TPM Reader MM responds to DO’s comments below …

I do not spend as much time tracking blogs as it seems DO does; no doubt there is some validity to his point that there is unwarranted venom out there. But I find it hard to believe that mean-spirited blogging alone would account for Lieberman’s ongoing slippage in the polls. There must be some other reason. It’s buried in DO’s post:

“And with the exception of Lieberman’s enthusiastic support of the Iraq war, it’s hard to see how Lieberman’s policy preferences are markedly different than his Democratic colleagues.”

That’s a pretty quick way of disposing of the issue. DO makes it sound like differing on the Iraq disaster is akin to differing on button subsidies, or the ball-point pen tariff. Iraq is bigger than that. Much bigger. No doubt Lieberman has a good voting record on all sorts of other things, but what we’ve done in Iraq, with his “enthusiastic support” is so bad for the country that it’s not unreasonable for Democrats in CT to consider replacing him as their senator.

TPM Reader RP chimes in too …

I am a frequent reader and poster at DKos. I have read a lot there about Lieberman. Not a single comment that I have seen as either wished him an untimely death nor been anti-semitic.

The core problem that Kos has with Lieberman is that he gives cover to Republicans. ‘Look,’ they can say. ‘Even a Democrat says what we’re saying.’ There are far more conservative Democrats, none of whom raise the ire of the left. Why? Because, while they may not vote with Democrats all the time, they do not go on Fox news to trash other Democrats. Remember Ronald Reagan’s famous 11th commandment? That goes for Democrats, too.

As DO points out, Lieberman is more liberal than almost all Republicans – a fact that does not go unnoticed at dKos. However, in contrast to Ben Nelson, he’s from a deep blue state. Connecticut deserves a Senator more attuned to their leanings. And Lieberman isn’t attuned to anything except his own selfish interests.

Thanks for letting me vent.

Then again, there’s TPM Reader JC …

I wish to concur with “DO”. He says everything I’ve been feeling (and says it very well) about the attacks on Lieberman. You can see the venom – I read it just now at the TPM Cafe – about Israel and see the same venom (watered down) about Lieberman.

I’m on record comparing the attacks on Lieberman to the immolation of the Democrats in 1968. It will be ironic if the same group of people who voted for Nader in 2000, driving Gore-Lieberman out of history, will destroy our chances to take the Senate in 2006.

But TPM Reader JM takes a different tack …

I just read the e-mail from DO about how anti-Semitic we in the anti-Lieberman crazy blogger Left are. Seems to me what’s missing from his very long message is, say, an example of that anti-Semitism? I frequently read through the comments sections of Eschaton and FireDogLake, and I’ll admit there are a lot of comments about Lieberman’s support of Israel and AIPAC’s support of Lieberman. Are those, in and of themselves, anti-Semitic? Are they untrue? I honestly don’t know. My objection to Lieberman is that he supports Bush and his plan-less war more than most sensible Repulicans (and Social Security, Alito, defending Rumsfeld after Abu Grahib, voting for Alberto “Quaint” Gonzalez–Digby has a post of Lieberman actually defending the word ‘quaint’–and Condi Rice) such as Hagel (and isn’t Hagel, who would be the blogosphere’s favorite Republican if he ever followed through on any of his lip-service to the Constitution, Jewish?). Even the vastly over-rated McCain would have cashiered Rumsfeld by now.

How do you (or DO) square these charges of anti-Semitism with the blogofascists’ almost fanatical support of Russ Feingold and (at least before she announced she’d be campaigning for Lieberman) Barbara Boxer? There are also, especially at Eschcaton, ‘trolls’ who take the names of regular posters and write “I hate Lieberman the Jew” or some such. Maybe this is what DO is referring to, maybe DO is one of those ‘trolls’. The only thing missing from his email is “I’ve been a proud member of the Democrat party all my life, but Sean Hannity is right…”

Frankly, it’s less than admirable of you to publish this nonsense without any kind of comment or context.

PS- Just listening to the anti-Semite Sam Seder on the Majority Report. They played a clip of Lieberman saying that the United States is a creationist nation. Yup. No reason to oppose him other than anti-Semitism.

For the record, I’m pretty certain Chuck Hagel is not Jewish.

And finally, TPM Reader MB …

Josh, are you actually sufficiently naive to print such nonsense as though it made a point? Just so that it’s clear, we don’t have to apologize for extremists on our side of the fence. Republicans don’t, even though their extremists are both more extreme and more prominent.

I don’t appreciate being blamed for the fact that some wild-eyed leftist, possibly fictitious, verges on anti-Semitism in his disapproval of Joe Lieberman. And I don’t appreciate that you give such views credibility by publishing them.

Come to think of it, this grievance actually encapsulates our problem with Lieberman himself.

Actually, one more, from TPM Reader CB …

The criticism DO has of the far left blogosphere has considerable merit, although I can’t say it quite equals in venality of the right’s eight years of smearing Clinton (after all, I haven’t seen any claims that Lieberman was a murderer or drug smuggler, as was alleged by Scaife-backed projects). I reckon all it goes to show is that extremism doesn’t sit well with many, if not most, Americans — at least when it’s blatant. [Rachel Maddow had an interesting take Thursday morning when she referred to it as the right wing’s “Boiling the Frog” tactic — admitting that the metaphor itself is a myth — of graduality, incrementally pursuing a policy course of which most voters would object if they recognized the ultimate goal (i.e. Social Security privatization)].

The main complaints about Lieberman among more moderately liberal Democrats is his unwillingness to reconsider his position on the war and, more critically, his completely lack of loyalty to the party. The latter is the kind of thing than can get an entrenched incumbent beat in the primary, where he has to sell himself to fellow Democrats who believe he has sold out to the other side.

More to come.

TPM Reader FC pipes in …

I’m not too macho to admit that I actually wept with pride when Joe Lieberman took the podium at the 2000 Dem convention. Today, I consider myself among the “sorely disappointed’ who would be glad to see Sen. Lieberman replaced by Ned Lamont.

Replaced, of course, is the operative word. Many Joe-pologists keep pushing the spin that it hurts Democrats to compete among themselves in a blue state primary, and that challenging Liebeman risks giving a safe Senate seat to the GOP (TPM reader JC even took a wild swing by comparing it to 1968!).

The truth is that this is a super-safe Democratic seat in one of the most reliably pro-Democratic, anti-Bush states. It’s not as though Barbara Steisand is self-financing a challenge to Ben Nelson in Nebraska. The winner of the Democratic primary will be the next Senator from Connecticut, period. The question is whether that Democrat will be Joe Lieberman or Ned Lamont.

Unless of course, Joe Liberman loses the primary and runs as an Independent…

A few more thoughts on the Lieberman-Lamont fracas, in no particular order.

One thing that strikes me is the sheer intensity of views on this race. We’ve heard a good deal already about the intensity of opposition to Lieberman. But his supporters, or what you might call the anti-anti-Lieberman crowd are really no less intense or in some cases almost unhinged about it. There is this sense that a Lieberman defeat on August 8th would be some sort of apocalyptic event, with Lieberman cast as some martyr, to what I’m really not sure.

Mort Kondracke’s column, which I noted below, seems like the quintessence of this sort of attitude, though the volume is turned, well, all the way up to eleven in other quarters. Listen to the opening line of Mort’s column: “This is no exaggeration: The soul of the Democratic Party — and possibly the future of civility in American politics — is on the line in the Aug. 8 Senate primary in Connecticut.”

That’s really heavy billing, isn’t it?

Following up on that, I think the Lieberman skeptics are really on to something when they point out that in the Kondrackes and others there is this sense that for a well-liked-in-the-beltway senior pol like Lieberman to face a primary challenge is somehow a genuine threat to the foundations of the system. You’d think he was a life peer, if not an hereditary noble, suddenly yanked out of the House of Lords and forced to run for his seat like they do in the Commons.

Finally, and this is just an observation, I think people really are going to write about this race after it’s over. But I’m not sure it’ll be for the reasons people think. The blogs have been important. They’ve generated money and press coverage, which are both key. But as I’ve said repeatedly, and tons of other people have too, Lieberman’s in trouble with Connecticut primary voters. Usually in big elections you’ll have particular races which come completely out of the blue, at least to the established voices, ones that show something big which, in retrospect, was clearly latent in the politics of a state or district, but couldn’t become visible without some spark to bring it to the fore.

Clearly, one person who’s been totally caught off guard by this is Joe Lieberman. And that tells me he’s fallen seriously out of touch with his constituents. Now, ‘Out of touch’ is a phrase that is often tossed around in some characterological or poetic sense. It is perhaps the cliche of contemporary politics. But I mean it in a more concrete sense. Most successful pols, especially those who have to run in competitive or even semi-competitive elections keep a good read on the pulse of their constituents — through a mix of retail politicking, political machines, polling, whatever.

To use just one example next door to Connecticut, look at Hillary Clinton. She’s been working that state for six years. I have no doubt that she and her inner circle have every county and even decent sized town mapped out in ten different ways — with pork, cultivating community leaders, keeping an eye on sources of opposition. The particulars aren’t the issue. And you could say the same thing about pols all over the country. My point is that I really doubt much of anything would catch that team seriously by surprise in New York state.

One might say that Lieberman has stuck to his views on Iraq notwithstanding the political perils or the unpopularity of the position in his party. And that’s certainly true in the sense that he had to know he wasn’t winning any points with the broad mass of Dems on this issue. But I don’t think he really understood the peril at home. Because if he had, he would have been more prepared for this. And he wasn’t.

This impession has been added to in my mind by chats with various folks from the Lieberman world. I think most of Lieberman’s advisors, supporters, hangers-on and former employees have watched these last seven or eight weeks with a mix of mortification, surprise and disbelief, as they’ve seen his campaign make one mistake after another. Going back to that issue of his being out of touch you really get this sense that Lieberman and his team were totally out of the habit of fighting a serious election. To me, it all goes back to the bizarre “bear cub” ad.

I remember at the time after commenting that it had to be one of the silliest ads ever. And some wrote in saying, well, it may look silly but the Lieberman camp is planting the seed of doubt about Lamont that he’s not his own man. Or it’s a Rovian example of attacking your opposition on their strength. But, really, it was just stupid — dumb and incoherent, making three or four contradictory claims at once. It showed a man and a team that were really rusty, caught unawares of what was rumbling beneath them.

New bombshell in the CT senate race.

Shrill McShrillsons. RNC sending out blast emails about “the Taepodong Democrats”, picking up sludge from the WSJ editorial page.

Murray Waas: Bush blocking NSA probe “unprecedented“.

TPM Reader JW on Joe: “I offer this from the perspective of someone who is centrist and moderate, who doesn’t read any of the lefty blogs and is not part of the grassroots or the Howard Dean wing of the Democratic party. I am socially liberal but fiscally conservative, and I while I might be considered a hawk on most foreign policy issues (say, Afghanistan), I strongly opposed the invasion of Iraq. Based on my own feelings from the moderate wing of the party, I don’t think that the anti-Liebermanism is confined solely to the far left. The problem for me is that he is sanctimonious and seems to have this feeling that he owns his seat in the Senate. The fact that he would even considering running as an independent seems to be me to be appallingly self-centered. But his sanctimony stretches to other issues, most importantly Iraq. I don’t see any difference between Bush and Lieberman on Iraq. He is one of those “everything is going perfectly well” types who refuses to accept reality because it differs with what he wants reality to be. Some people may like that; most Republicans apparently do. Personally, though, I don’t. I think that Lieberman has just run afoul of his own party, and not just the far left of it. When you don’t see that coming, and you’d rather fight it than accept it and address it, it’s time to move on.”

That should go over well. Lieberman got contributions from Bill Kristol.

Lanny Davis on Lieberman: “He’s not depressed, he’s not sad, he’s not down–he is furious. I’ve been there with him since his first campaign in 1970, and I’ve never seen him this angry.”

Cheney hires taxpayer-funded in-house press critic.