Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Joe Lieberman is raving again:

If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England....

I’m worried that too many people, both in politics and out, don’t appreciate the seriousness of the threat to American security and the evil of the enemy that faces us — more evil, or as evil, as Nazism....

Wow. Worse than the Nazis? For a mad-dog Likudnik like Joe, that's a bit like sawing off the branch you're sitting on. But the guy really is a genuine, sincere, means-every-word lunatic -- anybody remember his paranoiac fanstasy about the New Caliphate?

Joe's alternate universe is at least richly-colored and exciting. But what are we to make of the strange shadowy hyperspace, or rather infraspace, in which David Sirota apparently lives and moves and has his being?

For Dems, Lamont Helps, and Lieberman Becomes a Clear & Present Danger

For months, Washington pundits, operatives and lobbyists have been issuing apocalyptic prophecies claiming that if Ned Lamont won the Connecticut Democratic primary, the Democratic Party will be severely weakened. But in very specific ways, it is clear this morning that the exact opposite is happening: that Lamont's win has strengthened the Democratic Party, and Joe Lieberman's selfish decision to ignore the democratic primary process and run as a candidate of one will weaken the Democratic Party. Here's what I mean.

Lamont's win will strengthen Democratic unity: In 2002, Republicans ran Rep. Pat Toomey against Sen. Arlen Specter. Though Toomey lost, GOP strategists knew the race was no waste - it reinforced to other GOP officeholders that if they veer from the conservative line, they could face a primary challenge. That has helped the GOP build and maintain unity, and that's the very same thing that will happen now that Lamont has won the Connecticut primary. As Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) admitted, Democrats everywhere now have a very clear example of how aiding and abetting the right-wing agenda of George W. Bush could land them with a challenge from their own voters at home.

Run that by me again, David? Did I hear you correctly -- Lieberman was supposed to be some kind of dissident, nonconformist maverick? But... support for the war has been the Democratic position right from Day One, and it's only very recently that any Democrats have started to go soft on it. Even now, the softies are the mavericks, and the War Democrats clearly represent the institutional mainstream.

And lordy, lordy, it's truly mind-bending to see Rahm Emanuel cited as a defender of some imaginary Democratic orthodoxy from which Joe is supposed to have departed. Rahm and Joe, ideological antagonists? Maybe in a world where pi = -3.

It's true, of course, that there is something different about Joe. The difference is that he's actually a more honest person than, say, Hillary Clinton. Hillary doesn't mean a word she says. Joe really does mean it. Of course that implies he's mad as a snake, but still, you have to give him credit for sincerity.

Joe plays the neocon symphony fortissimo from beginning to end, and lays out the line in all its full loopiness, because he really buys it. Naturally that's a little embarrassing for people like Hillary and Rahm, who follow the score, in practice, as sedulously as Joe does, but soft-pedal its crazier fugal passages.

Lamon't victory a victory for party unity? How can you say these things, David? The party lined right up behind Joe. And it's not at all clear, to me at least, that they aren't still behind him, in deed if not in word.