Remind me again why the Democrats in 2008 thought it was a great idea to let McCain endorser Joe Lieberman caucus with them?

Independent "Democrat" Joe Lieberman:



I can't add much to Joan McCarter's comments on this at Lieberman: We have to cut Social Security to pay for fighting 'the Islamist extremists' Daily Kos 08/02/2011. Except to note that Holy Joe describes his proposal to begin the phaseout of Social Security as one "to secure Social Security for American seniors."

Once the Democratic President offered up Social Security cuts in the name of trying to avert a completely contrived debt-ceiling crisis, he made it open season on Social Security for Republicans and ConservaDems.

Tags: joe lieberman, social security

The Three Musketeers of Militarism on the Libya War

The Three Musketeers of Militarism - Sens. John "Maverick" McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman, all members of the Senate Armed Services Committee - were on Candy Crowley's CNN State of the Union program on Easter Sunday 04/24/2011 to call on President Obama to escalate, escalate, escalate in Libya.

Nothing at all suprising about this. It's what they always call for in wars. Nor is it surprising to hear the bold Maverick saying that Al Qa'ida will git us if we don't escalate like he says: Ken Maguire, Libya stalemate would draw in Al-Qaeda: McCain AFP/Yahoo! News 04/24/2011. It's true that we likely face a protracted insurgency of some kind in Libya, and jihadists will likely be involved. But whatever is left of Osama bin Laden's original Al Qa'ida group is not going to be sending in divisions of soldiers to take over Libya. "Al Qa'ida" has become an all-purpose bogeyman for our national security establishment and its eager enablers like the bold Maverick.

Tags: libya war, joe lieberman, lindsey graham, mccain

I wish I could say this wasn't true

Joe Conason, The Democrats Blinked New York Observer 12/15/09:

By bowing to Senator Joseph Lieberman and his obstructive pals in both parties on health care reform, President Obama has confirmed what Republicans always say about Democrats: They simply aren’t strong enough to govern.

Tags: barack obama, joe lieberman

Tags: barack obama, joe lieberman

An historic phenomenon

When future histories of American political parties are written, Joe Lieberman deserves his own chapter. He was campaigning with John McCain in 2008 before the primaries were even over. Even Deep South Democrats in the segregation days didn't do stuff like that. And here a short year later, McCain's supporter and bestest fanboy Joe Lieberman is running the Democratic Party. It's like if Herbert Hoover had been calling the shots for the Democrats in 1933. Or Jefferson Davis had taken over the Republican Party in 1857. It's mind-boggling.

Tags: democratic party

Time to flush the filibuster rule

I've been griping about the Senate filibuster rule all year. Now that Joe Lieberman - remember Joe, the "Independent Democrat" who defeated the Democratic Senate candidate in Connecticut and who supported John McCain for President even during the primary season and was welcomed by to the Democratic caucus with open arms after the 2008 election? - is saying he will support a Republican filibuster against any meaningful health care reform, it's time for President Obama and Harry Reid to cut out the excuse-making and whining and pandering to the insurance lobby and get a health care reform bill passed with a solid public option. And if they need to abolish the Senate filibuster rule to do it, Wednesday sounds like a good day for that to happen. If not tonight.

In 2005, the Republicans threatened what the pundits called the "nuclear option", i.e., abolishing the filibuster rule by majority vote in order to overcome Democratic filibusters of some of their worse judicial nominees. That bold Maverick McCain got all mavericky and joined in with 13 other members from "both sides of the aisle" and put together a "bipartisan" lovefest of the kind that the Cult of High Broderism adores. The result? The filibuster rule was technically preserved. And the Republicans pretty much got everything they wanted. Another way to put it: the result was that the Democratic filibuster was defeated by effectively abolishing the filibuster rule for that vote.

To his adoring press fans, this was another sign of McCain's mavericky maverickness. That is, he wouldn't agree to vote with the Democrats to preserve the holy filibuster rule. But he would do a mavericky stunt to abolish the filibuster on this issue and get the Republicans what they wanted. Some Republicans were still grumpy at the Maverick for doing this, as explained in this article by Distrust of McCain Lingers Over ’05 Deal on Judges Carl Hulse New York Times 02/25/08

Even some colleagues now backing Mr. McCain consider the judicial agreement a sore subject. “We had the votes to put both parties on the spot that whoever is president, Republican or Democrat, has a right to appoint and we have the right to vote up or down,” said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah and a former Judiciary Committee chairman.

Mr. McCain and his allies say they remain proud of the deal they cut because it avoided a potential constitutional crisis in the Senate and led to the confirmation of two Supreme Court justices named by President Bush, as well as several federal appeals court judges. They say there is no certainty that Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican who was then the Senate majority leader, had the votes to win approval of his rules change, which was dubbed the nuclear option because of the chaos it was predicted to cause.

With the possibility of a Democratic White House and Congress in the future, Mr. McCain said protecting the right of the minority party to force the majority to produce 60 votes to confirm an objectionable judge might not seem like such a bad idea.

“Find me a Republican senator who now supports 51 votes for the confirmation of a judge,” Mr. McCain said. [my emphasis]

Or, to put it another way, if give-'em-whine-Harry Reid had been so desperate to nominally preserve the filibuster rule, he wouldn't have to deal with Republican filibusters today.

But Reid's one-day stand as a Democratic partisan on Monday seems to have relieved him of those unnatural partisan impulses. After getting kicked in the teeth by Joe Lieberman, after sniveling in the dirt to get good ole Joe to stay in the Democratic caucus, Reid if full of praise for his old buddy Joe. And as Alex Koppelman relates in Reid: "Joe Lieberman is the least of Harry Reid's problems" Salon 10/27/09, Reid is still oh-so-grateful to Joe for helping him get rolled in 2005 on the "nuclear option" threat:

"I don't have anyone that I have worked harder with, have more respect for in the Senate than Joe Lieberman. As you know, he's my friend. There are a lot of senators, Democrat and Republicans, who don't like part of what's in this bill that we went over to CBO. We're going to see what the final product is. We're not there yet. Sen. Lieberman will let us get on the bill, and he'll be involved in the amendment process," Reid said.

"Some of you will recall one reason that we were able to solve the problem with the nuclear option -- I write about it in my book -- is I called Joe Lieberman to my office and said, 'Joe, I want you to join -- I want you to join the enemy and get us out of this deal.' And he did. I have the greatest confidence in Joe Lieberman's ability as a legislator. And he will work with us when this gets on the floor, and I'm sure he'll have some interesting things to do in the way of an amendment. But Joe Lieberman is the least of Harry Reid's problems." [my emphasis]

Two thing urgently need to happen in the Senate: the Democrats need to abolish the filibuster rule so they can pass real health care reform, and the Democrats need to can Harry Reid as Majority Leader.

Tags: harry reid, health care reform, joe lieberman

Okay, I was wrong

I thought that even the Senate Democrats could get themselves together to do the painfully obvious, depriving Joe Lieberman of the Chairmanship of the powerful Homeland Security and Governmental Operations Committee.

But I was wrong.

I don't take any comfort from it, but there's a big probability that they will seriously regret this. Holy Joe sat there the last two years cheering for war, endorsing McCain in the Republican primaries before there even was a Democratic nominee, and bashing the Democrats at every opportunity. But he didn't use his Committee to do any meaningful investigations of the most corrupt administration in the history of the Republic while they carried on with their predator-state ways.

Sooner rather than later, the Republican slime machine - or the dysfunctional Establishment press on their own - will come up with some Whitewater-type pseudo-scandal to use against Obama. And Holy Joe will feel deeply obligated to investigate the matter and fan the scandal for his Republican buddies.

It would be a good thing for the Democratic Congress to maintain an honestly critical eye on the Democratic administration. That's the way the system is supposed to work. But don't expect that from HoJo.

Heckuva job, Senate Dems! Y'all are off to a heckuva start for next year!

I wonder, did the Democrats get anything in the way of agreement from Lieberman in exchange for this capitulation to him? Did he promise to use his Committee to investigate some of the corrupt dealings of the outgoing administration, e.g., the post-Katrina reconstruction contracts? Did he agree to stop making his primary public function being an obnoxious advocate for Republican foreign policy positions? From what I could tell from the news, it was almost like the Democrats were begging him to let them completely capitulate to him!

Since our pod-people press corps are sure to spin this as the Democrats boldly standing up to "the left" and to the dirty blogging hippies, it's worth remembering what the activist base of the Democratic Party find so objectionable in Lieberman's conduct.

Having won the 2000 election as Al Gore's Vice Presidential running mate, Lieberman is a high-profile Democrat. And as his defenders are fond of pointing out, he has a fairly liberal voting record, definitely more liberal than your typical Republican. Without double-checking any systematic rankings, I believe his voting record overall is more liberal than any Senate Republican.

But pretty much since 9/11, Lieberman has used his high profile as a Democrat to go on talk shows and make speeches to hawkish political groups in which he focuses on attacking Democrats using Republican Party talking points, especially on national security issues. And it's primarily because he's counted as a nominal Democrat that he can pull off this schtick at all. As a run-of-the-mill Republican, he would have less star power, because there would be nothing mavericky about his repeating stock Republican talking points against the Dems.

That's why he wound up losing the Democratic Senate primary in Connecticut in 2006. Then, after winning that general election as an independent supported in fact by Republicans - despite the fact there was an official Republican candidate in the race - the Democrats welcomed him back into the fold.

That decision actually made sense. They needed Lieberman's vote to have a Democratic majority in the Senate. And there was even some sense in recognizing his seniority by allowing him to chair the Homeland Security and Government Operations Committee. Because there was the possibility that he might use his position to investigate some of the many misdeeds of this massively corrupt Republican administration. But he didn't.

And Think Progress reminds us that barely two weeks ago, Lieberman in an interview with Glenn Beck was worrying that a 60-vote Democratic majority in the Senate could destroy America:

BECK: But do you agree that Senator Hatch said to me that if we don’t at least have the firewall of the filibuster in the Senate that in many ways America will not survive?

LIEBERMAN: Well, I hope it’s not like that, but I fear.

Now the Senate Democrats are welcoming him again with open arms like the proverbial Prodigal Son returning home. But he's a Prodigal Son with a twist: in the Biblical tale, the son repents of his former conduct and hostility toward his father. By whatever strange sort of logic it is on which the Senate Dems have been operating in relation to Lieberman, they don't seem to think it's necessary to require Lieberman to actually act like a real Democrat to welcome him back home.

Tags: democrats,joe lieberman

Glenn Greenwald harshes on the Senate Dems for being such punks about Joe Lieberman

Looking at the seeming probability that the Senate Dems will let Holy Joe Lieberman get off with no consequences for pimping for the Republicans for the last eight years, Glenn Greenwald writes (The Democrats of 2002 and 2007 haven't gone anywhere Salon 11/12/08):

It is worth remembering that the Democrats who are going to exert dominant political control are the same ones who have provoked so much scorn -- rightfully so -- over the last several years, and particularly since 2006. This is the same Democratic Party leadership which funded the Iraq War without conditions (and voted to authorize it in the first place); massively expanded the President's warrantless eavesdropping powers; immunized lawbreaking telecoms; enacted the Patriot Act and then renewed it with virtually no changes; didn't even bother to mount a filibuster to stop the Military Commissions Act; refrained from pursuing any meaningful investigations of Bush lawbreaking; confirmed every last extremist Bush nominee, from Michael McConnell to Michael Mukasey; acquiesced to even the worst and most lawless Bush policies when they were briefed on them; and on and on and on. None of that has changed. That is still who they are.

Joe Lieberman didn't merely campaign against Barack Obama and several other Democrats. That's the least of his sins. He was not only among the most vocal supporters of the Iraq War, but at least as bad, has endorsed and supported every last radical Bush policy to expand executive power and surveillance activities while destroying core constitutional liberties and checks and balances. He used his Chairmanship for only one purpose: to block oversight into Bush scandals and corruption. He has spouted the most defamatory attacks, not only against Barack Obama, but against war opponents generally. More significantly still, Democrats in his own state -- his own constituents -- booted him out of the party, no longer wanting to be represented by him.

That is who Senate Democrats appear well on their way to selecting to serve as their Chairman of Homeland Security, of all committees. That's because nothing that Lieberman has done really bothers them. Endorsing the Iraq War and the full panoply of radical Bush policies isn't disqualifying in the least because so many of them also endorsed that and support it, or, at the very least, it's not a priority for them. They care even less what their "base" thinks, what the so-called "Left" wants. Few things in this world are less likely than them ever taking even a mild stand - such as stripping Lieberman of his Chair - in order to defend some sort of political principle, or to punish ineptitude, or to announce that there are certain lines to the Right that can't be crossed. They don't do that. They never have. And it shouldn't surprise anyone that they won't now. [my emphasis in bold]

This is what we (the Democratic base!) are up against. And this advice of Glenn's is a very appropriate reminder:

Politicians respond to constituencies and pressure. Constituencies which announce their intention to maintain respectful silence all but ensure that their political principles will be ignored.

It can't be emphasized enough that the election last week was but the first step to changing things meaningfully. None of that is likely to matter much unless as much energy and effort is now devoted to changing the Democratic Party as was just expended to remove the right-wing from power. [my emphasis]

Tags: glenn greenwald, joe lieberman

What happened to John Kerry on Sunday?

Obama surrogate John Kerry: does he actually care who wins the Presidential election?

One thing I failed to comment on in my post yesterday about John Kerry's sad performance on the 08/03/08 Meet the Press. It was bad enough that he allowed himself to be paired with pseudo-Democrat Joe Lieberman, enabling Lieberman's (and McCain's) phony "bipartisan" posturing. And that he praised McCain to the heavens for his awesome war heroism. (He used the word "awe".) And that he said he was glad to have good ole Joe stay in the Democratic caucus, even though Lieberman's whole public persona is now about bashing the Democrats.

This argument that Kerry made may be even worse:

Barack Obama is right about Iraq. Now George Bush, Prime Minister Maliki think we ought to set a deadline. ... He's been right about North Korea and Iran and the notion that we ought to negotiate. Now the Bush administration is negotiating. The Bush administration has moved towards Barack Obama, not John McCain. And John McCain's judgment has been wrong, and it's dangerous for America. (my emphasis)

Yes, that was Kerry's pitch: Vote for Obama because Bush agrees with him on the Iraq War! Obama and Bush, they're right on the same page there. Vote for the Obama-Bush plan on Iraq!

That's just so sad it's mind-boggling. Bush and his war are incredibly unpopular. And Kerry says vote for Obama because he agrees with Bush on the Iraq War! Plus, McCain has been working hard to create the impression that he's been a big critic of Bush on the war.

What was Kerry thinking on Sunday? Does he really just not care who wins the Presidency this year? That was worse than "phoning it in". Kerry was playing the McCain game all over the place. If he can't make a real case for Obama, he should just absent himself from this campaign. If that performance is any measure, Obama should be distancing himself from John Kerry, not from Wes Clark.

Tags: barack obama, joe lieberman, john kerry, wesley clark

Joe Lieberman's alternative history and Trot foreign policy inclination

Leon Trotsky and Holy Joe Lieberman: "comrades" at last?

Joe Liberman becomes an increasingly sad case almost by the day, it seems. He's practically become McCain's butler to judge by the number of times he appears with him in public. Does McCain even go outside without Lieberman there any more?

Lieberman's rightwing radicalism - let's call it what it is - was on full display this past Wednesday in his op-ed Democrats and Our Enemies Wall Street Journal 05/21/08. The Democratic Senate establishment was sympathetic to Lieberman in his 2006 Senate re-election campaign, even after he lost the Democratic nomination. Harry Reid is still running around defending the guy.

But here's a good example of how a timely intra-party challenge can be good for the Party rather than simply "divisive". Lieberman is building up to his Zell Miller act at this year's Republican National Convention, and his op-ed gives a good idea of what we can expect. McCain is using Lieberman to boost his "bipartisan" credentials to posture as a phony "moderate" for the general election. I don't expect it, but I also wouldn't be terribly surprised if he picks Lieberman as his running mate.

Since Lieberman, though, was not elected as a Democrat in 2006, that gives the Party a way to undercut his shtick about upholding the true Democratic tradition against that radical America-hating black guy Obama and the anti-American Democratic Party. Of course, the Dems need to actively make the effort to start creating that distance now before Lieberman puts on his clown show at the Republican Convention. Harry Reid, in other words, needs to shut the hell up making excuses for Lieberman and start discrediting him. The Dems all need to emphasize that even though Holy Joe voted with the Dems in organizing the Senate, he is the Senate representative of a one-man party, the Independent Democratic Party. Actually, the FOXist grammar using "Democrat" as the adjective would be appropriate here - the Independent Democrat Party - since Lieberman is the only known member of that organization. (Technically, I don't think it's a Party organization at all, but the point is he's not an elected Senator of the Democratic Party.)

Joe Conason rakes Lieberman over the coals for his Journal op-ed in Joe Lieberman, ideological turncoat Salon 05/23/08. I couldn't hope to outdo Conasaon's version of how tendentious Lieberman is being now. But I will comment on a couple of things that particularly struck me.

Lieberman recites the standard "Reagan Democrat" jive-talk about how Truman and Kennedy and LBJ were tough and warlike but today's Democratic Party is just a bunch of wimps. Actually, it's worse than that. What he says is:

This worldview began to come apart in the late 1960s, around the war in Vietnam. In its place, a very different view of the world took root in the Democratic Party. Rather than seeing the Cold War as an ideological contest between the free nations of the West and the repressive regimes of the communist world, this rival political philosophy saw America as the aggressor – a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and "inordinate fear of communism" represented the real threat to world peace.

It argued that the Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they were inspired by a totalitarian ideology fundamentally hostile to our way of life, or because they nursed ambitions of global conquest. Rather, the Soviets were our enemy because we had provoked them, because we threatened them, and because we failed to sit down and accord them the respect they deserved. In other words, the Cold War was mostly America's fault. (my emphasis)

As Conason sensibly asks:

Which Democrats does Lieberman think represented this dubious worldview? Was it George McGovern, decorated veteran of World War II? Was it Jimmy Carter, the former Navy submarine officer who stood against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan?

Lieberman's caricatured version of Democratic foreign policy post-1968 is actually so far off that it would would be a challenge to dig up even a few leftwing pamphlets, leaflets or articles from "the 60s" that actually stated such a case. And half those would be from FBI front groups. Even among the relatively tiny group of followers of actual Marxist-Leninist parties and sects such baldly-stated views would be scarce. Trotskyist groups always saw the Soviet Union as horribly threatening; the neocons' Trotskyist hostility to the USSR is one thing that didn't change much in their journey from Trotskyism to neoconservatism.

The "Old Left" Communist Party was pro-Soviet but saw other countries like China as big problems. Conversely, Maoist groups saw "Soviet social-imperialism" as just as threatening an evil as American imperialism. And, after 1972 and the US-Chinese rapprochment, the Maoist position was that the Soviet Union was more of a threat in the world than the US.

To the extent any of those Marxist views affected Democratic Party thinking at all, it was primarily through those hawkish Democrats who would later be known as neoconservatives and whose outlook was heavily influenced by Troskyism. Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson of Washington, aka, "the Senator from Boeing", was a major mentor and sponsor of the neocons. Elliott Abrams and Richard "Prince of Darkness" Perle both served as aides to Jackson. And Lieberman praises the "principled efforts" of "Democratic Cold Warriors like Scoop Jackson [who] fought against the tide" of Democratic foreign policy thought.

In fact, the very words "empire" and "imperialism" were considered a sign of lack of seriousness in foreign policy discussion among most Democrats until very recently. And that changed because the post-Trotskyist neocons started frankly and approvingly describing the United States as an "empire". In what must be in part some weird kind of projection, a lot of the statements from the neocons in the 2000s sound like what in the 1960s would have been overdrawn parodies of militarists. Michael Ledeen's infamous quote about how the US should pick up some crappy little country every 10 years or so and slam it against the wall just to show we mean business comes to mind.

In fact, given Lieberman's kind of sleaze-slinging, the Dems should insist on more aggressive reality-checking by the press on some of these things. For instance, check out this from Sid Blumenthal's 1986 The Rise of the Counter-Establishment: From Conservative Ideology to Political Power:

In the 1976 Democratic primaries, the neoconservatives supported Senator Henry Jackson, a black hole of charisma who could not fill the vacuum left by [Hubert] Humphrey. By now some of them were beginning to become an entrenched element within the Counter-Establishment. Their flagship publications, Commentary and The Public Interest, set the line, critical of Great Society social policy and non-interventionist foreign policy. At think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, they occupied chairs newly endowed by corporate benefactors seeking intellectual guardians. Some neoconservatives who, amazingly, still regarded themselves as socialists belonged to the Social Democrats U.S.A., which had intimate ties to key figures within the AFL-CIO leadership. These Social Democrats had battled for decades against the sins of Stalinism [Soviet-line Communism], and they viewed their position as unchanged. As they allied themselves with the right wing, they still quaintly called each other "comrade." Other neoconservatives belonged to the Committee on the Present Danger, trying to persuade the public that the Soviets had achieved military superiority and that the threat was immediate. Every deviation by the Democrats from the neoconservative line was assailed by the entity they founded in the wake of McGovern's intra-party victory, the Coalition for a Democratic Majority [CDM]. The name expressed their desire more than the reality, for they were not the majority and many of them were moving out of the Democratic Party. The CDM was the neoconservative party shadow. (my emphasis)

Since he's so chagrined by such doctrines, maybe Comrade Holy Joe should explain just where he stands in relation to these Troskyist and bastardized social-democratic ideas.

But Holy Joe has another problem in his alternative history. Since he himself was the Vice Presidential candidate of the Democratic Party in 2000, the same Party that Rush Limbaugh and all good Republican white folks were trashing then and now as being hopelessly radical, etc., he has to work in an additional revisionist twist. In Holy Joe's version, Bill Clinton's victory in 1992 represented a return to the Trot-style militarism that Lieberman supports! And the Gore-Lieberman ticket in 2000 was practically the reincarnation of Scoop Jackson and his social-democratic comrades! As opposed to that wimpy foreign policy advocated in 2000 by Dick Cheney and George Bush.

Even in a FOXified world, you would think that this would be too much for any minimally-literate person to swallow. But, at least in Holy Joe's case, you would be wrong.

In Comrade Holy Joe's history, 9/11 changed everything. Cheney and Bush were transmuted into faithful comrades and the Dems responded with "the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price". As Conason observes, "Lieberman's indictment of a party that abandoned the president after 9/11 is just as dishonest as his failure to discuss his own evolution," said evolution from being a peacenik Democrat in his youth to a Comrade Warmonger today.

Tags: joe conason, joe lieberman, neoconservatives, trotskyism

The Maverick and the Republican "conservatives"

The Maverick embraces his Dear Leader, 2004

That bold Maverick McCain addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference this afternoon. That's the gathering where last year Mad Annie Coulter fired up the faithful by calling John Edwards a "faggot". A number of prominent conservatives have complained that the Maverick isn't sufficiently loyal to the Party line, which incidentally (or maybe not so incidentally) plays right into the endless depiction of McCain as some kind of moderate by his adoring fans in the press corps.

Before I get into the rightwing grumbling over the Maverick, has anyone else noticed that Joe Lieberman has been showing up standing loyally beside McCain lately when he gives victory speeches? The Senate Democrats probably think they have little choice but to accept Lieberman as part of their voting majority in organizing the Senate. But, good grief, if the man is campaigning for a Republican Presidential candidate even during the primaries, it's silly to regard him as any kind of Democrat any more. Given their difficulty in getting any innovative, non-Cheney-approved legislation through the Senate anyway, I have to wonder whether accepting him as part of the majority even now makes sense. If the Dems pick up a couple more Senate seats in the fall - or even one more in the Mississippi special election to fill Trent Lott's vacated seat - there will be even less reason to allow Lieberman to pose as a Democrat. Because he obviously isn't. The Dems are at least not allowing HoJo to be a "super-delegate" at the party convention (Lieberman No Longer a Super Delegate Capitol Watch 02/06/08).

This suspicion of the right wing against their presumptive Presidential nominee Maverick McCain is very strange. I hate when Pat Buchanan agrees with me, but he's right in saying that the Maverick as President "will make Cheney look like Gandhi."

A couple of useful looks at this dustup within the Christian Republican Party are McCain seeks to assuage wary conservatives by Joe Garofoli San Francisco Chronicle 02/07/08, and Hating on McCain by Joe Conason Salon 02/07/08.

Garofoli hits what I think is the bottom line on this faction fight among the Reps:

Talk show host and conservative commentator Mike Gallagher wrote Wednesday in the TownHall.com blog that "a lot of my friends and colleagues are in a foul mood over John McCain's Super Tuesday success."

"But what should really fire them up is the possibility of a Democrat in the White House in 2009," he wrote. "And I would respectfully suggest to the 'I'll-never-vote-for-McCain' crowd that you are threatening to hand the November election over to the Democrats on a big, fat silver platter."

Why should prominent conservatives be harshing on McCain? In some cases, looking for reasons is probably useless. Rush Limbaugh, for instance, was off the wall even before he pickled his brain in OxyContin. Conason also predicts with good reason that most Republicans won't experience much trauma in getting behind the Maverick as their nominee:

Certainly there will be many elected officials, bureaucrats, officeholders and assorted pork-choppers who will fall into the McCain ranks without much protest, out of personal interest or partisan loyalty. If conservatives could persuade themselves to accept Romney's professions of the true faith despite his record of support for abortion rights and gay rights, then why not believe McCain when he promises supply-side tax cuts?

And, as Conason also explains, plain old fanaticism and wingnut paranoia are also likely at work to some extent.

I realize that the image of Maverick McCain is one that has been repeated for years by our sad excuse for a press corps. Most of whom luuu-uuv that living saint, Staight-Talking McCain. Listen to the reporters on TV, blathering about St. McCain's "straight talk" and his "Maverick" nature.

The bold Maverick has one of the most conservative, pro-Bush voting records in the Senate. He panders to the Christianist right, including embracing their anti-science, anti-evolution pitch. He supports continuing the Cheney-Bush tax cuts (aka, tax subsidies) for the wealthiest citizens, because the heart and soul of the Republican Party is to make sure that the wealthiest people who materially benefit the most from what the United States has to offer should be free of the terrible burden of paying taxes to support their country.

McCain gave his adoring fans among the TV talking heads a chance to pimp his Maverick image by his anti-torture bill. But that was a joke from the start, though our pathetic press corps wouldn't think of reporting that. Torture was illegal when Cheney and Bush and Rummy started it in 2001. Why would anyone think that outlawing it again would make any difference to these scoundrels? Then when Bush signed the bill with a signing statement saying he had no dadgum intention of obeying it, the bold Maverick said he was just fine with that. And, of course, the Straight Talker happily voted to approve to retroactively indemnify many of the torturers. Although they can still be prosecuted under international law, if necessary. No McCain Presidency will prosecute those or any other torture cases unless their hand is forced somehow. And if the Congress can't force Bush's Attorney General to even investigate instances of torture in which the administration openly admits to using the drowning torture (waterboarding) that has been generally recognized as torture since at least the days of the Spanish Inquisition, it's unlikely they would be able to force McCain either.

The Maverick supports Cheney and Bush on telecomm amnesty for illegal spying, supports the illegal spying program generally, is fine with Cheney's Unilateral Executive theory of (Republican) Presidential power, will do nothing to stop Republican voter-suppression maneuvers (a direct continuity between today's Republicans and "Old South" segregationists), is totally on board with Supreme Court Justices like Roberts and Alito (one McCain Supreme Court appointment and you can kiss Roe v. Wade goodbye), supports Republican administrations defying Congressional subpoenas and exercising a blatantly partisan and often plain dishonest political prosecution policy, and thinks preventive wars are just dandy.

McCain was the chief Congressional advocate of The Surge, aka, the McCain escalation, whose main function has been to strengthen the Sunni militias that are fighting against our allied Shi'a-dominated, pro-Iranian government in Baghdad's Green Zone. Just within the last few weeks, fighting between government (aka Shi'a partisan) forces and the supporters of some whacko apocalyptic cult produced fighting in 75% of Basra, in the south where the British have, uh, successfully pacified everything. That's a key port facility for oil exports and a key location on the exit route for American troops leaving Iraq.

And, of course, the point of The Surge - to produce political reconciliation - has gone nowhere, to put it mildly. Oh, yeah, now the Turks are regularly bombing northern Iraq and conducting cross-border raids. And the air war in Iraq and Afghanistan escalated dramatically in 2007. The Iraq War is almost exclusively urban combat. Gee, when you drop a 2,000-lb bomb on a building in the middle of a crowded city, think there might be some civilian causalities? Have you ever heard the bold Maverick McCain express the slightest reservations about fighting a guerrilla war this way?

And what's the Maverick's solution to this? Keep fighting forever. He said he was fine if the US stayed in Iraq for 100 years. When a reporter later challenged him on it, he said 1000 years or even a million years (!!!) would be fine with him.

Speaking of which, you wouldn't know it listening to the Chris Matthewses expounding their man-crushes for the Maverick. But listen to one of his speeches at some length sometimes. I heard a long excerpt of him campaigning in Florida, I think it was, and he sounded downright dingy. And that dull roar you hear in the background when he speaks? That's the sound of bombs falling on Teheran. And Damascus. And Lord only knows where else.

Tags: iraq war, joe lieberman, mccain, mccain escalation, surge

How sad has Joe Lieberman become?

Pretty sad. This recent speech of his, The Politics of National Security 11/09/07, shows his current public persona clearly. The Democratic base's gripe against him was not simply that he supported Bush's foreign policy and the Iraq War. It was in particular that Lieberman made a point of attacking other Democrats using White House talking points.

In that speech, he said (based on the text at his Web site):

Since retaking Congress in November 2006, the top foreign policy priority of the Democratic Party has not been to expand the size of our military for the war on terror or to strengthen our democracy promotion efforts in the Middle East or to prevail in Afghanistan. It has been to pull our troops out of Iraq, to abandon the democratically-elected government there, and to hand a defeat to President Bush.

Iraq has become the singular litmus test for Democratic candidates. No Democratic presidential primary candidate today speaks of America's moral or strategic responsibility to stand with the Iraqi people against the totalitarian forces of radical Islam, or of the consequences of handing a victory in Iraq to al Qaeda and Iran. And if they did, their campaign would be as unsuccessful as mine was in 2006. Even as evidence has mounted that General Petraeus' new counterinsurgency strategy is succeeding, Democrats have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq, reluctant to acknowledge the progress we are now achieving, or even that that progress has enabled us to begin drawing down our troops there. (my emphasis)

This is one of those pitches that in one sense is irrefutable, because it's based on fantasy (our Saviour-General Petraeus and his sacred surge are succeeding) and slams the Democrats in a thoroughly dishonest and sleazy way. If you believe this type of propaganda, there's likely nothing rational that anyone could say to change your mind.

Lieberman sounds like a bitter man. And one who wants to widen the war to Iran. He talks at some length about his precious Kyl-Lieberman propaganda resolution. Without naming names so his claim could be verified, Lieberman says that Democrats opposing his resolution "invariably" agreed with the claims that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards were sponsoring guerrilla attacks on Americans in Iraq. And why wouldn't they support his amendment to promote war with Iran?

"It’s simple," they said. "We don’t trust Bush. He’ll use this resolution as an excuse for war against Iran."

I understand that President Bush is a divisive figure. I recognize the distrust that many Americans feel toward his administration. I recognize the anger and outrage that exists out there about the war in Iraq.

But there is something profoundly wrong - something that should trouble all of us - when we have elected Democratic officials who seem more worried about how the Bush administration might respond to Iran's murder of our troops, than about the fact that Iran is murdering our troops.

There is likewise something profoundly wrong when we see candidates who are willing to pander to this politically paranoid, hyper-partisan sentiment in the Democratic base - even if it sends a message of weakness and division to the Iranian regime. (my emphasis)

In other words, he's saying that they (Democrats) hate us (Bush supporters) for our values.

This one is refutable in a more concrete sense, though it's also the same sort of sleaze. The Iranian sponsorship of anti-American attacks is questionable. But since launching a war on Iran in the current situation would put the 160,000 American soldiers, plus American diplomats and mercenaries, at much greater risk with few if any alternatives once that begins to occur, anyone who has the least sense of responsibility about supporting wars had very well better be concerned about how Cheney and Bush might "respond" to the allegations of Iranian actions that they themselves are promoting.

Holy Joe continues directly to sing the familiar song of, I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me:

For me, this episode reinforces how far the Democratic Party of 2007 has strayed from the Democratic Party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and the Clinton-Gore administration.

That is why I call myself an Independent Democrat today. It is because my foreign policy convictions are the convictions that have traditionally animated the Democratic Party - but they exist in me today independent of the current Democratic Party, which has largely repudiated them.

I caught only one criticism of the Republican Party in that speech, and that was in passing and referred to the 1990s. The entire thing is a polemic against Democrats.

Lieberman calls himself and "Independent Democrat". I'd say he's become very independent of the Democratic Party.

Tags: democratic party, democrats, iraq war, joe lieberman, stab-in-the-back

Sad Joe Lieberman

I'm sitting here listening to Joe Lieberman gushing over our Saviour-General Petraeus at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Lieberman has become a sad spectacle. He's become almost a caricature of a war cheerleader. Not only for the Iraq War but for expanding the war to Iran.

Tags: iraq war, joe lieberman

Joe Lieberman: More Republican than the Republicans?

Josh Marshall quotes the administration toady, "Independent" Joe Lieberman, pleading with the Senate to let Dear Leader Bush and Dark Lord Cheney do whatever they want:

Even as our troops have begun to take Baghdad back step-by-step, there are many in this Congress who have nevertheless already reached a conclusion about the futility of America’s cause there, and declared their intention to put an end to this mission not with one direct attempt to cutoff funds, but step by political step. No matter what the rhetoric of this resolution, that is the reality of the moment. This non-binding measure before us is a first step toward a constitutional crisis that we can and must avoid. Let me explain what I mean by a constitutional crisis. Let us be clear about the likely consequences if we go down this path beyond this non-binding resolution. Congress has been given constitutional responsibilities. But the micro-management of war is not one of them. The appropriation of funds for war is. I appreciate that each of us here has our own ideas about the best way forward in Iraq, I respect those that take a different position than I, and I understand that many feel strongly that the President’s strategy is the wrong one. But the Constitution, which has served us now for more than two great centuries of our history, creates not 535 commanders-in-chief, but one - the President of the United States, who is authorized to lead the day to day conduct of war. Whatever our opinion of this war or its conduct, it is in no one’s interest to stumble into a debilitating confrontation between our two great branches of government over war powers. The potential for a constitutional crisis here and now is real, with congressional interventions, presidential vetoes, and Supreme Court decisions. If there was ever a moment for nonpartisan cooperation to agree on a process that will respect both our personal opinions about this war and our nation’s interests over the long term, this is it. (my emphasis)

How does a democracy die? This is one way.

The Cheney-Bush administration has been trampling on the Constitution even before the day they took office, thanks to invaluable assistance from the Scalia Five in taking office despite Al Gore's election victory in 2000.

The only reason there hasn't been a "Constititional crisis" is because the Republican Congress and, for the most part, the Republican-dominated federal judiciary were willing to roll over and play dead for Cheney's theory and practice of the Unilateral Executive form of government in which the President is bound neither by law or the Constitution. It's advocates call it the "Unitary Executive" theory, but Gore's "Unilateral Executive" label is more descriptive.

The phrase "Constitutional crisis" is normally used these days when there is an actual conflict among branches of the federal government over some substantive issue. So you could say that from 2001-2006, we had a "Constitutional trampling" instead of a Constitutional crisis.

Lieberman says a Constitutional crisis is something "that we can and must avoid". And he makes it clear that what he means is that Congress should avoid such a crisis by refusing to exercise its own war powers and by meekly agreeing to continued illegal and un-Constitutional practices by Cheney and Bush.

In other words, if we just act like there's no Constitution, we won't have any crisis over it!

Lieberman gets more and more pitiful as time goes on.

The reality is more like what Paul Krugman wrote earlier this year, that 2007 and 2008 are likely to be one long, rolling Constitutional crisis.

For more on the Cheneyist notion of the "commander-in-chief", see the post by Jack Balkin that I've referenced here before, Two Concepts of Commander-in-Chief Balinization blog 02/05/07.

Tags: commander-in-chief, jack balkin, joe lieberman, war powers