“Many activists believe that Lieberman’s conciliatory approach undercuts the party’s unity, consistency and confrontational posture, all of which are essential for an effective opposition party. They resent his style more than they resent his voting record, which is not very different from those of many popular Democrats.
Lieberman obviously still has incumbency, fund raising, name recognition and good poll numbers on his side. Yet Democrats’ enthusiasm for devoting resources to this internal battle, instead of to races that actually could win back Congress, reveals the increasing significance of leadership strategy in the debate over the party’s future. While Lieberman may be the most noticeable target, he is not alone.
Last month, the influential progressive organization MoveOn.org asked its members if it should devote resources toward similar primary challenges. (For full disclosure, I wrote a chapter for the 2004 book “MoveOn’s 50 Ways To Love Your Country.”) The group announced that 84% of respondents agreed, and it is now leading a primary challenge to Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar.
Critics of this approach say an opposition party cannot afford to quibble with its elected members, and that all resources should be devoted to winnable swing districts in the next election. But that misses the whole point: Proponents of primary challenges are actually strategizing beyond the next election.
They believe that some of the party’s most visible scars are self-inflicted. Its reputation is tarnished by prominent Democrats who capitulate to Republicans at every turn, undercutting the entire rationale for an opposition party, and by candidates who define their personal strengths by knocking their party’s perceived weakness, as Zell Miller and Evan Bayh have done with national security. Eradicating such timidity and disloyalty would be good for the party; challenging it is just common sense.
Today, Democratic activists have little patience for leaders who still don’t get it. The Santa Monica-based Digby’s Blog explained the contrast in a post this month: “The grass roots of the Democratic Party see something that all the establishment politicians have not yet realized: Bipartisanship is dead for the moment, and there is no margin in making deals. The rules have changed. When you capitulate to the Republicans for promises of something down the road, you are being a fool. When you make a deal with them for personal reasons, you are selling out your party. When you use Republican talking points to make your argument, you are helping the other side.”
If Democratic leaders listened to this insight, they would understand that many of their supporters yearn for confrontational leadership and unwavering allegiance to the party — reasonable requests that do not require major ideological shifts.
The primary challenges to Lieberman, Cuellar and other like-minded Democrats are designed either to purge the targets or to temper their conduct, while warning other elected Democrats that disloyalty now has a cost. It is a valiant effort finally to give the Democratic Party more discipline, all the more striking because the calls for unity are coming from the bottom up.”-from Ari Melber’s op-ed in Forward, via The Huffington Post.
someday soon, they will learn that there is an insurgency afoot.
I say we run democrats that are democrats and get the “mini repugnants” out of office. I am sick of so called Democrats who have no backbones and are willing to sell America out every time.
may well be true.
It cannot, however, be our future as a nation. If bipartisanship is dead forever, so is America.
with their twin credos: power over principle and money over US interests. Their power is held together with the idea that any straying off the range will have immediate consequences. And straying off the range means talking on something other than their talking points, working with dems and caring about their constituency.
That is very true. Fortunately i think it will be dead only as long as it takes to get the neocons/fundies out of control. THese are the extremists and while the party’s majority may not be extremist as long as these folks have the reins everything is going to be polarized.
Reasonable people can only talk reasonably to reasonable people.
America is more than two parties. America is more than bipartisanship.
These Republicans have to learn the lessons the hard way. If we simply look the other side, next time they can controll all three branches of government, they will do exactly the same thing. They will take us tho the verge of dictatorship and fascism. That is where we are today.
Whant to be bipartisan??? Fine, but first learn your lesson, so they won’t forget.
I am going to start pointing this out every time some nostalgic fool starts pushing Al Gore for President yet one more time.
Who was it that he acceded to allowing on the ticket as a running mate again? In the interests of regional (And…wink wink, nudge nudge. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Ethnic..as in “ensuring the Jewish vote”. BET on it) )”electability”?
THIS asshole, THAT’S who!!!
Please.
Al Gore.
ANOTHER Democratic know-nothing rich boy political genius.
JEEZ!!!
AG
I keep searching for the light at the end of your tunnel, Arthur.
I supported Gore for president. I supported Clinton intially in part because he picked Gore as a running mate. I’d support Gore again tomorrow. I also support a primary challenge to Lieberman and think it should have happened long ago. Calling me a fool is no way to convince me of your points. For the record it makes me much less likely to read you or give your comments any weight for now and the forseeable future. Way to alienate!
If the Gore fits…wear it.
You want to recycle yet another Dem loser because he “says” the right things. I am sorry. That is foolish. ANY candidate who would allow a Ratpub mole like Lieberman to run on his ticket…any politician who cannot beat a REAL fool like Bush even WITH a concerted vote theft effort working against him…is simply a waste of time.
He doesn’t have the talent. Get the hook.
Now…Gore may be a VERY nice man, and he may be a good governmental bureaucrat as well. But he is not going to beat these people.
Sorry…that’s the way it is.
We need someone to awaken the American people.
Gore is darvon on the hoof.
Plus…I am SO sick of seeing people who were born with a silver spoon up their ass try to lead us little people.
Point…we have had two successful democratic Presidential candidates in the modern era…post-JFK assassination, post-media takeover by the PermaGov.
Two.
That’s all, baby.
Two.
Care to comment on their point of origin in this society?
Yup. Working class and below. A Georgia peanut farmer and some kid from the hell of lower Arkansas.
Why?
BECAUSE THEY HAD TO PAY SOME DUES TO GET WHERE THEY WERE. And people SEE that.
Gore?
Please.
The first kerry.
No more losers. We cannot afford it.
AG
Don’t look for me in your diaries.
Sorry you feel that way.
Just trying to make some sense out of what is essentially a NON-sensical situation.
Here we are…right on just about every issue.
MORALLY right.
And here THEY are…transparently crooked as the day is long, and right in the clear LIGHT of that day. No subterfuge, to speak of…right in out faces, and what are we goiong to do about it.
And we run the Dukakises and Gores and kerrys of our world at ’em.
Hmmmmm….!!!
Maybe THAT’S the problem.
Sorry, Kelly.
You…and much of the REST of the Democratic mainstream…are WAY off.
On the evidence.
The evidence of your ongoing failure.
Bye bye…
AG
My point was that your tone matters. Yelling at people and calling them fool has a long history of driving people away. If you want to convince people to your points skip the accusations. If all you want is an argument, keep hurling insults. But I’ll pass on responding. If you don’t see that tone matters be prepared to spend a lot of time frustrated.
You know…it’s getting a little late to be nice.
We are halfway over the edge of a precipice and you want me to politely tell you to get your ass off the wrong end of the wagon after your positions…your lame humpty-dump candidates…were one of the main reasons we went off the road in the first place?
Sorry…I’m through being nice.
I was “nice” for 40 years. I nicely tried to point out to people that the assassinations of the ’60s and ’70s were the beginning of something truly deadly for America. Then I got less nice for a while. Radical, even. That didn’t seem to do much good, so I dropped out of politics.
I was “nice” during the Nixon + Reagan eras. Worked hard, didn’t argue much.
I was “nice” during the Clinton years, when our gluttony was overwhelming. Lived moderatley, did my work well.
I was even nice during Bush I.
But now…
No more Mr. Nice Guy.
These assholes are going to kill us all.
Does someone yell “Fire” in a theater nicely?
We have niced ourselves into proto-fascism.
And that AIN’T “nice”.
So take your hurt feelings and go look in the mirror.
YOU know…the one with the “Gore + Lieberman in 2000” sticker on it?
Get real.
AG
nice-iness
needed.
it is time to get nasty.
(actually, it may be too late even for that)
nice-iness = truthiness
yes, rumi, I’ve been reduced to taking my cues and my news from Colbert! 😉
Gotta love the guy.
And O’Lielly goes after Olbermann b/c he thinks Colbert is “nice”!
RFLMAO!
Colbert’s best, based on O’Reilly- I can’t prove it, but I can say it.
I am not familiar with O’Wrongly’s positions due to my absolute inability to look at his face without vomiting, but…
If he HAS said that he thinks Colbert is “nice”…Colbert’s that guy that started on the Daily Show, right? (Sorry…my NEWSTRIKE!! includes the liberal assholes, too. No offense, but sophomoric humor about murder, torture and rape is just not my cup of tea these days. I’m sure it has its place in the scheme of things, but then…so did Thomas Paine and Socrates.)…if Mr. Wrong HAS said tthat…here’s the translation.
He thinks Colbert is cute.
In point of fact…Colbert IS cute.
That’s his stock in trade.
I just don’t think that’s the “trade” his O’Wrongliness has in mind.
Later…
AG
You didn’t have to look at O’Lielly’s face to hear about it (I’ve never watched O’Lielly either, btw, for the same reason as you: unfortunate to some degree, b/c at first I didn’t even realize what/who Colbert was parodying). The Schtick becomes immensely more funny when you’ve seen the ‘real thing.’
This is what O’Lielly had to say in Newsweek a few weeks back
Frankly, Arthur, if you include Colbert and Stewart in your “newstrike,” you are making one rather glaring mistake and thereby actually not doing anything to “rage against the machine”, but instead disregarding two people who are master ARTISTS. These two shows run on the COMEDY CHANNEL–they are not news broadcasts. These two men, imho, are masters of their craft. If you see these guys as part of the news network and throw them on the same trash heap as Olbermann, Mathews and Tweetie, you’re really making the same kind of mistake as O’Lielly himself, just from a different angle.
You are not bashing the “news” here–you are bashing ARTISTS–artists who, in fact, look to me like they have been conducting an all-out, brilliantly orchestrated newstrike on national television, to the delight of millions of viewers, nightly, for quite some time now.
I’m sorry, but if you choose to disregard artists and to also block them out with the smokescreen of your “newsstrike,” then you have lost me because in just about every fascist regime I am familiar with, the ARTISTS are usually put in line somewhere between the Jews (or whatever ethnic target is on whatever fascist agenda for the day) and the communists (or whatever ideological enemy is on the fascist agenda for the day).
When a ‘radical’ artist such as yourself comes out trashing guys like this whose comedic skills are, imo, on a par with the likes of Chaplin and Pryor, that is to me clear evidence of the fact that your “newsstrike” has backfired. There is a very big difference between the COMEDY CHANNEL and MSNBC. Stewart and Colbert are not newscasters.
Anyone who, like Colbert, is successful enough in his parody to get the direct object of that parody to like him, well….all I have to offer that man is a tip of the hat that says RESPECT.
too many are just for killing all our Democrats, not just the DINOs.
There does not seem to be much time taken to pick our friends and enemies anymore in the party.
I don’t know personally anyone who repudiates all Dems, though it’s clear from reading commentaryon some blogs that such people exist.
For me there’s a difference between postulating the idea that if the Dem party as an institution cannot effectively stand up and actively defend to the hilt even one solid principle (even if doing so means they’ll likely lose an election), they are not worthy as a party of the support they seek, and the idea that individual Dems who, by their own betrayal of individual principles, need to be exorcized from the party.
Here in Forida in ’04 I voted for Betty Castor, not because I knew enough about her to value her positions on various issues, but because a vote for her was a vote against the odious piece of lying shit Mel Martinez. My vote for Kerry was not an affirmative vote either, but rather was a vote against the imbecile in chief and his sociopathic regime.
Many of us differ on where we need to draw the line between whether we should vote for a lackluster candidate to defeat the greater Repub evil, or whether voting for a DINO actually does more damage than not voting for him.
I regard people like Lieberman and Casey and virtually all of the DLC crowd as much more destructive of the party than the Repubs.
I agree. They are the enablers. Without them we probably wouldn’t have to worry about republican extremists.
We’d still have to deal with the Repub extremists but we’d at least have a better chance at communicating effectively with the public if there was a more unifying philosophy being demonstrated in the Dem party itself.
Right now there doesn’t seem to be such a philosophical framework for unity; hence the ability for the Dems to effectively challenge the Repub insanity is severely fractured.
Get rid of stealth wingnuts like Lieberman and Casey and the DLC crowd, and stand up for abortion rights, against the Iraq invasion and occupation, against the environmental protection rollbacks, against the diminishment of civil rights, against land giveaways to corporate entities, against the looting of the treasury for the benefit of big energy and big pharmaceuticals and aggressive religiouys zealotry, etc. Then ther party would have some legs to stand on and a way of uniting the various separate issues under one overarching philosophical theme.
will I live to see this resurgence of principle and action within the Dem Party? I hope so, but, as someone who’s got many more years behind him than in front of him, it’ll be close run thing if I’m to witness a Dem party able to help avert the complete disaster being wrought by the extremist Repub lunatics.
with your comment here and the one above sbj.
In fact I have sincere doubts as to any great D success in ’06 as long as current DLC/leadership attitudes prevail.
I would love to see a Dem majority in one or the other houses of congress if for no other reason than to make it (at least theoretically) possible to derail further Repub/BushCo assaults on our Democracy, and have subpoena power that might be used to investigate and hold them accountable for crimes already committed.
However, if creatures like Lieberman/Casey/Bayh/dlc types are part of such an emerging majority it’s not clear such exercises of Dem majority would take place.
I think it may take another humiliating defeat before Dems across the country finally overcome their denial and repudiate completely the DLC gang and the religious authoritarians who are compromising the very essence of our Dem party and our national democracy itself. Throwing these Dem bums out is an imperative if the Dem party is going to be able to counteract the Repub machine, but I sense the Dem and Independent voting public still needs to suffer more before they’ll finally do it.
The Democrats have to basically ask themselves the question: what do we want with this party? and come up with a strategy according to their values in pursuit of a more cohesive policy platform. The Democratic Party’s policy platform of today is in reality the sum of each and every Democrat representatives personal views on every single ad-hoc issue that surface in Congress and thus have little resemblance to a political party and more the resemblance to a political movement.
Imho, you’ve nailed the principal issue. It looks and feels ad-hoc. We’re splintered. To win, a party must be cohesive. The rethuglicans manage that even with differing views within.
FT (UK) Financial Times of London reporter is having lunch with Mr. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter at the Pharjac Grille, one of 3 restaurants in Plains Georgia. Over green tomato soup, chili soup and southern fried chicken, let’s listen in.
The conversation reminds us of the contrast between the presidency then, and now.
the Lieberman Democrats, the Powers-That-Be in the Democratic Party continue to foist more of them upon us.
And the MSM cooperates.
In today’s NY Times, there’s a piece on the Pennsylvania Senate race. I saw the headline on the Safari RSS reader, and eagerly clicked on it to see if there was something new. But what do I read? More on Santorum, and Casey…and a brief mention that Kate Michelman is considering an independent candidacy because of Casey’s stated support for Alito. Not word one about Chuck Pennachio’s candidacy challenging Casey for the Democratic nomination. As far as they’re concerned, it’s a done deal.
We’re not a democracy — the suits tell us who to vote for, and we’ll fall in line. That’s the way to regain control…screw it if we lose what few rights we have left in the process. We’ll just roll over and let them take our health decisions away, just like all but 10 Senators rolled over and let the Patriot Act become more solidified into our way of life…
…okay, I’m ranting here, if I’m not careful this’ll turn into a diary like Tracy’s comments… 😉
OT see FBC
Not only that, but the inference in the Times piece was that there was nothing controversial about Casey except his anti-choice stance. Oh really??? The guy supports the war, thinks everybody should be free to buy assault weapons without so much as a background check, endorsed the Alito nomination, endorsed Congressional intervention in the Schiavo case (which, aside from the privacy concerns, was a full frontal assault upon the independence of the judiciary), supports the Patriot Act, is virtually silent about health care reform (but gets lot of money from HMO’s, fancy that), opposes any expansion beyond the Bush plan for stem cell research, etc. etc.
That article looked like it had been written by the press office of the DSCC.
Actually, leadership strategy’s the only thing that matters. Unless we elect actual progressives, nothing’s going to change.
Mark my words, chillen . . . the DNC/DLC is significantly more apt to devote fervor and money to ridding the party of the Russ Feingolds than it is to trashing the Liebermans. Those of you who think otherwise are as deluded as those who think Saddam was sleeping with Osama.
The greatest enemy of the new radical is the old liberal. V I Lenin
For the last five years the Republican Party has been self-destructing. Should be a slam-dunk for the Democrats to defeat them, right?
So what is the “common wisdom”on the Democrats? Bad as the Republicans have repeatedly proven themselves to be, the Democrats have not been able to take advantage of their incompetence.
Why?
The single most important reason is that the public has the idea that the Democrats “don’t stand for anything!” And why is that the case?
The most important reason is that the Democrats don’t speak with a coherent voice. How do you present a Democratic view of what they stand for when Lieberman uses the Republican talking points against the members of his own party and Cueller campaigns for Bush for President?
We have a party with a lot to offer America, but we can’t present it with federal Senators and Congressmen spouting the Republican lines, cutting down Democrats with Republican talking points, and suffering no consequences. If the leaders of the Democratic Party can’t control the members, why should voters consider a member of the Democratic Party any different from the Republicans?
The voters don’t trust the Democrats because there is no way to predict that a candidate running as a Democrat will be any different from the currently provably incompetent Republicans?
If Democrats don’t discipline the members of the Party, no one will vote for them as opponents to the Republican incompetence. So the current intra-party conflict is probably the finest thing Democrats have done since LBJ was President and passed the Civil Rights Act and Medicare.
Why go after Lieberman and Cueller?
Because the shape shifter/body snatcher that inhabits the RatPubs now in power…the PermaGov Monster…will just shift its base to the DemocRatPubs.
THAT’S why.
Duh!!!
AG
hey Arthur. comments like “duh” in response to those that may disagree with you tells me your ability to articulate your point of view is less developed that your “attitude.” I would suggest you work on the former and deposit the latter on your private pissing post.
Arthur, that’s your opinion, unsupported by any facts that you allude to.
I suggest that removing those Democrats (or severely chastising them in the way that gets their attention – threaten their jobs) is a way of giving the Democratic Party the appearance of having principles.
The problem being solved is the view that the Democrats don’t stand for anything. The solution is to go after Lieberman and Cueller in the primaries.
As nearly as I can tell from your post, your reason for going after those two is that you just don’t like them and suspect them of some unspecified evil. No doubt a worthy goal, but why should I or any other Democrat buy into your idiosyncratic dislikes?
Please pardon me if I am violating any norm of courtesy here by treating your rude and rather uninformative response as though it were a reasonable comment by an intelligent person and so worthy of a courteous reply.
Add Bob Casey to your list of unacceptable “Democrats” the DSCC would anoint in back rooms. Here in Pennsylvania the grass roots are determined to do something about that by voting for the insurgent candidacy of Chuck Pennacchio. I for one will vote independent in the Fall if Casey is the candidate, and I suspects tens of thousands of registered Democrats and moderate Republicans will join me.
By the way, Kate Michelman, former head of NARAL, announced this week that she is seriously considering an independent run for the Senate in Pa. If Casey is the Democratic candidate. She’ll have my vote for sure.
I agree JPol. Enough is enough. We have to do everything we can to get Chuck Pennacchio elected. But if he doesn’t win, I cannot bring myself to vote for Casey… He will just be another Lieberman.. (if not Zell Miller).
http://www.chuck2006.com