Colin McEnroe | To Wit

Case Closed on the Lieberman Website

I had either the best or worst seat in the house in August 2006 when the fight erupted over the crashing of Joe Lieberman's campaign website which, as of today, is officially the fault of the Joe Lieberman campaign.

My Connecticut talk show runs from 3 to 6 p.m. and, long before that day, it had turned into the Bull Run of the Lieberman-Lamont war. They did a lot of their fighting on my clock. On primary day, when the dispute arose about what was happening to the website, I was sort of a human battlefield and, in retrospect, it was more interesting as a lesson in how media wars are fought these days.  Operatives from the two campaigns started spinning me, by phone, as I was driving in to work, and they never stopped, especially once the show got rolling. There was a kind of fusion of e-mail, talk show and cell phone as each side tried to convince me -- sometimes in heated conversations during commercial breaks -- that the other side was wrong and possibly evil. It was a question that was impossible to resolve on a real time basis, but it was definitely fought out that way. On balance, I think that was good. We managed to get the arguments of each side on the air.  To their credit, the Lamont people figured out the truth pretty quickly -- that they hadn't done it and that inherent problems with Lieberman's skimpy web set up had caused the problem.

At some point during the show, it became clear to me that Lamont web director Tim Tagaris (pictured) was doing one of the things he does best -- turn loose 1,000 unpaid researchers on a problem in order to get a rapid response. He had people all over the nation geeking out on the question of what could have caused the crash.  The hypothesis they offered me, in real time, is pretty close to what we have now as the official truth, years later.

Lieberman will never apologize because he never does. The other people connected to this whole episode -- and they know who they are -- would do themselves proud if they stepped forward and expressed even mild contrition.

It also has to be said, in the interest of fairness, that one possible reason they thought they'd been hacked was because the Tagaris operation did have a fondness for cyber-guerilla tactics. They eventually Google-bombed Lieberman so that they could control the top menu of search results involving their rival.  But that doesn't excuse the Lieberman crowd for their strongly-worded and unfounded attacks on that day.

The other point that may have some lasting value is the way the dispute reflected Lieberman's psychology, which permeated his campaign staff. "The people who are against us are bad people." He parades himself as the Great Reconciler, the Yankee Peddler of bi-partisan bonhomie; but he actually takes the whole process a lot more personally and bitterly than most poiticians do.  His fondness for common ground only switches on when you're standing on that ground with him.  Dare to have a different view of the world, and you're liable to get lumped in with the orcs and trolls and forces of Mordor.

And Lanny Davis is still an emu.

Why Joe Lieberman has a sore throat

I ran into a fellow reporter at a gathering Saturday night, and he (I will shield his indentity for now) told me of encountering Joe Lieberman in a Bridgeport restaurant shortly after having published an article critical of the senator, When Lieberman realized who the guy was he frowned and blurted, "You're even worse than Colin McEnroe."

I offer that as further proof that Lieberman is fickle.  You can't even stay at the top of his s--t list if there's a new kid in town.

No sooner had I digested that but there came another Whitmanesque song of himself by Lieberman on ABC's This Week.  I was going to go on and on about it, but I think Genghis did an especially nice  job of wrapping it up.

But if you look at the MLN clip, you'll see right away that even the most widely circulated quote is mendacious. That's the quote about the Democratic Party being "effectively taken over by a small group on the left of the party that is protectionist, isolationist and basically will -and very, very hyperpartisan."

It's in response to the showing of a 2006 clip in which Lieberman promises he has the interests of the party at heart and wants to work to get a Democrat elected president in 2008.  So this conversion of his party into a rabble of carbine-wielding, bandoliered Guevaras apparently happened in the ensuing 18 months, just in time to provide justification for his embrace of McCain.

It would have been nice if  George had called him on that one. His explanation of  his turnabout from a promise in 2006 to a violation of that promise in 2007 is an eight-year (alleged) shift in the Democratic Party. Doesn't pass the smell test. Anyway, what is that shift? I wish somebody would ask Lieberman who he's talking about when he mentions the people on the left who took over.  (He says this a lot.) Harry Reid? Nancy Pelosi? John Larson? Chris Dodd? Barack Obama? Ted Kennedy? Who does he mean? Nobody ever asks him that.  I suppose if you spend a lot of your time propitiating and being stroked by Sean Hannity, those people are the far left.

And if this shift really happened, how did  Hillary Clinton -- presumably part of the older, approved-of version of the party -- amass so much power?  And why doesn't Lieberman support her instead of McCain? That would seem to be the other hole in his statement.  Why did he defect? Because the party abandoned its old Clinton DLC politics. There was nobody he could really support.  Including Clinton? That's the hilarious part. Clinton is losing a narrow race right now, and if Lieberman really cared about his party in the way he claims to, he would have used whatever appeal he has among moderate Democrats and independents to help her. The 'sphere, meanwhile, did catch Lieberman in a few other paradoxes here and here.

(I'd love to know what Lanny Davis says in private about Lieberman these days. You may recall that Davis came here as Lieberman's hatchet man and heavily shopped the argument that Lieberman was a trustworthy Democrat who had no substantial areas of loyalty to Bush once you got outside the borders of Iraq. Now Davis is back to being a Clinton hatchet guy. They're losing a squeaker without the help of the man he said they could count on.)

My first thought, listening to Lieberman croak out his answers in that froggy voice, was so coarse and uncharitable that I'll just keep it to myself.  My second thought is this: there are often connections between mind and spirit and body. Lieberman years ago, sloughed off the skin of his old self and fell in love, deeply in love, with the war politics of George Bush. And he fell even more deeply in love with John S. McCain. It seems, at times, a little bit like Lucy's love for Schroeder. Schroeder doesn't really reciprocate, but it's nice to have someone listening.

But for Lieberman, new love has meant burning old principles. You set fire to your old attorney general's faith in law and instead make excuses for torture and for imprisoning people for years with no access to lawyers and no redress in courts. You make excuses for the most disastrous military and diplomatic policies in the last forty years, and you damn Barack Obama when he won't hand this administration more tools for implementing these policies.

You become a different person from the man you were in 1980, and when anybody asks you about it, you blame everybody else. I think Genghis has it right. Democrats and other Americans have watched an eight-year nightmare unfold and were appalled by a lot of things that apparently do not appall Joe Lieberman. McCain has failed to differentiate himself from Bush on foreign policy, military affairs or the economy, and Lieberman is with him, all the way, apparently baffled and disappointed by our failure to applaud his choice.

So your throat hurts because the words coarsing up through it are false and come from a bad place inside you, because a few years ago, you leased the whole word-making apparatus to Karl Rove, a guy who's not really into the health of your chakras or right intention or any of that holistic stuff.

Obama, meanwhie, is runing exactly the kind of Democratic campaign Lieberman always claimed he wanted, but Lieberman has to pretend otherwise. No wonder his throat hurts.

If Joe Lieberman Couldn't Pry McCain Away From His Wife ...

Excellent point by Paz.  Joe Lieberman who has spent years in the grip of a tragic man-crush on John McCain and who will, as we know, mack on Republicans at the slightest encouragement, would certainly be the first to know if there was any way to get John to forsake Cindy and start feelin' on his booty. So he can promise you that this is all about riding around on corporate jets and not about sexual monkey business. Phew!

Thar She Blows

I've been wondering when the state Democratic party would finally blow a gasket at Joe Lieberman over all his philandering with McCain.  It looks like we have an answer in this statement crafted by somebody -- Mr. Occhiogrosso, is that you? -- and ascribed to party chair Nancy DiNardo.

“I continue to be disappointed beyond words with Joe Lieberman, as are a lot of Connecticut Democrats -- saddened, surprised, and truly disheartened by just how completely he has abandoned the Democratic principles that have guided him over the years and the Party whose members have supported him and helped him achieve his goals.  As recently as 18 months ago, Senator Lieberman was telling us Democrats that he shares our values, and with the exemption of Iraq, that he agrees with us on the issues we care so much about -- critically important issues like a woman’s right to choose, tax and economic policies, healthcare and education.  Moreover, in July of 2006, Senator Lieberman even stated that he intended to work to help a Democrat get into the White House in 2008.  His endorsement of Senator McCain means he either doesn’t care about the issues noted above, or he’s putting politics ahead of people.  If you look at Senator McCain’s voting record, and campaign platform – on these, and many other issues we care about – you’ll understand why I am saying this.  This is a man, Senator McCain, who proudly says he was a “foot soldier” in the Regan [sic]Revolution.  Senator McCain is wrong on the issues we Democrats care so much about—and he’s wrong by a lot.  I am proud to stand with my fellow Democrats and announce that we as a Party will grow stronger and do everything in our power to make sure a Democrat is elected in November, “  said Nancy DiNardo, Chairwoman, CT. Democratic Party.

The Mask Comes Off

Sweet Jesus, I'm here on vacation, in laid-back SFO, the town that gave you Nancy Pelosi's new House cafeteria menu. Our room has a  view of the East Bay bridge. I can feel my blood pressure dropping.

AND NOW I'M SUPPOSED TO COMMENT ON JOE FREAKIN' LIEBERMAN'S MCCAIN ENDORSEMENT??????  EWWWWWWWWWWW!

Well ...how big a surprise is this? It's more an instance of -- finally -- honesty, after all the lying he did about who he was (and would be) while he was trying to get elected in 2006 -- lying that was believed by nobody with any sense but which was lapped up enthusiastically by brain-dead party hacks.  If you want more vitriol than I can probably muster while on vacation, I would, generally, recommend ...well, almost any left-leaning blog, now that I think of it.

And you know what? If he had endorsed Obama or Clinton, it would have raised caution flags over them. And McCain is probably the least disastrous of all possible GOP nominees. And maybe the imprimatur of a man who finished a distant, unequivocal fifth in New Hampshire in 2004 and claimed he was tied for third will help.

Keep That Breathless Charm

He's still the same old Joe.  And he's still hating on you for having any convictions.  Why can't you be more like him?

Best Digression Ever

Gail Collins is the best.

And this is a great column about Hillary.

But it will be long remembered here in CT for this digression:

And how could she have voted for an Iran resolution that was sponsored by Joseph Lieberman, who was basically drummed out of his party in Connecticut because of his hyperhawk stance on Iraq? Lieberman, who was once a somewhat boring but apparently good-hearted centrist, has turned into a disaster area for Democrats, a one-man quagmire.

If it hadn’t been for his unhelpful performance in Florida after the 2000 election, perhaps Al Gore would be president now and there would be peace and global cooling throughout the planet. Honestly, there’s a book in this somewhere: Joe Lieberman Ruined Everything.

We digress.

Rapture Joe

A lion and a racoon might both be kind of happy there's a chicken farm, but one of these days, the lion is going to want the chicken farm all to himself.

I have puzzled, for years, over the odd alliance between fundamentalist end-times Christians and certain Zionist Jews.  I keep wanting to say to the Jews: "You do understand, right, that ultimately they don't see Israel as just a really great place to practice Judaism? That they want it for something else? That they wouldn't be doing any of this stuff if they didn't basically believe that Jews are wrong about everything?""

Anyway, one of the guys who likes to swim in this sea is Joe Lieberman.  And Max Blumenthal catches him at it here.  And kind of explores those questions.

I don't know Max's work, but if this is what he does, I'm all for it.  He's sort of halfway between Michael Moore and "The Daily Show." Some nights "The Daily Show" manages to serve up some real substance without alienating the part of the audience that comes only for the laughs. Other nights, there's a lot of Rob Riggle saying the same bad word over and over. Max serves a little stronger tea than TDS, but he's doing the stuff John Stewart would probably do if his audience would let him get away with it.

Lanny Davis Is (Still) an Emu

Before I address the substance of Lanny Davis's stale defense of Joe Lieberman, please take note of one of the throwaways at the beginning of the piece:

But I must admit I had some doubts about my opposition when the statue of that genocidal thug Saddam Hussein was pulled down to the cheers of Iraqis young and old. My heart sang as I watched on television.

Yes, zing went the strings of Lanny's heart. And yet, like so much about this war and like so much about Lieberman, this toppling was not what it appeared to be. Fast-forward to 2004:

Army Admits It Staged Toppling of Saddam Statue
A newly declassified Army study of the Iraq invasion confirms that the U.S. military stage-managed the fall of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad. According to the Army's own report, a Marine colonel decided to topple the statue and an Army psyops worked to make the toppling of the statue appear to be a spontaneous undertaking by Iraqi civilians. This according to the Los Angeles Times. The psyops team used loudspeakers to encourage Iraqis to gather in Firdos Square and a Marine recovery vehicle was used to topple the statue with a chain.

You can read a little  more about that here.

It's a fitting start to Lanny's piece, a bit of Psy-Ops in its own right.

          Lanny's argument rests on two legs: That if you take Iraq out of the equation Joe Lieberman is a liberal and that Lieberman's most ardent critics would be mollified if they believed that.

If the first thing is true, somebody should tell Lieberman. Dating way back to his days as a crusader agaist violent videogames and filth on television, he has been a darling of cultural conservatives. Forget about his votes. Look at the heavy schedule of shows he appears on:  Hannity, Beck and, back in the day, the scabrous Bob Grant and even Pat Roberston.

Why do they like him? Iraq? Maybe. But they also like his taste for keeping Terry Schiavo alive and his apology for torture. They like the way he voted against a filibuster in the Alito nomination (even if he cast a meaningless vote against Alito at the end.) They like all the Bill Bennett stuff on values and virtue. They like his speech about Condi Rice having the hearts of all Americans.

OK, don't forget his votes. Lieberman is the master of voting Democrat at the last minute. After a crucial amendment or a cloture vote, he'll veer off sharply and vote with his party. He''ll dance with the Bush administration on Social Security until his own party leaders are pulling out their hair and then run back to the fold so Davis can spin him as a Democrat.

The complicated dance Lieberman has done to remain both a lapdog of the Bush administration, the Charo of right wing propaganda shows and yet, on paper,  a plausible Democrat is covered by me in this Salon piece and, in greater depth, by this DailyKos post.

    Forget about all that for a second. Because Davis is right in one way. Lieberman is going to have a pretty good position in the crucial debate about climate change, and maybe he could even bring a  few people along with him (although that remains by to seen). And I'm guessing he'll be pretty good in the next national debate on health care too.

Most of us don't vote or enthuse or deplore simply based on a quantifiable assessment of somebody's ideology. Heck, I probably have almost nothing in common (if you take Iraq out of the picture) with Chuck Hagel, but something makes me like and trust the guy.

So Lanny, here is something you failed to grasp: You can bring out all the liberal ratings numbers you want. Some of us just don't like Joe Lieberman as a person.  He's vain, ambitious, preening, hypocritical, vindictive.  He gives us the creeps. OK?

The unbearable nothingness of Lieberman

As of 4 p.m. today this was the most-read article at the New York Observer. At the rate Lieberman is going, the elevator buttons won't light up when he touches them.

Understood in this context, Lieberman's bizarre declarations about Iran start to look like the knockings of a poltergeist, tipping over pots just to alert the living world that he still exists.