What a uniformly perverse commentary! Bridges is faulting the left for ideological integrity and placing such integrity ahead of winning races. Sorry—-I was raised to prioritize exactly the opposite!

What a uniformly perverse commentary! Bridges is faulting the left for ideological integrity and placing such integrity ahead of winning races. Sorry—-I was raised to prioritize exactly the opposite!

What we have to do now is figure out where we go from here. Do we abandon the Iraqi people because Bush lied? Or do we do our best to fix the mess we created?

It's not a far-left position to oppose the war in Iraq, nor to oppose a potential war in Iran. It is a far-left position to try and punish those who want to end the war in a way that doesn't ruin what's left our tattered reputation in the world.

As for needing to stand for something, Lieberman votes with Democrats about as much as McCain votes with Bush.

Point 2 – Regarding the expanded troop presence that Lieberman backed, as Obama puts it the surge of American forces in Iraq has “succeeded beyond our wildest dreams,” though Iraqis still haven't done enough to take responsibility for their country. See the story here.

I think it's great, though, that so many of you commenters here have accused me of hating democracy or as you put it “the will of the people” because I said the left-wing pushed Joe out of the party. I didn't write anything about democracy, just politics. Sheesh.

In all seriousness, I'm not condemning the primary process at all. I'm merely saying that when a when our party runs a primary against a guy we shouldn't be outraged or even surprised when that same guy shows up at the other party's convention.

I also understand that people from across the political spectrum dislike Lieberman, but the people who led the charge for his primary came mostly from the far-left of the blogosphere.

And I agree 100% that we've got to clean up the fiscal mess in Washington created by, as you put it very well, “the most radical and most incompetent administration in the country's history.”

WE did this to Joe Lieberman? He had no choice in the matter? Please. Joe Lieberman is responsible for Joe Lieberman's choices, not you, nor me, nor any of his colleagues in the Senate, nor Markos Moulitsas or anyone else. Joe Lieberman is responsible, period.

I'm glad you can recognize that Lieberman's transformation over the past eight years (accelerating heavily since he was primaried by the Democrats of Connecticut) has resulted in him being “dead wrong” about John McCain and Barack Obama. I'm glad that you can recognize that Lieberman lied, flat-out, from his perch at the RNC's pulpit in St. Paul, about Obama's history of working across the aisle during his time in the Senate. But I doubt you've considered what I've suspected for quite some time now: that Lieberman's transformation, or, as you put it, his “slow slide,” has been one only of visibility, not one of essence. Lieberman hasn't radically changed his philosophies or his sympathies since he was Al Gore's running mate, only his observable operating principles. I submit that the Joe Lieberman of 2000 is NOT all that different from the one who stood on the stage in St. Paul this week with the plastic smile painted on his face and the harsh words for fellow Democrats falling out one side of his mouth at the same time as sanctimonious pieties about “bipartisanship” fell out of the other. The only thing that has changed substantially in the intervening years is the political landscape, and the changes in behavior that changed landscape has forced Lieberman to undertake.

In 2000, as the media, almost en masse, sneeringly flogged Al Gore for everything from his choice of wardrobe colors to a distorted attack about his having “invented the Internet,” Lieberman was able to rely upon a palpable exhaustion with the Clinton years on both sides of the aisle – or, more precisely, with the partisan rancor they engendered, first in the ideological conservatives and then the populace as a whole. Lieberman was able to stand alongside Gore as the mature, experienced voice of reason, the “sensible” choice for a VP who was looking to distance himself from the muck of the Clinton years as much as he was to take credit for as much of the prosperity of those years as he could.

And after the Supreme court selected George W. Bush as President, and the subsequent events of 9/11, Lieberman was able to go on Hannity's show and into other conservative outlets, and provide the thinnest of “bipartisan” cover for the Bush Administration's power-grab and trampling of the Constitution. Did Lieberman believe he was doing the right thing with respect to the war in Iraq and national security? He probably did, initially. Perhaps he still does. And he is most certainly “allowed” to follow his own conscience even if it means disagreeing with his party. But contrary to your claims, the way Joe Lieberman has treated voters in his state, as well as people with whom he is nominally allied, is 100% his own choice, not the doings or choices of national or Connecticut Democrats, or the media, or anyone else.

And it is sickening.

Lieberman was able to feel secure in doing it, because for a great part of the time since he and Al Gore lost the election in 2000, George Bush's star had been rising, and it looked for a long and uncomfortable moment as if Karl Rove would see his dream of a “permanent Republican majority” would be realized. Lieberman could effectively operate as a Republican, working with them and speaking ill of his own party, because the party he'd crossed over to – in practice if not in name – was ascendant, and the Democrats were too in-retreat to want to abandon even someone who had abandoned them so publicly and repeatedly.

That's why starting in 2006, when the Democrats swept back (nominally, at least) into power in the midterms, Lieberman's fortunes began to change in inverse proportions to those of his erstwhile party. He began to realize that he might have to – no, almost certainly WOULD have to – actually LIE in the bed he'd seen so fit to make for himself, back when there didn't seem to him to be many if any consequences to doing so. But as the rock of Bush's second term was pried loose to reveal the worms and rot beneath, and the country's mood soured further on Bush and the Republicans, Lieberman realized he'd cast his die and would have to live with the consequences. That's not what makes Joe Lieberman loathsome, though – what does THAT is how he chose to deal with that realization, and how he treated his own dignity, and the members and constituents of the party to which he still claims he belongs.

Our first real taste of that was watching Lieberman lose his own party's nomination to HIS Senate seat (and make no mistake, like a number of multiple-term incumbents, Lieberman most certainly considers the seat he currently occupies to be HIS, not the people of Connecticut's). He was first dismissive, then contemptuous, then seethingly (although quietly) angry that he had even DRAWN a primary challenge, with the subsequent changes in reaction manifesting themselves as it became more and more clear that this upstart, pipsqueak challenger, Ned Lamont, wasn't just going to go away and wasn't going to be relegated to the under-10%-also-ran status which so often awaits challengers of incumbents. It was then that Lieberman truly started making the choices that took HIM away from his PARTY, not the reverse: he began collecting signatures to run as an independent EVEN THOUGH THE DEADLINE TO TURN IN SUCH SIGNATURES WAS ONLY A WEEK OR SO AFTER THE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY. That, right there, tells anyone who really wants to know, all they need to know about who Joe Lieberman is, as a politician in regards to the Democratic party. And it also tells us a great deal about who Joe Lieberman is as a person, too. While he was hitting the campaign trail, sucking up to Barack Obama (whose star was already rising in Democratic circles, and who had initially selected Joe Lieberman as a mentor in the Senate), and also saying that he wanted to use all his skill and connections to “help elect a Democrat to the White House in 2008,” he was simultaneously gathering signatures to run as an independent if he should lose the Democratic primary.

He was hedging his bets.

And not just in the “save 10% of your paycheck for a rainy day” sense of the term; what Lieberman did was telling indeed: he had already judged that it was at least possible – perhaps even likely – that Lamont's significant challenge to the Lieberman dynasty would succeed; that the Democrats of the overwhelmingly blue state of Connecticut would have grown disgusted enough with Lieberman's Hannity appearances, Bush-kisses and Democrat-bashing that they'd go for the “throw the bums out” option – always a possibility with underdog-loving American voters. And Joe Lieberman had already crossed his own personal Rubicon of deciding that his continuing presence in the Senate was worth more to him than his honesty, integrity, or loyalty to the party which had nurtured and promoted him, and about which he was still mouthing empty platitudes on the campaign trail in an effort to stave off a defeat in the primary. So, when the unthinkable finally happened, and Lieberman, even WITH the power of incumbency, was rejected by a majority of his state's Democratic voters, he was ready: within a week, he filed the signatures he'd ALREADY COLLECTED, to run as the founder, candidate and sole member of the Connecticut for Lieberman party.

I've always considered that particular choice of party name to be quite telling: Lieberman could have chosen any name he wished, running as he was on a one-man ticket from a one-man party. Politicians in the past have chosen similar-sounding names for their parties, with one notable exception: they always put the region/city/state name last, and their own name first: Jones for Des Moines, Smith for Ohio, etc. That gives the impression that the candidate is FOR the state/region, is a servant and defender/proponent of that region. Lieberman's choice was the inverse: Connecticut for Lieberman. Clearly, Lieberman meant it to imply that it was the CITIZENS of Connecticut who were FOR Joe Lieberman. But as an unusual variant of the traditional way such a thing is done, it could also easily be read as a haughty, to-the-manner-born assertion of his sense of divine entitlement to that Senate seat for which he'd lost the right to campaign officially as a Democrat. Connecticut for Lieberman; it's all about Joe, and what the state owes him.

And that's exactly the campaign he ran. Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, having observed that the Republican candidate that year in Connecticut was a scandal-dogged big-mouth, realized that there was little point in spending dwindling NRSC funds backing such a politician who would remind Republicans and Democrats alike of the ongoing GOP culture of corruption – as well as little chance of unseating a sitting Senator with such a flawed candidate. But they also realized that there was (thankfully, for them) no NEED to run a candidate against a candidate such as Lieberman in Connecticut that year. They judged (accurately) even though Connecticut was a very blue state lately, if the NRSC actively and publicly did NOT endorse nor fund their scandal-plagued candidate in the race, that the state's Republicans, faced with a choice between Lieberman and Lamont, would pick Lieberman in overwhelming numbers, recognizing him as a Republican in all but name….and that probably that, combined with enough independents and a few Democrats who remembered the old Joe Lieberman or were just not paying close enough attention lately to notice how little Lieberman reflected or advocated for their own positions and beliefs, would be enough to put Lieberman over the top.

And it worked. On election day, 2006, in a year in which the entire COUNTRY, from state houses to the US House of Representatives to the Senate to state Governorships went almost universally Democratic, Joe Lieberman, the fake Democrat in the race for one of Connecticut's two Senate seats, won “re-election,” despite having had to do so under the banner of his own, made-up political party of which he was the only member. And since then, it's only gotten worse: Lieberman's no longer under any illusions about what will happen to him and his political future if what he told the voters of Connecticut he was working towards – getting a Democrat in the White House in 2008 – actually comes to pass. And it won't be because Barack Obama is some sort of doctrinaire ultra-liberal, it will be because Lieberman himself chose to align himself, possibly for reasons of political conviction but (as demonstrated by his subsequent actions) unquestionably for reasons of personal aggrandizement. And there is a difference: I would have had respect for Lieberman if he had decided that his differences with the Democratic party had become so irreconcilable, as they say in divorce court, that he needed to officially sever ties with them and become a Republican in name as well as deed. But Lieberman preferred to try to hang on to his committee seats and his seniority, and he may have known instinctively that the Republican party of today, led as it was by the Tom DeLays and the Bill Frists, wouldn't have had much use for another Lincoln Chaffee or Olympia Snowe: New England moderate Republicans who are only useful for holding onto seats, and not much else. Lieberman's chief value to the GOP was/is that he is a Democrat who attacks Democrats, in the same way and on the same issues as the Republicans do. He's willing to get up on that stage and, with a smile on that Droopy-Dog face of his, stick the knife into places in the Democratic party that the GOP just can't reach on its own. The GOP – and the media, crucially – lap it up: “the Democrats are divided” is the storyline.

In fact, it reminds me, in the last analysis, of another story the media always seems to get wrong: that of Bob Casey, Sr., who is always portrayed as having not been allowed to speak at the 1992 convention because of his pro-life stance on abortion. It makes a good story, if you're a Democrat-basher: it makes the Democratic establishment of that year sound hidebound and doctrinaire; too wedded to their utopian ideals to actually live up to their democratic principles. But if you actually research why Casey wasn't allowed to speak at that 1992 Democratic convention was because he REFUSED TO ENDORSE THE TICKET. Sounds a bit more reasonable, put that way, doesn't it? Less “newsy,” perhaps, less salacious….but more accurate: what political party in its right mind WOULD allow someone who didn't support their platform and/or had publicly refused to endorse their candidate, at their largest quadrennial event? Allowing such a thing wouldn't be indicative of a “big tent” mindset, it would indicate a party which had grown so afraid of ridicule and accusations from those who would see it relegated to permanent minority status that they will allow people who disagree with them and don't support them to mount their largest national pulpit and tell anyone who's listening/watching what's WRONG with them.

You name me the last time the Republican party did such a thing, and then get back to me. You might start by talking to any one of the reportedly 10,000 Ron Paul delegates who showed up in Minneapolis last week. Or the Nevada GOP. You get the point, I think. I hope.