Joe Lieberman is in trouble. His campaign seems to think it's because some voters disagree with his stands on a litany of issues: "entitlement reform," "personal responsibility in borrowing," "cleaning up Hollywood," and "the War on Terror." (I feel like a need a shower after describing the issues in his words, but bear with me.) The real reason boils down to the growing understanding that he's not a good Democrat--neither in the sense of being effective, as this
excellent diary suggests, nor especially in the sense of having the larger interests of the party in mind.
Lieberman's strategy so far has been to create a
kitchen sink litany of issues (Long Island Sound, the 2002 gambit of jobs, education, healthcare, etc.), and to go unnecessarily negative on Ned Lamont. The first strategy confirms his poor political instincts. The second demonstrates he will attack fellow Democrats more strongly than he's ever dreamed of attacking rightwing Republicans (as well as
fritters away the perception that he's a different kind of politician.)
Lieberman needs to address the narrative and show that, by God, he is a good Democrat. Below I offer a sensible way he could do just that.
Digby recently offered this astounding post that Republicans are going to try to run nationally on the lie that Democrats are stealing elections. Between the fact that Lieberman can make a pretty good case for himself on voting rights being a hallmark of his career, his personal involvement in the Florida recount, and the gravitas he enjoys with the Beltway Cool Kids, Lieberman could single-handedly defang this latest Rovian gambit. It would be a great service to Dems nationally, and as a result would do more for his campaign than anything he could ever say about Ned Lamont.
He could do an ad something like this:
JOE: My name is Senator Joe Lieberman, and I approved this message because you just can't make this stuff up. Recently, Karl Rove told a group of Republican donors that Democrats are stealing elections.
CLIP: "We have an enormous and growing problem with elections in certain parts of America today. We are beginning to look like we have elections like those run in countries where they guys in charge are, you know, colonels in mirrored sunglasses."
JOE: Well I agree, but it's not Democrats who are leading that charge to the bottom. Republican National Committte chair Ken Mehlman also recently made similar outlandish claims. These claims are kind of funny coming from Rove, who is under threat of indictment for his role in weakening the War on Terror, and Mehlman, who is under investigation for his role in Republican efforts to suppress voter turnout in New Hampshire in 2002.
Look, I've spent my entire career fighting for the rights of Americans to vote. I went to Mississippi during the Civil Rights movement to register African-Americans to vote. When DC insiders have treated voting rights for the District of Columbia as a hot potato, I've never wavered in my support for them. And I saw first-hand during the recount in 2000, when a mob of paid Republican staffers staged a riot and shut down recount efforts in Florida and were rewarded with cushy jobs in the Bush Administration, what Republicans are capable of doing to subvert the Democratic process.
I've been proud to fight alongside good Democrats like Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton for the voting rights of folks in Connecticut and all across this country, and I will be proud to do so for another six years.
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Ok, obviously it's very rough. My intention is not to argue over the statements I put in Joe's mouth--some are undeniably true, all are at least comfortably within the borders of truthiness of everyday politician speech. My larger point is that he's the Democrat best positioned to rebut these outlandish Republican up-is-downisms, and by helping his party he'd help himself immensely. An ad like this would certainly be picked up by the Beltway pundit shows--it would give an opportunity for Lieberman to do the circuit and sound like a Democrat for a change. It would tie him to larger party efforts and would be an effective pre-emptive strike against a bunch of damn bullshit.
I suspect Lieberman is genetically incapable of doing anything like this, but the only blowback would be that the dinks on Fox would call him a loopy lefty (like Fred Barnes recently did of Evan Bayh [!]). That--and again, Lieberman is too maladroit a politician to understand this--is exactly the point. Arlen Specter beat back a primary challenge by showing uneasy voters that he was in fact a fighter for his party's platform, values, and position in the Senate. Lieberman needs to do something similar if he hopes to win. And although I'm as much for a Lamont victory as the rest of the community, the next best thing would be for Lieberman to be scared straight--to start acting like a good Democrat.