(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom)
Joe Lieberman is a career politician. He has been a state senator, state attorney general, and a U.S. Senator for the past 18 years. With the exception of two years, Lieberman has been in public service for the past 36 years. While he did admirable work during the civil rights movement, his beliefs have fallen increasingly outside the scope of the Democratic Party. He is perhaps the only member of the Democratic Party to have earned the endorsement of the National Review. Lieberman is an honorary co-chairman of the neoconservative Committee on the Present Danger. As a prominent member of the corporatist Democratic Leadership Council, he has received donations from the energy and pharmaceutical lobby, to name a couple. He receives high ratings from the traditional Democratic interest groups, but on the votes that count, he has never failed to disappointment.
In short, Joe Lieberman personifies the failures of the Democratic Party. He sounds unconvincing, he backs the policies of his campaign backers, and he has a complete lack of vision.
Ned Lamont does not sound like your typical progressive Democrat. He lives in Greenwich, a town known for housing the extremely wealthy and its historically Republican ties. Lamont founded and runs his own business, and his own net worth lies somewhere between $90 and $300 million, a far cry from the humble roots of a fellow netroots favorite, Jon Tester. His only previous public service was as a selectman in Greenwich, where issues were voted on in a largely nonpartisan fashion; he also lost a state Senate race 16 years ago. Despite these attributes, which skeptics may question how they make Lamont fit to serve in arguably the most venerable institution in America, the netroots around the country and the grassroots in Connecticut have empowered the Lamont campaign to the point where Lieberman is pondering an independent run. The latest poll numbers show Lieberman with a scant 6-point lead over Lamont. August 8 – less than two months away – will tell us a lot about who will win the struggle between the power brokers in D.C. and the Internet-equipped grassroots.
The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations. This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.
In Crashing The Gate, Markos and Jerome wrote about the Democratic power structure and how it operates in the same losing manner, never learning from its mistakes. The same consultants are hired, the style of the campaign ads remain the same, the policies of a candidate are flexible, and candidates are stuck in a state of perpetual arrested development because of the multitude of interest groups that are severely shortsighted. Joe Lieberman exemplifies the traits of the decaying power structure of the D.C. Democrats. He laughs over his own party’s netroots failure to get candidates elected; he acts in a manner that is appropriate for his corporate masters, not his constituents; he has been a willing accomplice to the Bush administration on the most important of matters – the war in Iraq, judicial nominations – and he has undercut the Democratic Party at every chance he can get. Ned Lamont recognizes that agreeing with Bush as much as Lieberman does is not representative of his fellow Connecticut residents. Clear differences have been delineated between the candidates, and in particular, the idea that party unity is tantamount to the Democratic Party’s electoral success. Whereas Lamont has promised to support the winner of the primary, Lieberman has refused to do so, and his campaign manager has laughed off the very notion of doing so.
The contest between Lieberman and Lamont can be seen in the greater context of the larger struggle that has been fermenting within the Democratic Party since John Kerry’s 2004 defeat. It is a battle between a group of entrenched insiders who are happy with minority status so long as they retain power, and on the other side, there is a rising group of grassroots activists with a non-ideological agenda who are wielding the Internet with increasingly positive results. After all, if a candidate such as Paul Hackett can raise half a million dollars in a few weeks, what power can the DCCC and the DSCC hold over us? They may try to slander us as leftist radicals, but as Yearly Kos demonstrated, we are a fairly sane, pragmatic group of people. The past few years have taught us some important lessons, the most important being that the old framework that Democratic Party politics used to operate under is broken beyond repair.
What has arisen from the ashes of our failures in 2002 and 2004 has been a unified movement within the Democratic Party. Our goal is not to enforce ideological purity – if that were the case, there would never be any chance that we would endorse candidates like Jim Webb or Stephanie Herseth. Instead, our goal is about change – change in government, change in beliefs, change in perceptions. We are here to show that the Democratic Party is indeed a party of ideas. We are here to show that you can be proud to be a Democrat and stand up for what you believe in. And most importantly, we are here to send a message to Washington – America is ready for a change in the way our business gets done. The ultimate outsider, Howard Dean, now has the ultimate insider’s job. History has shown that progress is inevitable, and it would be wise for the D.C. Democrats to recognize this and embrace the grassroots. Otherwise, they will simply collapse…just as Joe Lieberman is in the process of doing in Connecticut.