I found this clip on Atrios’s site from this morning’s Today Show …
LAUER: Senator, is there any phone call you could receive? Is there anyone in the Democratic Party who could call you today and ask you to drop out that you would listen to?
LIEBERMAN: Respectfully, no. I am committed to this campaign, to a different kind of politics, to bringing the Democratic Party back from Ned Lamont, Maxine Waters to the mainstream, and for doing something for the people of Connecticut. That’s what this is all about: which one of us, Lamont or me, can do more for the future of our people here in Connecticut. And on that basis, I’m going forward with confidence, purpose and some real optimism.
Maxine Waters isn’t really my kind of Democrat. But then, if I understand what’s happened in the last 36 hours, Joe Lieberman isn’t a Democrat at all anymore.
But more to the point. This isn’t just inaccurate, it’s pathetic. I’ts a like a mini-version of the Iraq War or the War on Terror. You’re either with Joe or you’re with the extremists. Apparently half of Connecticut Democrats are outside the mainstream.
This is really the attitude that got poor Joe into this bind.
The mainstream is Joe Lieberman, along with possibly Sean Hannity and Bill Kristol. If you disagree with Joe Lieberman, a disagreement about policy is the least of it. It’s a major existential crisis for the Democratic party which risks conquest by unreconstructed leftists, extremists and miscellaneous other freaks.
The idea that Ned Lamont is ‘outside the mainstream’ on any issue I’m aware of is laughable.
As a matter of civics, if Joe Lieberman wants to run as an independent, good for him. If 51% of Connecticut voters want to vote for him, that’s democracy. As a Democrat, he should get out of the race now. And every Democrat should tell him to.
If he wants to run as an independent he should and could go to Connecticut voters and say, “A lot of people in my own party disagree with me on this or that issue. But I’ve served all of Connecticut’s citizens for 18 years. And I still think I can be the best senator. So vote for me.”
I wouldn’t agree with that. But I could respect it.
But he’s not. It’s all about him and stabbing his own party in the back while he disingenuously pleads that he’s trying to save it. He can’t admit or realize or get his head around the idea that his denial about Iraq and his obliviousness to his own constituents got him into this mess.
In the end, he just won’t come clean. Forget about being a Democrat. Just be a man. It’s time.
