Lieberman's Fall: Krugman Understands, WSJ Freaks Out

One other interesting thing happened this weekend. Connecticut Democratic Party delegates voted on which candidate to endorse at a state convention. While Sen. Lieberman got the majority of votes, the big news was that Democratic challenger (and political newcomer) Ned Lamont received 33%, well more than the 15% he needed to force a primary election for later in the summer. It was an open vote that some delegates skipped out, leading some to suspect Lamont's numbers could have been higher in a private vote. This is obviously bad news for Lieberman, the incumbent who six years ago won the popular vote for Vice President. The fact of the matter is that while he retains of the support of the Democratic Party national leadership, Lieberman is very unpopular with Democrats all over the country. The conventional wisdom is trying to imply that this is solely because of his support for the Iraq war, but that is knocked down by the fact that many Democrats have supported the war and have not been met with this kind of opposition. The reality is that Joe Lieberman is, for all intents and purposes, a Republican. He purposely stabs his own party in the back on numerous key issues and is all too happy to prop up GOP talking points in his media travels. His downfall is proof that a) this behavior is finally catching up to him, and b) the Democratic party grassroots are finally catching up to the level of influence that the GOP grassroots have, despite the attempts by the national DNC leaders to ignore them.

Ned Lamont appears to have a very good shot at being on the ballot this November.

On the right, the Wall Street Journal is freaking out over the whole thing-

Mr. Lieberman will still be favored to win the primary, but angry-left activists around the country will now descend on the state and the fight may well turn vicious.

The left's larger goal is to turn the Democratic Party solidly against the war on terror, and especially against its Iraq and Iran fronts.

(bold added by moi... I hope you caught the same thing I did....)

Oh my! Apparently, being against Sen. Lieberman and/or against the Iraq war means that you support terrorism and want the U.S. to fail in its efforts to thwart it. Makes sense to me! That must be why 90%+ of the country supported our actions in Afghanistan. I have to believe- for the sake of my sanity- that the GOP's 'A vote for a Democrat is a vote for Osama' strategy is no longer selling with voters who are increasingly catching on to the usual tricks.

Of course, I have two other questions about the section I bolded in the WSJ piece. Number one- How exactly was Iraq a front in the war on terror before we invaded it; isn't that talking point well past its expiration date? And, more importantly, number two- We are at war with Iran?!! Yikes, I did miss some news this weekend, didn't I?

Looks like the WSJ is jumping the gun! Patience, I'm sure we'll invade Iran soon enough.

Meanwhile, the NY Times' Paul Krugman has the handle on the real issues behind this-

What happened to Mr. Lieberman? Some news reports may lead you to believe that he is in trouble solely because of his support for the Iraq war. But there’s much more to it than that. Mr. Lieberman has consistently supported Republican talking points. This has made him a lion of the Sunday talk shows, but has put him out of touch with his constituents and with reality.

Mr. Lieberman isn’t the only nationally known Democrat who still supports the Iraq war. But he isn’t just an unrepentant hawk, he has joined the Bush administration by insisting on an upbeat picture of the situation in Iraq that is increasingly delusional...

...And it’s not just Iraq...

On each of these issues Mr. Lieberman, who is often described as a "centrist," is or was very much at odds not just with the Democratic base but with public opinion as a whole. According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, only 40 percent of the public believes that we were right to go to war with Iraq.

Mr. Lieberman’s tender concern for the president’s credibility comes far too late: according to a USA Today/Gallup poll, only 41 percent of Americans consider Mr. Bush honest and trustworthy. By huge margins, the public believed that Congress should have stayed out of the Schiavo case. And so on.

Mr. Lieberman’s defenders would have you believe that his increasingly unpopular positions reflect his principles. But his Bushlike inability to face reality on Iraq looks less like a stand on principle than the behavior of a narcissist who can’t admit error. And the common theme in Mr. Lieberman’s positions seems to be this: In each case he has taken the stand that is most likely to get him on TV.

You see, the talking-head circuit loves centrists. But a centrist, as defined inside the Beltway, doesn't mean someone whose views are actually in the center, as judged by public opinion.

Instead, a Democrat is considered centrist to the extent that he does what Mr. Lieberman does: lends his support to Republican talking points, even if those talking points don't correspond at all to what most of the public wants or believes.

But this "center" cannot hold. And that's the larger lesson of what happened Friday. Mr. Lieberman has been playing to a Washington echo chamber that is increasingly out of touch with the country's real concerns. The nation, which rallied around Mr. Bush after 9/11 simply because he was there, has moved on — and it has left Mr. Lieberman behind.

That's the answer in a nutshell.

In conclusion, Krugman gets it. He sees the larger issues at play in the Lieberman-Lamont battle and knows that the war plays only a small part in that. The WSJ and others, meanwhile, continue their attempts to marginalize liberals in this country as current events continue to prove right much of what we have been trying to say for years. Numerous polls continue to show the country is center-of-left on most of the issues (including the war), even though many may end up voting center-of-right because of a better organized media message machine on the right. For proof of how out of touch this section of the right is on issues like the war, one needs look no further than this Powerline post stating that Republicans can regain support for themselves and the war by speaking more straightforwardly about it. They state that "The public's negative view of Iraq is driven mostly by biased press coverage, not the realities on the ground." So the reality on the ground is... good? If that's their message, then they must by all means make promoting their responsibility for the Iraq debacle key to their reelection bids, because as Krugman noted, the majority of voters have moved on from that naive worldview of the Bush strategy and it will leave them behind in turn.

[Hat tips- Firedoglake and Atrios.]