clear-eyed war strategy. Only the pressure from a Democratic Congress gives a possibility of that, AND only a Democratic Congress will be able to act to withdraw and stop the daily waste of our troops lives when and if the war is truly beyond hope.

Russ Feingold and Hilary Clinton could agree on that, but not Joe Lieberman.

Salon. Guardian. New York Times/IHT.