According to Joe Lieberman’s people Obama was engaging in “sleazy” tactics when he let it be known that he gave Joe a talking to about, among other things, Joe’s “half-hearted denials of the false rumors that Obama is a Muslim”. Apparently it is not, in the current political environment, sleazy to insinuate that a candidate is a Muslim, (but why stop there, add “socialist” to boot) but it is sleazy for that candidate to try to put a stop to it. It’s also, apparently, not sleazy to sign on as a director of an organization formed to swift-boat Obama.
One of Obama’s worse mistakes was to destroy a little of his credibility with the anti-war crowd by speaking up for Joe at the 2006 Jefferson-Jackson-Bailey Dinner. We were told that Obama sought out Joe to act as his “mentor”. What we didn’t know, but could partly guess, was, “that Lieberman’s staff practically begged Barack Obama to come in and endorse him at a critical moment “, which Obama did.
It was a mistake, as things turned out. Obama lost a bit of credibility, and still earned Lieberman’s enmity when he did what Lieberman would have done under similar circumstances: endorsed the winner of the primary.
There’s been a lot of ink spilled speculating about Lieberman’s motives as he systematically trashes Democrats in general and Obama in particular. At this point it’s pretty clear it is not even mainly about ideology. Lieberman is a bitter old man. He actually believed that he was entitled to be Senator, and that no one, particularly his constituents, had any right to question his actions so long as he was “voting his conscience”, be it ever so warped. It’s an argument he would never apply to anyone else, and one that makes no sense in a representative system. He may have won the election in 2006, but whatever was left of his principles went into the shredder that day. From that day on he has been mainly interested in payback: revenge not only on the dirty hippies who denied him his nomination, but on all the elected Democrats who played by the rules and backed the party’s candidate.
If things go well, we will have a President Obama in January, and a Senate with up to 59 Democrats, not counting Lieberman. Wouldn’t it be delicious if, on top of all that, we get to see Lieberman exiled to his proper place to the back benches of the Republican party. It is a consummation devoutly to be wished.
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