Disclosure: I worked for the Lamont campaign doing web design and production and some writing for the official blog (from 9/5/06 to 11/07/06).
Sunday, August 20, 2006
Sunday Morning Round-Up
- In today's must-read column, Frank Rich looks at the political landscape and the polls and declares an end to the era of the politics of fear - a full five years of Republicans like Bush and Lieberman being able to count on terror alerts and false generalizations to boost their poll numbers and scare up victories on election day:
The hyperbole that has greeted the Lamont victory in some quarters is far more revealing than the victory itself. In 2006, the tired Rove strategy of equating any Democratic politician’s opposition to the Iraq war with cut-and-run defeatism in the war on terror looks desperate. The Republicans are protesting too much, methinks. A former Greenwich selectman like Mr. Lamont isn’t easily slimed as a reincarnation of Abbie Hoffman or an ally of Osama bin Laden. What Republicans really see in Mr. Lieberman’s loss is not a defeat in the war on terror but the specter of their own defeat. Mr. Lamont is but a passing embodiment of a fixed truth: most Americans think the war in Iraq was a mistake and want some plan for a measured withdrawal. That truth would prevail even had Mr. Lamont lost.
A similar panic can be found among the wave of pundits, some of them self-proclaimed liberals, who apoplectically fret that Mr. Lamont’s victory signals the hijacking of the Democratic Party by the far left (here represented by virulent bloggers) and a prospective replay of its electoral apocalypse of 1972. Whatever their political affiliation, almost all of these commentators suffer from the same syndrome: they supported the Iraq war and, with few exceptions (mainly at The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard), are now embarrassed that they did. Desperate to assert their moral superiority after misjudging a major issue of our time, they loftily declare that anyone who shares Mr. Lamont’s pronounced opposition to the Iraq war is not really serious about the war against the jihadists who attacked us on 9/11. - Toby Moffett compares the Lieberman Party candidacy to that of Ralph Nader in a column in the Courant:
In 2004, I and many other volunteers built a more effective operation to challenge Nader's presence on the ballot in many states. It was clear to us that Republican operatives were helping him because they wanted him to take votes from Democrats.
That's why Joe so reminds me of Ralph these days. He's ruining what is left of his progressive credentials and doing it with Republican help. Prominent GOP leaders across the country are urging Republicans to support him....
For those who want to take one critical lever of power - the House - away from Bush, this is a looming disaster. - The Bush-endorsing editorial page of the Courant responds with an unsigned and pretty much unintelligible editorial entitled "Let Losers Try To Win," specifically defending the actions of the Lieberman Party and calling it healthy for democracy for politicians to disregard election results. It's amazing to me the levels that some will go to to help save the job of this one selfish man. The idea behind "sore-loser" laws is pretty simple and common-sense - if you decide to run in an election, you should abide by its results. No one forced Joe Lieberman to become a Democrat. No one forced him to remain a Democrat and run in the Democratic primary. He chose to do so. He lost.
- Chris Shays buckles under in the wake of the Lamont victory, calls for troop withdrawals and congressional hearings on Iraq. (On the flip side, imagine where Diane Farrell would be in the polls right now if she had had the courage to endorse Ned Lamont in June or July, instead of hopping aboard the bandwagon with everyone else post August 8th.)
- Ned met Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres on Friday night. The Stamford Advocate has the details.
- Update: Ned's been back on the campaign trail in full force this weekend, meeting voters across the state. Today, he's visiting a DTC picnic in Burlington, the Machinists Union picnic in Granby, and a Polish festival in New Britain.
posted by tparty at 9:20 AM 
