Far Left liberals, like the bunch at The New York Times, are wishing and hoping for Joe Lieberman's demise in the Connecticut Democratic primary today.
The Times is punishing in its reporting on Lieberman.
That's understandable given that the publication endorsed Lieberman's opponent, Ned Lamont, the politically inexperienced but rich guy that sends the Lefties into rapture.
I think Lieberman's primary struggle deserves much of the national attention it's getting because it was just six short years ago that he was his party's choice to be vice president. Also, just a few months ago, Lieberman seemed untouchable. But now polls indicate that Lamont could stage an upset. At one point Lamont was up in the polls by 13 points. In recent days, Lieberman has regained some ground, coming within 6 points of Lamont.
It's a dramatic turn of events. So dramatic that it's weird, like there's some kind of strange pack mentality at play, driven by emotion rather than reason.
Although the hard Left, out of touch Times and other radical loons are solidly behind the obscenely rich Lamont, Lieberman has held on to some solid support in his home state, receiving endorsements from The Hartford Courant and The Connecticut Post.
Lefty media and bloggers have deemed this race to be a referendum on President Bush and the Iraq war. Naturally, they are deeply invested in its outcome. They desparately want Lieberman to lose in order to claim that Americans have rejected Bush's policies, as if the primary would signal a major turning point in public opinion.
"The Kiss," a brief moment between President Bush and Lieberman at the 2005 State of the Union, is the image that Lamont groupies are using to symbolize what they consider to be Lieberman's unacceptable allegiance to the President.
It's truly bizarre.
The Times and other outlets are reporting on the race as if its outcome can be extrapolated to represent the mindset of the entire nation.
Frankly, I think that's taking it too far.
I don't think the results of this primary will determine the future course of the Democratic party.
If Lieberman loses, it's because radical Lefties were whipped into a frenzy and energized to show up at the polls IN CONNECTICUT. It's because they want to participate in a Bush hate-fest.
That doesn't mean that the country would back an extremist of Lamont's ilk. A Lamont win wouldn't signal a sea change.
From The New York Times:
As Connecticut voters prepared for their highly anticipated Democratic primary today, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman and Ned Lamont, the two rivals for United States Senate, used sharply different tactics yesterday to gain a final advantage in a contest that appeared to be tightening.
Mr. Lieberman, the three-term incumbent whose support for the Iraq war has cost him voters, held nine events over 13 hours and exuded fresh optimism on the ninth day of a statewide bus tour. He also spent tens of thousands of dollars on an unconventional two-minute television ad in which he aligned himself with Democratic anger over Iraq and President Bush — an attempt to neutralize Mr. Lamont’s signature antiwar message.
Mr. Lamont, a millionaire businessman from Greenwich, made the unusual choice of limiting his public events and instead called undecided voters and tried to reach them through interviews with reporters. At a news conference last night, Mr. Lamont also tried to remind voters a final time of his political theme, saying he believed voters were “ready to change course,” in the Senate and, implicitly, in Iraq.
The Connecticut race, which has been regarded by some Democrats nationally as a referendum on the party’s wartime posture, had been tilting in Mr. Lamont’s favor in the last two weeks, according to public opinion polls and anecdotal evidence from voters. Yet Mr. Lieberman seem buoyed yesterday by a new poll from Quinnipiac University that showed him down by 6 points, within the poll’s margin of sampling error.
What is Lamont offering the citizens of Connecticut?
He says he believes the troops should come home from Iraq. That thrills the Bush-haters, but it's incredibly short-sighted. After they're home, then what?
Is he so naive to think that the threat of terrorism against the U.S. and our allies will just go away? Pulling out of Iraq won't make that happen.
I hope that Connecticut voters will realize that it's necessary to take a more sophisticated approach to a very complex situation and that the implementation of the retreat and defeat strategy promoted by the MoveOn-wing of the Democratic party would prove to be disastrous.
In another article in today's Times, Lieberman is drawn as a pathetic figure, in denial that he is the certain loser of the primary.
Anne E. Kornblut writes:
It was a marvel of message discipline: White vans circled the block blaring commandments to vote for Senator Joe Lieberman. Paid workers pounded “Vote Joe” posters onto buildings, replacing ones that were torn down the night before.
And in the noonday heat in the parking lot in front of the Rajun Cajun diner in North Hartford, young campaign volunteers lifted their Lieberman signs aloft as skillfully as tour guides, wading through a crowd of camera crews to position themselves before the senator emerged from his campaign bus.
“We got some momentum,” Mr. Lieberman proclaimed, beaming and red-faced, as he loped down the steps of the bus into the arms of a small group of supporters.
Whether he really believed it or not — a last-minute poll did show him rebounding somewhat against his challenger, Ned Lamont — Mr. Lieberman showed relentless optimism on the final day before a Democratic primary that could represent either a storied comeback or a possible end of his 18-year Senate career.
Kornblut seems to be suggesting that he shouldn't believe he has some momentum, as though he's kidding himself. The fact is Lieberman did rebound in the polls.
Momentum has shifted in his favor.
...Mr. Lieberman, perhaps liberated in the final hours, seemed not to mind a last round of indignities. Never mind that almost all the celebrity surrogates were gone: a rumor that former President Bill Clinton might return to Connecticut swept through political circles before being put to rest, leaving Mr. Lieberman to campaign virtually alone. (He was later joined on the road by his fellow senator, Christopher J. Dodd.) Never mind that dozens of reporters from across the country — sent on a death watch as the former vice-presidential nominee struggled to defend his seat against a once-obscure multimillionaire cable executive from Greenwich — far outnumbered actual voters almost every place Mr. Lieberman went.
Spare me the "perhaps liberated in the final hours" psychobabble!
"Death watch"?
That sounds like it came right off of a loony Left website.
...Earlier in the day, at a Stop and Shop in Meriden, just north of New Haven, volunteers and two union workers awaited the Lieberman bus on its swing through town. But the supermarket was almost empty, leaving Mr. Lieberman to wander the aisles, startling the few shoppers. One woman, seemingly anxious to end the encounter as quickly as possible, assured Mr. Lieberman she would vote for him. After he left, she said she was an independent with no intention of changing her registration in order to participate in Tuesday’s primary.
The man who nearly was Vice President of the United States now is wandering the aisles of a supermarket and startling shoppers and engaging in awkward conversations.
How goofy!
Others told similar fibs: Before Mr. Lieberman arrived at an Italian festival in Waterbury on Sunday, Tim Chapulis, 46, a small business owner, said he was undecided even though he had been a longtime Lieberman supporter. But when the senator arrived, Mr. Chapulis offered only words of encouragement.
Kornblut is painting Lieberman as a pitiable character. The man on the street has to tell the once powerful U.S. senator a fib to spare his feelings.
After weeks of losing steam, with polls showing the senator on a sharp decline against Mr. Lamont, Mr. Lieberman seemed, in the last hours, to stabilize.
This article just keeps getting worse.
"Stabilize" is a very odd word choice. It's like Lieberman is dying, physically. The "death watch" metaphor doesn't hold up.
Lieberman has stated that he's not pulling out of the race whatever the primary results are.
Death is hardly imminent.
But there were still, as in any race, awkward moments on the campaign trail and glimpses of strain and exhaustion. Mr. Lieberman changed clothing three times on Sunday, donning and shedding a pink candy-striped oxford shirt, then putting on a suit and tie for a news conference in East Haven (an event during which Max Cleland, a former Democratic senator of Georgia, begged voters not to “throw out the baby with the bath water”).
Why is changing clothes a sign of strain or exhaustion?
I would expect Lieberman to dress appropriately for the different events. That requires changing clothes. Big deal.
It seems like Kornblut is assigning weird meanings to Lieberman's actions because she wants to see signs of strain. She wants defeat for Lieberman.
My advice to The New York Times and the fringe Leftist vultures circling above Joe Lieberman:
This fight may only be beginning.
It's not time to bury Lieberman, because he's not dead yet.
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