Bush-bashing is not productive
This is no exaggeration: The soul of the Democratic Party — and possibly the future of civility in American politics — is on the line in the Aug. 8 Senate primary in Connecticut.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, Conn., one of the last “liberal hawks” in the Democratic Party and a leader in efforts to find bipartisan solutions to America’s problems, is being targeted for defeat by an emergent new left that’s using savage, Internet-based attacks to push moderation out of politics.
If former Greenwich Selectman Ned Lamont beats Lieberman in the Democratic primary, it will represent a signal victory for the MoveOn.org-Michael Moore-DailyKos left wing of the Democratic Party and for vicious name-calling as a political tactic.
The Democratic Party already is handicapped by the fact its liberal base amounts to just 20 percent of the electorate, while the Republicans’ conservative base is 33 percent, according to decades of polling. Both parties must appeal to the remaining 47 percent who describe themselves as “moderate” — which Democrats can’t do if the left triumphs.
But the left is ascendant. MoveOn’s preferred 2000 presidential candidate, Howard Dean, is now chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and the party’s leaders in Congress, Sen. Harry Reid, Nev., and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Calif., give every evidence of being influenced by the left-leaning blogosphere’s obsessive hatred of President Bush.
Lieberman is a target primarily because he supports the Iraq war, but also because he rejects Bush-hatred and often cooperates with Republicans, even though he votes with his party 80 percent of the time.
When fellow Senate Democrats Joseph Biden, Del.; Ken Salazar, Colo.; and Barbara Boxer, Calif.; endorsed Lieberman, the liberal blog Democrats.com featured this warning:
“If they read progressive blogs at all — and by now one would assume they do — (these Senators) certainly know that the Democratic ‘base’ hates Lieberman and will be furious at his defenders.”
Even before the current Middle East conflict, Lieberman was subjected to anti-Semitic attacks on liberal blogs DailyKos and Huffington Post. One commentary declared, “Ned Lamont needs to beat Lieberman to a pulp in the debate and define what it means to be an American who is NOT beholden to the Israeli lobby.”
As Lieberman told me in an interview, Lamont’s (and the left’s) policy on Iraq would have profoundly negative consequences for America’s interests in the region and would embolden Iran, whose leader has pledged to destroy Israel.
Lieberman favors “aggressive diplomacy” and economic sanctions, not direct talks, with Iran to control its nuclear program, but if that fails, “I would never say we would not use military power, air strikes, to incapacitate … their nuclear program.”
Lieberman is a rare remaining vestige of the assertive Democratic foreign policy typified by presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy. Though he’s accused of being Bush’s cheerleader on Iraq, Lieberman first called for toppling Saddam Hussein in 1993, before Bush was even governor of Texas.
Lieberman surely is out of his party’s force-averse post-Vietnam mainstream on foreign policy. But the party desperately needs his voice, and American politics also needs his willingness to cooperate with his political adversaries and to act independently.
“Hatred divides the country and blinds us to the fact that we are all in this together, particularly when it comes to national security,” Lieberman said. “The hatred of Bush among some Democrats mirrors the hatred of Bill Clinton among some Republicans in the 1990s. It’s destructive.”
And it’s now up to Connecticut voters to decide whether hatred-politics will prevail.
Morton Kondracke is executive editor of Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.