The Truth About Connecticut

by DemFromCT

(restored from crash)

Harold Meyerson has a wonderful column today in the Washington Post regarding the Connecticut challenge to Bush's enablers in the Senate. I have not been full steam on the Lamont bandwagon since the get-go. I like earnest, but experience and seniority when coupled with leadership are vital to getting things done in DC. But the campaign that Lieberman is running is validating every early Lamont supporter's gut feeling that Joe needed to be challenged. The Lieberman campaign is mean spirited where it's not plain incompetent, and it lacks the insight to understand that Joe doesn't win by running against Connecticut Democrats.

Meyerson tries to explain to his tone-deaf colleagues:

The issue here isn't that Lieberman is not 100 percent. It's that his positions -- not just on foreign policy but on trade, Social Security and other key issues -- are often out of sync with those of Democrats in his part of the country. To expect his region's voters to dump the area's moderate Republicans but back Lieberman is to expect that they will adopt a double standard in this year's elections.

Lieberman's ultimate problem isn't fanatical bloggers, any more than Lyndon Johnson's was crazy, antiwar Democrats. His problem is that Bush, and the war that both he and Bush have championed, is speeding the ongoing realignment of the Northeast. His problem, dear colleagues, is Connecticut.

Indeed it is. And to the extent that the primary is a referendum on Lieberman and his enabling support for a variety of Bush programs from Social Security to school vouchers to -yes- the war that Lieberman says is going so well, Joe is in deep trouble. As Meyerson points out, so is Chafee for the same reason.

Bloggers are no more crazy than CT voters. It's the right-leaning DC pundits who need to reorient. We're mainstream on the war and we're mainstream on the  issues this primary is about, including local opinion and small d democracy. It's about time the rest of the country caught up with New England and the Northeast. 

Comments

[emptypockets]

good column by Meyerson. I especially like this line: "Politics 2006, in which Democrats are doing their damnedest to unseat all the president's enablers" although I'd broaden it to Democrats and Independents.

I'd likewise broaden the realignment that's taking place beyond you New England elites, but maybe that's still wishful thinking.

[Kagro X]

Thank God somebody finally understands that blogs don't grow from spores. Real human fingers have to do all that typing. And sometimes, the people attached to those fingers go out and do things, including making voting decisions all by themselves, without a dime of payment from a single campaign!

Meanwhile, poor Maura is fingered as a Lamont "plant" for having the temerity to attend a gathering of Irish-American Democrats, and asking Joe Lieberman why he won't commit to supporting the winner of the Democratic primary.

The entire Connecticut press had just gone bonkers covering the big story that a sitting Senator was committed to bolting his party if he lost the primary. Now ask yourself: what's the implication of that story?

Enter a mere mortal to ask that question out loud, of the only person in the world who can answer it with authority, and what's the headline?

"Moonbat Lamont 'Plant' Harasses Lieberman."

Look, there's very little Joe can say other than make that kind of an accusation. We all know that. But what's the excuse for the press who covered the story that way? They just got done telling us what a huge story it was for Lieberman to file his papers.

So what's the goddamned big surprise when someone who read their story asks Joe to explain it?

Why is it a legitimate "big story" if the press covers it without asking the question, but a suspected campaign stunt when an actual person reacts to the story by asking the question?

[DemFromCT]

Because Joe, the seasoned campaigner, was smart enough to suggest it. it's the only good move he's made in this entire camapign, and i'll give him credit for it. And remember, Joe is still the favorite.

But Meyerson has the dynamics right. And it will be a shocker if Lamont wins because DC people have no idea what goes on in the hinterlands, and the press takes their cue from DC.

It won't come as a shock in CT. The story has been too well covered locally.

[Mimikatz]

The only political stunt that seems to do politicians good is the "listening tour", like Hillary did in upstate NY in 2000 and Dean did all around the country in 2002-2003. Get out of DC, talk to real voters, and above all listen to how they live their lives and what their problems are. This requires that the candidate have some humility and recognize that s/he doesn't know everything.

Life as experienced by ordinary people really is very, very different from life as seen through the Beltway prism. Ordinary people think and talk about politics in a very different way--different from us, but very different from the pols and pundits in DC. The first politician who really understands this and, more importantly, puts it to effect for 2008 will leap ahead of both packs.

[Mimikatz]

And on Lieberman--the unspoken factor in all this, the 1800 gorilla, is religion. It definitely colored Joe's support for ousting Saddam and his tiresome moralising. And it surely accounts for some of his support from politicians who ought to know better. But no one wants to even allude to, let alone talk about, it.