Reply #28: There is a chicken and egg circle

[PATRICK]

being missed AFTER the election. We tried to get some inkling BEFORE election day as to what was going on. Save for our actual ground volunteers it might as well have been North Korea. Why? For the same reason some are accusing the centrist leaders, not to rock the boat to victory nationwide, maybe. And that was one of the prime justifications for the Dems undercutting the divisive strategy of Bush in this particularly undemocratic and hateful way.

Lieberman was viewed as a sure thing among the voters statewide. That alone crafted centrist reasons for shushing the Democrats in the state who proved partly otherwise. YOu had top Democrats going for Lamont and Lieberman according to trying to do the right thing. Such stellar help one might think was almost cynically rationed out for top Dems not risking anything this year. That is so natural it needs no actual motivation, much less a conspiracy.

My take after all the political realism or ideological sniping is that both national parties, from the leadership down to their local obedient minions pissed on the state and its parties and its voters and the ideals Americans of any conviction have about anything. Pissed on for national strategy so that we have a Republican elected hypocrite by the will of people who had absolutely no interests of the state in mind. I am sure that intentionality- on our side- was not as evil as the results bluntly are. It is another gray blotch against democracy itself in the smudgy area where tyrant Bush meets weak Dems- and Connecticut, like NOLA and Baghdad is awesome collateral damage. At least there no one died, one of the better things that could be said, besides the ugly, pragmatic destruction of Bush/Cheney strategy.

And I fear, just because the greatest threat may be over, there may very well be no condescending return to democratic processes, honored ideals or bravery or wisdom just because there is no Cheney setting the rules. In war one becomes like one's enemy. That is never a good result.

By the way, no single scandal as remote as money donations or something in DC or in abstract policies, is a likely excuse for a winning or losing campaign. Scandals have to have time, local relevance and a bigger, lasting outrage factor. Sirota tosses that in like a proof Lamont may have won when it is mainly an small example that the Democrats abandoned a difficult and controversial candidate chosen by their own people and their own determined process.