Joes' right of course: Dean is a sure prescription for another McGovern-style donnybrook, even though Dean the political personality is superior to that of George. Too bad Joe doesn't cut the personality/charisma grade, either, while the other DLC-type "centrist" (translation: moderate right of center conservative), Edwards, appears to be less desirous of winning the nomination than he is of plowing the field for a 2008 run. As is the most winning possibility, Hillary, whose noncandidacy is a sure sign that the bipartisan system would rather give Bush a second term. Short of a really massive screwup by Rove that is, which is highly unlikely.
And yes Lieberman won't pull the US out of Iraq, but that's based on his convictions: Joe will be tied down by his connections to the lesser evil, not the neocon cabal, which will be sent crawling back to their stink tanks. No Straussian boldness is to be expected from a President Joe.
Meanwhile, it's back to the Cal Recall Show. It is a real pleasure to watch the whole bipartisan system, Dems and Repubs both, twist, turn and thrash in agony. It is only too bad that the Greens didn't show the initiatve to tap into the _very real and totally justified_ mass anger by launching the recall themselves. Evidentially they were cowed into passivity by the extremely abusive bullying of the "progressive" supporters of the Dems in the 2000 election, who care only about their own elitist anger, not the anger of the masses - of the latter they are plainly terrified! The inevitable result was to leave the whole field open to the far rightist Issa. There's a lesson in there, hint, hint, but I've long since given up on the progressive left Dems ever learning a goddam thing. They'd sooner end up in a concentration camp run by Issa than break from the Democrats. -Brad Mayer
Lieberman assails Democratic rivals as being too liberal He says party risks being voted into 'wilderness' Dan Balz, Washington Post Tuesday, August 5, 2003
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/08/05/MN108088.DTL
Washington -- Sen. Joe Lieberman attacked former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and several other rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination Monday, arguing that they have embraced extremely liberal ideas that threaten to return the party to political exile.
Saying he is in a fight for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party, Lieberman said policies rooted in the "vital center" of the political spectrum,
not what he termed the anti-war and big government policies of his rivals, provide the only hope of defeating President Bush. He warned Democrats that abandoning the policies that helped elect Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 would result in a terrible setback for the party.
"I share the anger of my fellow Democrats with George Bush and the wrong direction he has taken our nation," Lieberman said in a speech at the National Press Club. "But the answer to his outdated, extremist ideology is not to be found in outdated extremes of our own. That path will not solve the challenges of our time, and it could well send us Democrats back to the political wilderness for a long time."
The party's 2000 vice presidential nominee saved his toughest criticism for Dean, the upstart candidate whose passionate opposition to the Iraq war and pugnacious confrontation of Bush have propelled him to the upper tier of the Democratic race. But aides said Lieberman also had in mind two other rivals whom they see standing in the Connecticut senator's path, Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt over trade, taxes and health care, and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry for what he described as "ambivalence" over going to war in Iraq.
Lieberman, who was one of Bush's strongest supporters in the run-up to the war in Iraq, has been struggling to find his voice in a year when his centrist ideas and restrained demeanor have appeared out of sync with many Democratic activists. He has led in several national polls for the nomination, but he is behind Dean, Gephardt and Kerry in Iowa and behind Dean and Kerry in New Hampshire.
Lieberman's decision to escalate his rhetoric over the direction of the party came on the eve of a candidate forum at the AFL-CIO executive council meeting in Chicago and ensures that concerns about Dean's gathering strength and what it represents will continue to be a dominant feature of the battle for the Democratic nomination.
A week ago, Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., chairman of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, of which Lieberman is a former chairman, warned that the party was in danger of being captured by the "far ideological left," and other DLC leaders warned that a Dean nomination could result in the kind of landslide defeats Democrats suffered in 1972 and 1984.
Lieberman was unsparing in his criticism of Bush, saying the president "has left our country dangerously unprepared to defend against and defeat the threat of terrorism. And his leadership has clearly driven our great American economy right into the ditch."
Bush, however, was a pretext to draw distinctions with his opponents. "If George Bush and his bankrupt ideology are the problem, old Democratic policies like higher taxes and weakness on defense are not the solution," Lieberman said.
He said repealing all the Bush tax cuts, as Dean and Gephardt have proposed,
would hurt the middle class; called Gephardt's universal health care plan a "break-the-bank $2 trillion program"; warned against raising "the walls of protectionism" on trade; and said the United States "must not shrink from the use of force when our security or our values are at stake."
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle