Uppity Wisconsin
Making Wisconsin Progressive Again
In Defense of Joe Lieberman
Fri, 11/14/2008 - 12:11pm | mal contends
Update: Hartford Courant: Secret Ballot To Decide Lieberman's Fate - "Joe Lieberman votes with me a lot more than a lot of my senators. He didn't support us on military stuff, and he didn't support us on Iraq stuff. But you look at his record, it's pretty good." - Sen. Harry Reid
I don’t care for Joe Lieberman as a U.S. Senator.
Lieberman went right along with the obscenity of the Iraq Invasion and the Patriot Act, among other imbecilities.
I don’t care for Joe Lieberman as a public man.
Even among elected officials in Congress, Lieberman stands out as a lying propagandist.
Lieberman used Republican talking points and lies in his failed attempt to prop up John McCain’s candidacy that would have been devastating to a reeling economy and a shredded American Constitution.
And Lieberman veered right up to and past neo-McCarthyism questioning the patriotism of those not sharing his discredited militarism.
But let’s look to history.
Did the Democratic Party attempt to marginalize and punish Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson in 1977, for example, the dedicated militarist of the 1960s-70s who shared with Lieberman the sanctimonious commitment to state violence?
No.
Because to cast out Jackson would have been to indict a whole generation of Democratic leaders without whose dedicated support and lies the Vietnam Invasion would not have been waged.
If we take seriously the arguments to sanitize by sanctioning Lieberman after the Democratic Party’s electoral victories in 2008, more than Joe Lieberman need to stand and account.
The effort to punish Lieberman smells of scapegoating.
We just had an election. What are we going to do, punish Vice-president Biden, Clinton and Kohl for their historically horrendous votes and sometimes unsavory politics?
Of-course not.
Obama has it right. Let’s look to the future.
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The idea of sanctioning Lieberman is as it stands a Democratic Party matter. The party has always tended to be pretty tolerant of different ideas, but it's a political party, and it's not going to be tolerant of "going to the other side". They tolerated his leaving the party so that he could be re-elected. They tolerated his adopting all of the talking points of the Republican party. But it's a LOT to expect the party to tolerate his active campaigning for a Republican candidate. Sorry, I just don't buy the argument that there's anything at all wrong with the party not wanting to deal with someone who has worked so hard against the party's interests, even if the party's interests are at times not comfortable to a lot of us.
Steve Hanson
Cruiskeen Consulting LLC
Uppity Wisconsin
I don't recall Scoop Jackson flying around the country to campaign with Gerald Ford and trash Jimmy Carter.
Lieberman, who I regret having voted for in 2000, is a turncoat. It's not about his votes, it's about his betrayal of the Democratic Party. He's not a Democrat; he was elected as an independent. There should be a price to pay for that behavior and his decision to leave the party.
Throw the bum out.