Photo of a washed up Portuguese man-of-war (by naotoj @ flickr).
It's difficult to not be cynical about politics and politicians - but this loss by Lieberman and win by Lamont is a hopeful thing.
Lieberman blames the bloggers - ie. - "It Wasn't About the War". As if people who share information and ideas by using the internet are any less citizens than anyone else. It's like he's saying - how dare anyone get their information somewhere besides the Corporate Media - whose games he plays.
And then - the way that Lieberman has been such a Bush supporter and now Rove and the Republicans want to support him in his run as an "Independent Democrat". Sounds sort of like a "DLC Democrat" (wink, wink). Leiberman was the leader of the DLC - the Democratic Leadership Council - prior to the 2000 election - when Bayh took over.
This rant that is posted on the DLC site (no author is named) -"The Return of Liberal Fundamentalism" (written June 2, 2006) - shows hows opposed they are to traditional Democratic values. The writer rails about the "purge" of Lieberman saying that the grassroots, bloggers, and traditional Democrats represent "a conformist tendency to stifle dissent among Democrats and require adherence to litmus tests devised by interest groups and ideological advocates.... and intimidate or even purge those who do not meet a narrow definition of what makes a "real Democrat...."
We deplore this purge effort because Joe Lieberman is an outstanding and respected U.S. Senator. He is a man of utmost integrity who speaks and governs by his values and principles, even when they lead him against the popular tide..."
It sounds like the writer does NOT share the values of traditional democrats (such as this). The reference to fundamentalists sounds like a vague comparison to terrorists. Certainly not what someone who shared those liberal values would say.
What I hear in this and other things that the DLC represents - is that the DLC is a third party (that has co-opted the Democratic name for their own purposes) - they even call it the "third way". This party represents big money and corporate interests much like the Republicans. And the DLC has no interest in the will of the people and does expect to have to represent them. The majority of Americans oppose the Iraq Occupation, for instance.
Anyway - good for Lamont - and I'm glad that Connecticut wasn't using electronic voting machines (or Diebold).
2 comments:
Saying that any certain school of thought is trying to "stifle dissent among Democrats" is absurd. Of course there will always be dissent; otherwise we wouldn't need primaries. Everyone would just agree on a candidate and that person would win.
I personally feel that what Lieberman is doing represents a severe lack of integrity. A "man of utmost integrity" would concede with dignity when he loses an election, not try scratch and claw his way into a positioni of power while betraying the party who elected him in the first place.
The job of a politician in a republic is to represent the citizens who put him into office. Lieberman obviously was not doing so, or else he would not have lost his own primary.
On another note: I voted in Connecticut. Those machines seemed electronic to me... We voted on scantron sheets, so there was a paper source, but the votes still appeared to be counted by a computer.
Some article said that the State was using levers - I guess it was wrong.
Some people are concerned about the scantron system - but that there is a much better possibility of recounting. You could recount the sheets with different machines and see if you get the same result for instance - or do a visual count. With the purely electronic system where the only record is the data on a computer - that is hackable and which can be programmed to miscount - there is no way to verify that the votes were what the computer says they were.
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