Joe Lieberman Concedes

only to announce on the basis of a hairbreadth loss that he is running as an independent for Senator this fall.
Oy Vey...
His "concession speech" was not as far as I could see, Lieberman's finest rhetorical hour. On the one hand he excoriates DC's partisan politics and promises a "new politics" of unity & purpose...and apparently he will achieve all that as soon as he is done calling Ned Lamont a dirty flippant guttersnipe and an appeaser.
Well it has come to this, Lieberman is running on an independent ticket...out of what? Anger, spite or a perverse sense of destiny?
Did Robert Reich run as an independent in 2002?
Did Frank Bellotti run on a third party ticket in 1990?
Did Tsongas bolt the democratic party in 1992?
The answer to all that is no, their issues were important, they were passionate, maybe they didn't deserve to lose.
Tsongas certainly didn't God rest his soul.
However all these candidates and thousands more like them knew that politics isn't stickball there is NO do-over if you strike out.
Joe just doesn't get this...the man is singularly devoid of irony so far as I can see from CSpan.
Frankly I thought it was grimly hilarious to see Bill Clinton down there in Connecticut campaigning for Lieberman last week given the fact that Joe never defends his colleague Hilary Clinton whenever Don Imus takes to calling her a witch and a dyke during Lieberman's call in appearance on that show.
Like I said, no sense of irony.
More and more I've decided Joe Lieberman is a politician of the past, he did well in the good old days of the Clinton Aufklarung when the issues weren't too taxing and consensus however rough ruled the land.
However today all is ideological warfare and partisan strife...we may well not see another "era of good feeling" in our lifetimes.
Joe just doesn't get that.
You can't bring back consensus and bipartisanship to DC simply by offering your opponents bigger and better concessions, not when the opposition has made it's bones by never ever keeping their word in matters large & small.
This bespeaks a sort of dangerous naivete'.
Alas, even the naive' can jump plenty ugly when their own pissing patch is threatened.
Joe Lieberman may not be too tough on the GOP but he will play this crazy third party candidacy up for all that it is worth and no doubt he will try to intimidate as many of his senate democratic colleagues as possible.
This thing has evil potential for the national party.

So it is a three way race in Connecticut, my only question is what will Karl Rove do? Will he try to funnel aid to the Lieberman campaign in hopes of getting him to switch sides after the election?
Can't rule that out can you? Lieberman is spiteful enough to run as a spoiler, what is to stop him from switching sides if he wins?

Down to the wire in Connecticut

with Ned Lamont in the lead according to most polls.
Ah but the polls can be wrong y'know.
It will be interesting to see what happens at any rate.

No matter who wins the primary down there tomorrow, Lieberman or Lamont, get ready for a lot of facile comparisons to the 1968 New hampshire Presidential Primary and a lot of eye-rolling commentary from the usual suspects about the "vitriolic democratic anti war left" etc etc...
It has been a long hot summer with naught to report but a lot of bad war news from abroad, a nice juicy senatorial primary fight in Connecticut plus a chance to lecture about the left's alleged futile anger, has got the punditariat salivating.

So we shall see...

God bless Michael Medved

Give him his due, he can yowl, screech and change the subject with the best the praetorian class has to offer.
CNN caught up with him with respect to the Mel Gibson Affair, the sniveling son of a bitch rendered up this classic howler:

"Michael Moore has done far more damage to the Jewish community, particularly regarding the issue of Israel, than anything Mel Gibson has ever done."

Loud, stupid, crude and irrelevant, a better textbook example of conservative "debate technique" cannot be found.
And again, I just have to say, their ability to obnoxiously rally around the fundamentally indefensible is breathtaking to see.

Apparently, David Horowitz has come out

banging the pots hard in Mel Gibson's defense this past week calling the Braveheart star's critics "anti-christian" or some such rubbish as that.
Haven't been able to track down Michael Medved's views of the whole thing, but I strongly doubt that he has broken with any of his fellow conservatives over Mel's drunken jew baiting.

There is something perversely admirable about the praetorian class' ability to pasionately reject reality no matter how acute the crisis. Having conquered power only to see the ship of state crash into an iceberg the David Horowitz's of this world manfully take axes to the lifeboats and scream lustily that the boat ISN'T sinking, no one is drowning, the boilers haven't exploded and the iceberg is naught but a product of Al Gore's imagination.
They do this all the time on the big issues, Iraq, the budget deficit, stem cells....so it comes easy in respect of a small matter like Mel Gibson's vular inebriated roadside fugue.
The fact that this makes the praetorian class apologists for war, national bankruptcy and drunken rampages is very much beside the point.

According to Joanie Vennochi

"In Massachusetts, Democrats groan and roll their eyes with every statement from camp Kerry indicating another presidential run."

Ummmm....what Humble Elias wants to know is, just who are these democrats that Spiteful Joanie is so sure of?

Haven't heard a whole lot on the local democratic circuit with respects to a Kerry '08 run most everyone here is focused on the governor's race. Kerry's "Imperial Guard" has for the moment dispersed into the camps of various gubernatorial candidates. To the extent that JK needs to keep the loyalty of that die hard cohort, he'll play some sort of a role in the fall campaign to be sure. Assist in giving his Spartans a democratic governor, and they in turn will do right by him IF Kerry gets into the big race in '08.
Thats as much as I've heard so far.
As for who is "rolling their eyes" for Joanie's merriment..who can say?

To hot to Blog

However I will say this...How about the Condi Rice eh? She has done nothing but dither and make excuses since the day GWB brought her to Washington DC. And now today, on the basis of a snub from the Lebanese PM and two entirely pointless trips to that war torn region of the world she currently polls fourth in the Iowa GOP Presidential Primary.

Just imagine how well she'd do if Iran field tested a nuclear warhead.
Yeah...just...imagine.

Mel Gibson

that axiom of modern cinema, got pulled over for DUI last week whereupon he indulged a sort of screeching anti-semitic, mysogynistic, homophobic ultra-tantrum...which the LA County Sheriff's department fastidiously recorded on audio tape.
Humble Elias has been devoutly praying to the God of Abraham & Isaac nigh these past five sweltering days for the release of that tape to the general public.
He is also of the pious hope that maybe just maybe the Deputy's patrol cars came equipped with that built-in videocam that forms the backbone of such TV shows as "American's Funniest Police Beatings".
Sooo...given the fact that Mel is on tape slagging the jews like a drunken Brownshirt, d'ye think Michael Medved and David Horowitz will be manfully rising once again to his defense?
Or is Mel's notion that "The Jews are behind all wars in history" too much for them?