Fascinating AMerican Prospect article on Lieberman & Dems '08

[TayTay]

The article talks about the current problems the Democrats face over their dithering on an Iraq War stance. The article notes that it may feel good to oppose Lieberman, but it doesn't solve their problem. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/17/opinion/main1808995.shtml

I have skipped the top part of the article to get to this part, but read it all, it's very good and on-point. Democrats have to take the bull by the horns and address their past stands on IRaq and face this monster on it's own terms, else they can't move themselves and the Party forward.

So the anti-war forces can scapegoat Joe Lieberman all they want, but they don't have a lot of heroes to look to as the presidential contenders line up. Defeating Lieberman is going to feel good for a lot of people, but beating him will come at some cost: First, he has already promised to run as an independent, making it more difficult for the Democrats to win that seat. But more importantly, defeating Lieberman will transform the war as a campaign issue. It will move from being an "effectiveness and competence" issue that the President and Republicans must defend and explain to serving as a political litmus test for Democrats.

So what to do now?

First, all the Democrats who voted for the war and are now against it better come up with an explanation for what changed their minds. Supporting the war but faulting the execution is not going to work this time. I say this on the strength of the evidence that it didn’t work the last time. In a very real way those Democrats have to do what they have been calling on the White House to do — admit they made a mistake. Kerry has made this journey: "It's not enough to argue with the logistics or to argue about the details," he said. "... It is essential to acknowledge that the war itself was a mistake. ... It was wrong, and I was wrong to vote for that Iraqi war resolution."

And then they must learn how to have two separate conversations at the same time: The need to address the urgent and complex questions about our current and future engagement in Iraq does not invalidate the equally important, if less urgent, questions about how and why we got into Iraq in the first place. And unless Democrats convincingly confront those questions, sooner rather than later, the happy season will end.

Thoughts?

[whometense]

1. I think it's a mistake

to over-conflate all the anti-Lieberman activity with anger over his support for the war.

His position on the war has certainly been a catalyst for the movement to oust him, but I'd argue that his repug-enabling activities have inflamed his opponents more: votes against juducial filibusters and for conservative judges, Terri Schiavo, his vote for the energy bill, and his social security waffling to name a few. It's all symbolized by that Bush godfather kiss photo.

I understand those who are in favor of not challenging him, but I have to say that Lieberman has made me more and more angry. His sense of entitlement ("How DARE you challenge me?") comes through in everything he says. It's infuriating, and it's anti-democratic.

I don't really understand the stuff about how the dems "better come up with an explanation for what changed their minds." It seems to me that Kerry didn't need to do a lot of explaining, as witnessed by his reception at the TBA conference - though people like HRC and Lieberman will certainly have to if they do suddenly change their minds at this late date.

They might find some cover from this story, though.

A timetable for Iraq? How does 2016 sound?

According to the Washington Times, U.S. war commanders who gathered for a closed-door conference in Fort Carson, Colo., earlier this year believe that "some level of American forces will be needed in Iraq until 2016." In the same story, the Times says that the commanders complained that the U.S. news media is ignoring progress in Iraq.

-- Tim Grieve

[TayTay]

3. I think part of Lieberman's race is a referendum on the war.

The war dominates everything. Lieberman is hard to take because he enables Bush and he enables Bush on the war. He is the Democrat that the Rethugs want on the air after Bush has given a speech about IRaq because he is likely to provide cover. Cover for what? Cover for Bush to continue his war.

The liberal blogosphere is splitting hairs over Lieberman. It is, to a large extent, about the war. It's about all the annoying things Lieberman does that make it that much harder to hold Bush accountable for what he has done. (What has he done? He has waged cruel war.) I have no compunction being against Lieberman because he is against the war. I would not, at this stage of the process, be for any Democrat who still thought we could 'win' Iraq. That is foolishness on a grand scale and such a person no longer belongs in the US Senate.

Their argument over whether or not the Democrats have a big enough tent to accommodate Lieberman is a false argument from the get-go. The Democrats should be discussing the war, they should be evaluating candidates and incumbents based on how they have voted and what they have said about this abomination in Iraq. This is why we have politics: to clarify issues. Lieberman is wrong on the Iraq War and the primary voters of Connecticut want to take him on on that issue. If it wasn't for that, there wouldn't even be a primary fight. Lieberman is pretending that being against this war shouldn't be enough to throw him out of office. He is being disingenuous and self-serving and selfish. Of course it's enough. I can't think of a more important issue. It is worthy of challenge all by itself. The liberal blogosphere is trying to protect other Dem politicians from other parts of the country with this false argument that it's not about the war. That way those other Dems think they can avoid similar discussions with their constituents. They cannot. This issue dominates.

[whometense]

5. I dunno.

I certainly see your point, and agree somewhat, but I honestly feel like it's about more than Iraq.

Iraq aside, there's the loss of civil liberties, media consolidation, the politicization of the courts, the mixing of religion and government, and the slide into authoritarianism. I honestly find these things equally disturbing to the miserable. The bottom line is, THE REPUBLICANS CAN'T GOVERN. Everything Holy Joe does to enable them is a slap in the face of his constituents. So I really do believe it's about a lot more than the war.

Not that it isn't be perfectly fine to vote against him on the basis of the war. I agree that the democrats should be honestly discussing the war. And the "big tent" crap is just crap. People aren't railing against Bill Nelson. Joe doesn't match up against his constituents' wishes in many ways. The war is just the biggest, ugliest, vilest manifestation of that dissonance.

[TayTay]

7. I agree with that

Bt I think that people on Kos are providing cover for some other Dems. Kos says he is all about winning (except when he's not as with Lieberman.) He is all over the map.

If you were to ask the people of Connecticut, the ones who aren't on the blogs, what the primary fight is aobut, I bet they would say Iraq. I think that is what will drive the voters to the polls. The other stuff, awful as it is, is just not enough to sustain the kind of uprising that is going on.

[ProSense]

2. It is a complex question to the extent

that the IWR itself doesn't indicate who was gung ho for war and who absolutely did not want the U.S. to enter into a conflict of choice. But frankly, this question is conflated because the complex questions about Iraq have nothing to do with the Democrats' positions, and everything to do with the DSM, trumped up intelligence and what Bush knew. Only an investigation will determine "how and why we got into Iraq in the first place." Kerry has presented a clear position on "our current and future engagement in Iraq."

[karynnj]

4. I can't see anyone but John Kerry succeeding on both conversations

On the what do you do now side, he was the main contributor to the withdrawal plan, which has many many components that were in all his plans. His comments last week in the SFRC were very good - when he called Kaliazad on the use of the word abandon - his ticking off all the ways they would continue to help calls into question what OTHER things the Bush administration expects.

It was also interesting seeing him vs Feingold (who was good), Boxer (who was a bit too much) and Biden - he was by far the best, asking questions that ultimately backed up the points he wanted to make which he clearly summerized. Kerry showed far more respect to Kaliazad than any of the other 3, and it was returned. If this accurate and if it extends to the military and to foreign officials, this should help Kerry if it shows in more support or just better input to his plans.

In terms of facing the problems of the world, Kerry is the only "anti-war" person, who has already expressed his worldview - in the recent LA speech, the Ireland one and the CFR one. Edwards' joint report on Russia with Kemp can't be mentioned in the same sentence. If Hillary is running, Kerry may be freer to speak about BCCI and his scary description of how global crime.

As to how we got into the war, Kerry is in a different position than any other person who voted for the IWR (other than maybe Harkin), because he clearly spoke against war before it started and because he is the person who lead the effort to look at the DSM and the Intelligence Report, part 2. That study needs to be done to answer the question on how we got in to Iraq - it is telling who wants it examined and who doesn't. (I still think the Kerry comment in the Truthout Will Pitt story that he was lied to by both DEMOCRATS and Republicans he trusted is interesting - I wonder if one possibly had the most comprehensive view of intelligence about 2 years earlier with initials WJC.) The fact that Kerry is pushing it has to mean that he knows the truth of what happened backs what he consistently said before he voted and though 2003 and 2004. (Everything publicly known on the DSM doaes.)

[TayTay]

6. Kerry has gone beyond that.

He has articulated a comprehensive view of how we need to deal with the peoples of the Middle East and how we have to deal with the religious extremist movement. I still see the speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, the one on Boston in April (Or June at the TBA, essentially the same speech) and the recent environmnental speech as the pillars he's resting his views on Iraq on. The CFR speech was extraordinary. If the US pulls out of Iraq, we still have massive problems with religious extremsists groups who hate the US. Kerry was seeing beyond this particular war to the root causes of the probelms we have and that the Middle East nations themselves have in dealing with their populations. Those nations are breeding grounds for violence and unrest because they are inherently unstable. These nations are unable to give their people a future, unable to provide jobs that don't have to do with the oil business and are rigid and inhospitable to change and to democracy. All these things remain, the war in Iraq had changed nothing. (Sen. Lugar has been holding hearings this year on the real price of oil and what this is doing to the US and to the Middle East. No other Presidential candidate is giving speeches based on this stuff like Kerry though. Sen.Clinton is not, she is still muddling through her position on the war as a separate issue and is not talking about it as it affects so many other things.)

America has to both get out of Iraq (the Boston speech) and end it's dependence on oil and stop enabling regimes that inspire these violent movements. All these things are related. I would argue that it's not enough to say 'withdraw from Iraq militarily' we have to withdraw, as the good Senator said, from the business of propping up tyranny in that region of the world. This serves other goals of stopping climate change and making for a better environment for all citizens, but it also is a critical pillar in the war against readical religious extremists. We have to stop providing these people with a target to focus their hatred on.

[whometense]

8. Op-ed by Atrios himself in the LA Times

expresses very well what I think about this:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-black18jul18,0,7362225.story?coll=la-opinion-center

..Many political observers have tried to paint the candidacy of Lieberman's challenger, Ned Lamont, as merely a referendum on the invasion of Iraq, which Lieberman supported. This newspaper's editorial board declared it "disturbing" that the senator has been "targeted for defeat by national fundraisers based on his foreign policy views." The reason for Lamont's popularity, explained the Washington Post's David Broder, "is simple: the war."

The war is certainly a reason — and given how events continue to devolve in Iraq, a perfectly sufficient one — but those who focus only on that miss the broader opposition to Lieberman and the kind of politics he represents.

For too long he has defined his image by distancing himself from other Democrats, cozying up to right-wing media figures and, at key moments, directing his criticisms at members of his own party instead of at the Republicans in power.Late last year, after President Bush's job approval ratings hit record lows, Lieberman decided to lash out at the administration's critics, writing in the ultraconservative Wall Street Journal editorial pages that "we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril." In this he echoed the most toxic of Republican talking points — that criticizing the conduct of the war is actually damaging to national security...