Uhm, no that’s not the way it works around here. We’re trying to establish on how many issues his position lies outside the Democratic distribution. That’s the key issue, and that’s the assertion you and others are making.
Yep. Swiftboating. If this is how the Netroots are going to purge the Democratic party, then maybe the Pubbies are right when they start dancing in the streets tomorrow.
We really have to check that memory! 
As early as 2000 it was reported that “Holy Joe” was Lieberman’s nickname among his Washington friends.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4196/is_20000901/ai_n10633053
I made no such assertion. Perhaps that would be the way it works if I had made the assertion you attribute to me, but it certainly isn’t the way it works when I toss in a few factual references to clarify what Lieberman actually said at the time.
As far as the exact number of issues upon which Lieberman departs from party gospel, that’s hardly a key issue at this late date. Except for a small number of navel gazers, voters will rate his position on the issues that they care about now, and vote accordingly.
I would see it more like the Pubbies in the Schiavo case, a sign that they are believing their own propaganda, the smart or informed Republicans will not dance.
Now, just by memory 
here since it is getting late:
It was very strange how the “compromise” was made in Congress, just like in many political maneuvers of today, thinking that the unanimous senate vote (Almost everybody was out of Washington) was a testimony of their true resolve is silly, the majority of the Democrats knew the bill had language that made the Shiavo resolution virtually useless, it was when the Republicans and few Democrats like Lieberman bothered to take it to court (the courts had a laugh) or commented in favor of it that then it was clear who was really willing to ignore what the American people wanted (some polls showed more than 75% of the people telling congress to bug-off)
While Lieberman was willing to support afterwards the continuation of efforts to keep government involved in private family matters, leaders like Dean were saying a case like Schiavo will not be forgotten come November, since it showed what the Republican leadership was willing to do to support a small base that does not know what separation of church and state is, Lieberman being caught in the backlash is his own doing.
For the record, Swiftboating refers to an organized campaign of repeating clear, obvious, easily refutable lies, taking advantage of the mainstream media’s stupid and simplistic definition of “balance” to create a false equivalence between the lies and their refutations, thus giving the lies a legitimacy they in no way deserve.
I see no evidence that anything resembling this is happening to Lieberman.
Watching the report on this subject on the News Hour w/ Jim Leher, it was interesting to see who was out campainging for whom. Lieberman had Bill Clinton and Max Cleland. Lamant had Maxine Waters and Danny Glover.
GIGO: Just because “Holy Joe” goes back a few years doesn’t mean much. The main Swiftboater (O’Neil?) had been after Kerry for several decades.
Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m not a big fan of Lieberman. Whenever I can’t get to sleep, I just pop in a tape of one of his speeches, and I’m out like a light in about 3 seconds. 
If I were voting in that primary, I might very well vote for Lamant. But it’s the way this campaign is playing out that is a bit disturbing. The Netroots folks aren’t just about the war. If there are two Democratic candidates who are both against the war, they’ll zoom in on some other issue, pushing the party further to the left. I still think it’s way too early to know if this is going to happen, but the more I’ve seen of this campaign (some of it thru the eyes of this very thread), the more unsettling it looks. You know what they say about the Democrats and the Palestinians-- both never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. They missed it in '04, and they just might miss it again in '06.
It was his Friends who came with the nickname. Like **Evil Captor ** says, what I have said about Lieberman has a basis in reality, not lies like the Swiftboaters.
You too?
The curious thing is that the Netroots are being assigned as the main shakers of this by the mainstream media when I remember that even the netroots are critics of that lazy angle from the Mainstream, I remember seeing articles that showed most of the roots are indeed coming locally from Connecticut (and lets face it, the wealth of Lammont) netroots are still not ready for prime time, but they make a good scapegoat for the Mainstream that missed what was going on:
CT-Sen: The Myth Of The Angry Left
by DemFromCT
Wed Aug 02, 2006 at 06:08:29 AM PDT
As **RTFirefly ** showed in a memorable thread years ago: the Democrats will not be able to win anything by continuing to show nothing, showing only to be a rubber stamp or being - like Bartcop called the democratic leaders like Lieberman- “pink tutu democrats” it is a status only Republicans want to keep, having Democratic leaders that forget that they belong to an opposition party has been shown to be harmful to the wellbeing of the separation of powers and to the nation in general.
As Chris Bowers asked, if a Lieberman loss will bring about the marginalization and subsequent end of the Democratic party, why has no conservative come out in support of Lamont? I mean, they had no problem both wholly funding and providing personnel support to the Green Party (or, as I said elsewhere “Green Old Party”) in Pennsylvania to try to derail the impending ouster of Santorum. Why wouldn’t they support Lamont if it would be such a blow to the Democrats?
Gee, even in this thread Sam Stone predicts dire consequences for the Democrats should Lamont win, yet continues to support Lieberman. Thanks again for your concern; hopefully the Democrats will give your suggestions all the consideration they merit.
Lieberman is no centrist. A centrist Democrat would work from a position of strength within the Democratic party to bring Republicans to the middle to work in a bipartisan manner. Lieberman has consistently given the most fawning support to the right for several years now. How else would one earn the frequent mentions from the administration and the butt-licking from Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity? Such folks are not big fans of compromising on their goals.
The issues are much, much greater than the war, but the foisting of that spin on the national public make things much, much tougher for Republicans in general, so I say let folks like John Mace keep running with it.
Thanks. I had not heard that.
I’d rather the seat didn’t stay Republican, but frankly I’d prefer Ney to Padgett. She’s pretty loathesome. The nastiest radio commercials I can think of.
What’s wrong with that?
(I am, of course, using your side’s definition of the term, which is “the public airing of unflattering, but true, facts”.)
As long as we’re throwing out links to op/ed pieces and such, here’s one:
excerpt:
Well, it’s unsurprising that conservatives and Republicans would try to muddy the clarity of the term, since muddying the water is part of Swiftboating.
The only thing that I would add to Evil Captor’s definition is that it is often targeted at an actual strength of the person in an attempt to weaken the appeal of that person. Kerry’s record of commendations in war, recent efforts regarding Murtha, and, pre-swiftboating, the disgusting things that were done to a candidate in Mississippi (IIRC), who was involved locally in providing support and resources to children in need. Rove is said to have started a whispering campaign that the guy was a pedophile.
It’s being done by his own party.
I’m not on either side. We libertarians have found the one and only true path! BTW, I’m not just talking about the Schiavo thing. Go back to that Op Ed piece that rjung posted and see my debunking of those charges against him. Maybe that’s just politics as usual, but there seems to be an almost visceral hate of Lieberman, much like the hate some on the right had of Kerry.
That’s pretty disengenuous, too. Sure, some who have recanted have tried to blame their original votes on others, but there were plenty of Democrats who voted agains the AUMF. Many of us here were never for the war, WMDs or no WMDs. The problem with Lieberman’s stance on the Iraq war is that he still thinks it was a good idea. It wasn’t.
Lanny Davis is quite unimpressed with some of Lamont’s supporters:
As for the actual primary, the tide seems to have turned back in Lieberman’s favor but I still think Lamont will pull out a narrow win. No reports yet on turnout but the Secretary of State was predicting 30-35% this morning, which would be HUGE.
I’m in Hartford and the streets are crawling with journalists. Lots of people around with Joe signs but I don’t think that means anything.
If it were being done. We lack evidence that it is.
I hope you don’t mind if I call bullshit on that pile of crap:
True so far.
“Almost every leading Democratic politician”? About half the Dems in Congress voted against it.
Kagan’s phrasing blurs the issue: many Dems favor commencing withdrawals this year; few advocate withdrawing completely by 12/31/2006.
Sure. Back in 2003, when he was running for the Dem nomination for President - and during the past few days. (I’d link you to the list of quotes on Joe’s campaign website, except he apparently forgot to pay his bills.)
No, Joe’s sins on the war are simple: he (a) has had as sunny a view of the war’s ‘progress’ as Bush does, which says enough about his judgment right there; and (b) once he folded his 2004 Presidential campaign, he’s been far more critical of those who would criticize the war, than he has been of the war itself.
His guns have all been pointed left.
Kagan’s making shit up, of course: Gore never favored a U.S. invasion of Iraq, during or since his veep days. Kagan’s deliberately obfuscating the difference between supporting Iraqi-originated regime change, and supporting U.S.-originated regime change.
Joe’s done his fair share of that.
Finally, a question that many people elsewhere have been asking: if Joe’s such a true-blue Dem, why are the wingnuts - the Rushes, the Malkins, the Coulters of the world, as well as NeoCon Kagan here - so upset that other Dems are treating him so badly? When people who are usually delighted to see you jump off a cliff, are suddenly wringing their hands and saying, “watch out for that cliff!” even a moron would have to wonder what the deal is.
If they want to make sure there are more centrist Dems in the Senate, there’s Harold Ford, Jr. running for Frist’s open seat in TN; there’s Jim Webb running against George Allen in VA; and I’m sure I can think of a few more, given the opportunity. Lotsa ways to fight the ‘purge.’
I wasn’t just being cute; I think this has a great deal to do with how future elections might turn out. I think the story here is that people on the center-left side of things have found mechanisms by which they can get involved, work together, build relationships and community, and make a difference. Not unlike the religious right a couple of decades back, the new left has found its way around the traditional structures, around the media, and found its own networks for organizing and communicating. The big difference is that (a) the left really hasn’t had anything analogous until now, which made our politics kinda lopsided; and (b) unlike the discussion on the right, which is mostly top-down, what’s happening on the left is more of a complex conversation; many more people may listen to Markos Moulitsas than listen to me, but I can still get a word in edgewise.
And this is how democracy is supposed to work. Everyone talks about town-hall meetings as being a pure form of democracy, and many have rued the fact that that model doesn’t work on a national level. Well, now we’ve got ways of having a huge online conversation, and it’s a hell of a lot more fun than reading yet another piece of direct mail, as well as being more insightful - because just like here, you can challenge someone if you think they’re wrong, or suggest improvements if you like their ideas, or whatever. Try doing that with direct mail!
To sum up, I think what’s happening here is a new wave of democracy, it’s a good thing, and it’s going to make a difference in our politics.
Just to burnish a point from Arty’s toothsome post: Democrats voting “against the war”.
History is unkind to memory. There was no “vote for war”. The substance of the vote was to empower the President as a means to bolster his credibility in pursuit of negotiation. And this was how it was sold: that by lending strength and unity to GeeDub’s position, it would be a means to avoiding war. If it were true, one could hardly stand in opposition. Which is to say, if one trusted GeeDub to be faithful to his word, one simply could not vote against such a resolution.
Ah! There’s the rub, Bub. Note how many Dems did not trust him. Note how many, facing a firestorm of political hysteria whipped up by Pubbies eager to pound the war drum and wave the bloody shirt (well, an impending bloody shirt…) had the moral and political courage to stand against it. And note how cynically the Pubbies used that vote to slander and slur them.
It wasn’t sold as a “war resolution”, it was sold as a resolution to strengthen negotiation positions, as a means to avoid war. Of course, it was no such thing.
What it was…well, it was a lie, wasn’t it?
No, there’s plenty of evidence, you just don’t find it convincing. It’s easy to nitpick and say it’s a different phenomenon, but no two cases are identical, and if one wants to focus on the differences, then those differences become the defining feature.
But it’s not the label that’s important. If you don’t want to call it Swiftboating, that’s of little import-- look instead at what’s actually being done: He is being characterized as a DINO, which is demonstrably false (see my post #36). He is being purged because he suppoted a war, but it’s not enough to just say that. History has to be re-written so that the faithful can say: Well, he wasn’t a real Democrat anyway. The one other thing (besides his Iraw war position) I can see that he is “guilty” of is that he doesn’t hate George Bush. That’s the gold standard of the NetRoots crowd. Lieberman is faulted for being “too cozy with the Republicans”. A virtue (being able to work with the other party) is spun into a vice. He’s derisively called “Holy Joe”, above, because he’s able to reach out to people of faith (surely you’re not going to us that you use that as an affectionate nickname, GIGO.)
It might be emotionally appealing for some to see the Democratic party purged of the centrists, but remember that revenge is a dish better served cold. It’s quite popular on this MB to see the Democratic party move noticeably to the left, but that will spell disaster for the Dems. This MB’s poltiical center of gravity is pretty far to the left of the center of gravity of the American electorate. And I say that as someone who wants the Dems to win in November. I want my government divided, and I want the Republicans knocked out of the position of power they’ve been in for far too long. There is a fight going on for control of the Democratic party and if the NetRoots folks win, it will be an overall loss for Dems.
Let’s roll tape on Lanny:
Well yeah, and I could go over to Little Green Racists…er, Footballs right now, and find worse on the other side in the first hundred comments. So what?
It’s the victim game, Ward Churchill edition. There’s always somebody out there who’s saying outrageous things, and if you work hard enough, you can find them. And, awww, if you dig through a year’s worth of comments at some major blogs, as Davis did, you’re going to find stuff to make you mad, or make you feel victimized, or whatever. You can collect enough of that .0001% of what’s going on together in one place to fool ignorant people into thinking that’s what Kos or HuffPo are all about.
But Davis’ game here is the deliberate propogation of ignorance - which puts him on the other side, no matter what my side is. And thank goodness he’s on the other side in this one, because I’d be disgusted to have him as an ally.
Davis is no doubt talking about D.C. lobbyist Richard Goodstein.
I’d love to be there and get a sense of what’s happening.