The week’s big news is the decision by Joe Lieberman to hedge his bets andgather the signatures he will need to run — and most likely win — as an independent.
I’ve not been a big fan of Lieberman’s; he’s one of the key votes for bad corporate accounting, Big Insurance and Big Pharma. He represents the downside of the Democratic Leadership Council’s policies of cultivating big donors while writing government checks for the dependent classes — that unholy marriage between the rich and the dependent that has marked Democratic politics lately. I don’t much like that mix, and so you’d think I’d be thrilled to see him prepare to walk off the island.
But I’m not. I’m not thrilled for a couple of reasons.
First, and foremost, I’m a Democrat who supported and supports the war in Iraq. That’s a longer discussion than we’re going to have here, so let’s just note it and put it on the shelf. I get it that my position isn’t uncontroversial. But is there room in the party for me and the people like me? I’m pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-environment, pro-progressive taxation (all within some limits). I’m mostly pro — the working people in this country — whether their collars are blue, pink, or white — who have gotten a truly raw deal from both parties in the last few decades. And I wonder where people like me are supposed to go — and where the people who the Democratic Party should be helping will be able to go as well.
Second, I think we need two vibrant parties in this country because neither one is big enough to contain the answers that we will need; it is through robust debate, argument and political tension that the complex problems of the world are solved, not through simpleminded slogans (yes, that’s a slogan …). And what’s happening to the Democratic Party is about to undermine that — as the party is marched over the electoral cliff by it’s “progressive wing” empowered in no small part by bloggers.
And that’s exactly what is about to happen.
Ask yourself this, if you’re all excited at the notion of Lieberman running against Lamont as an independent. Who do you think is going to be sitting in the Dirksen Building in February of ’07? Lamont? In a state that was — in 2004 — 44 percent unaffiliated, 34 percent Democratic, and 22 percent Republican. Come Election Day, what exactly do you think is going to happen?
And when Lieberman is sitting in his Senate office next year, do you think the Democratic Party will be stronger or weaker for his departure?
I say it will be weaker.
It will be weaker because a losing Lamont candidacy will not have local and regional coattails as large as Lieberman’s — and I somehow don’t see Lieberman doing a lot of campaigning for downballot offices in the next few months.
It will be weaker because a senior sitting senator will owe very little allegiance to the national party.
Weaker because other senior officials will sit and weigh the cost of party allegiance against the benefit, and will have a concrete example of what party loyalty buys.
So when such bloggers as Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, Chris Bowers, Jerome Armstrong and Jane Hamsher preen that they have pushed “Rape Gurney Joe” (Hamsher’s sobriquet) off the island, there’s only one problem: They think they are winning in doing so.
Now parties have been getting weaker over the last few decades, and there’s a long and interesting discussion to have about that secular trend.
But right now, the interesting question is this one: Why are the leading progressive blogs pushing so hard for something that will objectively set back their ostensible goal — Democratic victory in ’06 and ’08?
When people do that, I tend to assume, not that they are stupid, but that there is another goal that may not be obvious to me.
And in this case, the goal is simple; they want to control the Democratic Party. The fact that a Democratic Party they can control will be a far weaker party hasn’t dawned on them yet. They are arrogant enough to believe that the people who live in flyover country are just ignorant, and that once they see the shining path they will fall in behind their betters. There is an argument to be made for mobilizing the discouraged nonvoters; but the candidates who have actually done that have been populists like Jesse Ventura — people whose politics are significantly different than Hamsher’s.
But to be honest, even if the public doesn’t fall in behind the leadership, and the party loses every election, there will be great consulting gigs and staff jobs. And there’s a part of me that believes that’s the real issue.
Marc Danzinger is a member of The Examiner’s Blog Board of Contributors and blogs at WindsofChange.net.
