The front page of the NY Times notes that Senator Lieberman -- having lost the primary to Mr. Lamont on the basis of his war footing -- is now being embraced by the GOP while they ditch their own candidate for the US Senate seat from Connecticut. It would seem that Mr. Lieberman wishes to go the odd way of Mussolini, playing second buffoon to a larger monster clown. He has decided to go down fighting for a war that cannot be won largely because no one can agree on what victory would look like. Furthermore, the enemy will accept a wide range of situations and call them victory. They already have. Perhaps its in the mind of the beholder.
The good part about that choice is that Joe Lieberman has finally joined, as a sort of unseen pariah, his party of choice. He will still be a Democrat he says, if he wins, but he will be on the side of his particular angels. Such a victory in the short term may have little to do with victory on some larger more permanent scale. The other good thing about this event is that Mr. Lieberman will not have the trust of either party or their regard either. He shouldn't because he has betrayed freedom in the name of his particular brand of security, and liberty in favor of order.
Those are the choices we are making this fall locally, regionally and nationally. The conflict that began with the election of Ronald region's election in 1980 boils down to this issue. Are we to be governed by a coterie of the rich who steer government and public policy. Are they the best judge of our destiny since they have the widest view and the most clout from the top? The GOP has served the interests of wealth both private and corporate by institutionalizing deregulation as a moral shibboleth. Mr. Lieberman essentially agrees that the people in charge know best even if we down here have no idea what they know if they in fact know anything at all. Mr. Bush often seems to be waiting in his bunker for a miracle weapon, the moral equivalent of the V2 which was supposed to save the Reich even as the Red Army entered Berlin.
The bad part about this situation is that the democrats ever trusted Mr. Lieberman at all. How moderate can you be until finally you are just one of them? And what if they don't want you either. Mr. Lieberman is about to find out whether he wins as an independent or not.
The best thing that could come of this separation is that the Democratic Party will do something democratic and support the other national position which is that we are a government by and for the people of our nation. They may come to realize that taking no position is not just a clever dodge, it is a conspicuous choice. Mr. Lieberman is to be credited for understanding that even if he could not get his party affiliations straight.
There can be little doubt that with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the American Right saw the door open to yanking the country in their direction. Who remained on the left to oppose them? Labor unions had been gutted. The rest could be dismissed for drinking latte. The people they forgot, as did Mr. Lieberman, were the rest of us, the tireless, voting, enterprising taxpayers who retain a sense of fair play and justice. Those are the people who since the Depression have held faith in the viability of our Constitution and the concept that government is not evil because it is large. It only becomes evil when its power is disproportionately out of control or in the hands of an unelected minority.
Even if re-elected, which I would regard as a fluke, Mr. Lieberman's career is at an end. He did us one great service which is to make clear where the real political division lies with the power of disproportionate wealth on one side and the natural and civil rights of citizens on the other.
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