When I was a young lad of 16, about 50 years ago, I loved to run through the New Orleans French Market and overturn the vendor's apple carts. The old men and women who owned these carts would panic as they saw me bearing down on them. They would grab their carts with skinny hands in a useless effort to protect them. Not to be denied, I would wrest the carts away and turn them bottom-side-up. Apples would fly in every direction. At the end of my run I'd look back and watch with great satisfaction as the poor devils restocked their carts with only good apples, discarding all the bad ones. How nice those carts now seemed, stocked with only the finest of fruit. But alas, soon enough those good apples would soon go go bad. More below the fold...
Today, in our efforts to replace "bad" senators with "good" senators, we have turned our guns on one of our own. And in style I might add. It seems that every effort is being made to demonize him. We make up silly nicknames to call him. We morph him into George Bush. He's portraid as Alfred E. Neuman on one site. A weeping crybaby in one photo, claiming the senate seat belongs to only him. We're thrilled that some genius has put togather a crude paper mache dipicting "the kiss" for display in a Fourth of July parade. The undecided voter (about 35%) looks at that display and turns away ashamed at the site of it. These folks vote with their minds, not the rah-rah bullshit we've heaved against the senator. Somewhere along the line the sympathy factor takes hold and comes into play. People like fairness, and they know it when they see it. If this crap can get any goofier, I don't know how.
Recently I read about a conversation someone had with Harry Reid where the minority leader said that there were consequences for ones actions. The party in that conservation took it to mean that Senator Lieberman must answer for his votes and his support for the things he believed in, and that Reid had given his tacit blessing to our efforts to unseat him. Turn that around. Reid could very well have meant that there could be consequences for actions that we (yes, we. I'm a paid up member and supporter of this site)have embarked upon.
Suppose, just suppose, that Senator Lieberman looses the primary and decides to run as an independent and beats Lamont. It's not out of the realm of possibilities at all. As a matter of fact it's more likely than not. In the run up to the general election Carl Rove could quietly tell the republicans of CT that the President and the nation needs Lieberman. Those people will fall in line, if for no other reason than to piss-off the democrats. The President could dispatch Rice to CT to "confer" with the senator on matters of great importance to the nation. Think the newspapers wouldn't eat that shit up?
Ask yourselves, do you really want that senate seat beholding to Rove? Could a promise of a minor chairmanship be a reward if Lieberman caucused with the republicans he'd be indebted to? To my next rant.
We've got our drawers in a knot because some democratic senators are supporting Lieberman. Biden, Dodd, Salazar, Boxer, et al. Hell yes they're supporting him. They want to keep him in the democratic caucus if and when he wins the election. I hope every senator with a "D" behind his/her name keeps a line of communication open with him during the campaign. They'd better, if they have any hopes of pounding the gavels at committee hearings. And that's what it's all about. IT'S THE CHAIRMANSHIPS, STUPID. (To paraphrase an asshole).
We've upset the apple cart. Now let's see how we can make the best of it. Let's not second guess those who don't see things exactly as we see them. These other senators know what they're doing, I assure you. Leave their apple carts alone. If we lose a majority in the senate because of this fight we've started, the revelance of this site among elected officials and canidates will diminish somewhat, I'm guessing.