The Joe Lieberman situation

I’ve pointedly ignored Joe Lieberman for a while now. The man just grates on me for obvious reasons. If there’s one thing that grinds my gears, it’s anyone who throws both party and supporters under the bus in power grabs and Holy Joe has provided me with so much gear-grinding all I’ve got left is cylinders.

Awful analogy aside, I was downright gleeful to read that Barack Obama may have delivered a little ultimatum to Joementum, telling him to shape up or ship out. At least that’s an assumption, for all I know he could have told Joe to stop bringing Pepsi to the party get-togethers and actually contribute something that requires effort. I don’t know.

The point is that the last two years have been torturous in all things Lieberman. With the Democrats barely holding onto a majority in the Senate, Joe has been the potential tipping point, and as an independent he could at any time choose to nominally or de facto throw the majority to the Republicans if so inclined.

Thanks to this, he’s been able to basically pull down his pants and waggle his shriveled old genitals at the Democrats and the moment they start to get mad and tell him to pull up his damn pants, pretends like he’s going to “accidentally” fall onto the red side of the fence. So the Democrats have been forced to tolerate him because, as it stands, he’s needed.

So you know what? Let me make this simple: fuck Joe Lieberman.

Y’hear that? Fuck ‘im. Lieberman’s gambit was incredibly shortsighted this time around. He created a little situation that worked to his advantage in the near term but offered nothing in the long haul. Let me explain.

Dick Morris is a flaming douchebag. That has nothing to do with what I’m about to say, but I felt like saying it. Anyway, the man was on FOX recently saying that the Democrats are “the party that cannot lose” this November. It was in the interest of making a stupid point about why Obama needs Hillary Clinton as his running mate, but let’s just stick with the first sentence: the Democrats are the party that cannot lose.

On that point, I agree. Come November we’re going to see something amazing. The Democrats are going to find an even larger majority in both houses. You heard it, potentially a filibuster-proof one in the Senate. In every single poll, Democrats are doing better than Republicans in the abstract by wide margins, so while person-to-person Obama may not run away with the win by a country mile, in the Congressional races where fewer people know what the hell’s going on we can expect an even bluer Legislative branch.

This is where Lieberman’s little master plan begins to unravel. The right, let’s face it, loves Lieberman the traitorous Democrat. He’s fantastic from their perspective. A “principled” Democrat who isn’t afraid to go against his party, coincidentally in a way that the right really agrees with. He’s on their side in a way that lets them claim him as an ally and accuse everyone else of being ideological and party-lockstep.

As a brief tangent, Lieberman going against the Democrats on the war doesn’t take balls. What does is to be a Kucinich or Russ Feingold. To stand up and take the “crazy” position that everyone wants privately but is too scared of being called a “radical” to say out loud. Russ Feingold was the only senator, the only Senator to vote against the PATRIOT Act. That’s being courageous. Siding with the opposition knowing they’ll be your best friend isn’t being strong and principled, it’s cowardice.

Here’s the dirty little secret though. The right loves Joe Lieberman the Democrat, they do not want Joe Lieberman the Republican. When he stands up and stumps for McCain and trashes Obama, he’s their ace in the hole: a Democrat defying his party to show just how gosh darn much he supports John McCain or wants us to win in Iraq or whatever. He’s being used by the GOP simply because of his willingness to do the aforementioned genital-waggling at his own party.

Look at Joe Lieberman’s track record: the man is a liberal and a damn good one. Pro-choice, pro-gay-rights, big on energy independence, 0% from the Christian Coalition, the works. If you just went by that, he should the left’s darling. The Iraq War has seen him, and frankly everyone else, ignore 95% of his political positions and define him as the Democrat that hates Democrats and stumps for Republicans. Nevermind that he agrees with the Dems on almost everything, he’s out there pumping Bush and knocking Obama.

Endearing himself to the right while caucusing with the Democrats has enabled him to be needed by both sides. All that goes away as soon as the Democratic majority breaks over 50. Suddenly Lieberman isn’t needed to keep majority. The Democrats have no reason to give a shit who he caucuses with and won’t need to try and keep in his good graces.

That leaves him in an awkward position because no one’s going to want him. The Democrats have proven he’s unwanted as he lost his primary bid in Connecticut, and the Republicans have no reason to want a flaming liberal who just happens to agree with them on Iraq in their party. Holy Joe is going to be burning his bridge at both ends (and yes, I’m aware that I combined two idioms).

So, once again, fuck Joe Lieberman. If he wants to deliver the key note speech at the Republican Convention, let him. In fact, let him break from the Democrats entirely. He’s been kissing asses on the right side of the aisle like mad these past three years, why not let him hop over entirely? Let him see how well that goes.

Did McCain just call Cheney an “elite”?

I keep seeing these stories, hoping they’ll get some traction and McCain will be raked across the coals over these things, but he never is. It’s still fun to muse about the potential McCain/Cheney battle over the gas tax. If you’ll recall, Cheney recently assailed the “holiday” idea:

“I think it’s a false notion, in the sense that you’re not going to have much of an impact, given the size of the gasoline tax on the total cost of the gallon of gas,” Cheney said when asked about the matter during a luncheon appearance. “You might buy a little bit of relief there, but it’s minimal.”

Well John McCain was not going to take that sitting down, no sir. Confronted about his idea, the Arizona senator had this to say about his detractors:

McCain said he was struck by the loud opposition by “the elites in this country.”

“The hysterical reaction was a little bit funny,” he said.

In Washington, McCain noted, “the wealthiest people live in Georgetown” and can walk downtown to work. By contrast, he said, the lowest-income workers live the furthest away.

I wonder if he meant to call Cheney an “elite”. I wonder if he realized he was calling Cheney an “elite”. I wonder if he has a goddamn clue what the word “elite” means. I did like this bit at the end:

“John McCain has said the he doesn’t understand the economy, and by trying to score political points with an idea that nearly all economists agree may in fact increase demand and gas prices, he’s proven himself right. Offering our struggling families more of the same Washington gimmicks instead of real relief is not ‘straight talk’ and not the kind of change that America needs.”

Indeed. But then again, completely ignoring what every expert says in order to score political points with a flawed plan is sort of the modus operandi for these guys.

The audacity of hope

Obama is the Democratic nominee. He has the delegates, he has the votes, and he has beaten Hillary in every relevant statistic. Even with Michigan and Florida in play, Obama comes out ahead. The only way Hillary can possibly beat him is if she leeched enough superdelegates from his pool and completely ignored the wishes of the voters.

Hillary has one resource Obama doesn’t have: windmills to tilt at. Clinton and her supporters have proven themselves to be some of the most quixotic campaigners I have ever seen. Hillary won’t concede, Terry Mcauliffe is still running around saying she’s the nominee, and utter whackjob site Hillary is 44 is asking when Obama will concede.

It’s been a very close race, but Obama has won. According to the Democratic party and virtually every vote and delegate count performed by media outlets put him over the top. He’s the Democratic candidate now. The only way you can put Hillary in first place is by ignoring all caucuses, giving Hillary every vote in Florida and Michigan, ignoring the 40% of Michigan voters who explicitly voted against Hillary, and other statistical contortions that should be reserved for counting lights in Cardassian interrogation cells.

I’ve heard from Hillary supporters that Hillary is the more electable candidate and Obama is unelectable. I’ve heard that she won the bigger states, and Obama lost them. I’ve heard that, logically, the states that Obama lost to Hillary, a slightly more centrist Democrat, will also be lost to McCain, an extremely hawkish Republican, in the general. I’ve even heard that Hillary has more votes, as long as you count Florida and Michigan entirely and completely ignore the half dozen or so other states that used caucuses instead of a primary vote to determine the candidate.

Hope is great, but at some point you have to admit that you’ve lost and bow out gracefully. There’s no prize for second place, and saying you should get the trophy because you would have been an inch ahead if you wore different shoes is obnoxious and counterproductive. No, Obama is not unelectable. No, he’s not going to lose California and New York, the two largest states that went to Hillary, to John McCain. No, he does not have fewer votes than Clinton unless you’re dyslexic. Obama is ahead in delegates and there is, mathematically, absolutely no way for Clinton to win without provoking a riot at the convention in Denver. The ways in which Hillary supporters think she can win the nomination are fantasies that would give the man of la Mancha pause.

Hillary’s previous scorched earth campaigning aside, this doesn’t have to be a disaster for Clinton. I sincerely doubt that Obama will choose her for a running mate, but she can still have a future in politics. If she bows out gracefully now she has a shot at keeping her Senate seat, getting chosen for Obama’s cabinet, maybe a governorship and a shot at 2012 or 2016. But by clinging to the false hope that she will get the nomination in some esoteric, unlikely manner, she hurts the Democratic party, she hurts her own political future, and she hurts her supporters. It’s time for Hillary to get behind Obama’s campaign and put a solid, unified Democratic party in this election against John McCain.

Daily Show: Primaries vs LOST

I’m a LOST nut, so this just cracked me up.