Farewell, Joe Lieberman

Looks like Senator Joe Lieberman will soon be former Senator Joe Lieberman.

If he goes down, expect the Republican message machine to say his defeat in Tuesday’s primary means that the Democratic Party can’t tolerate dissent and won’t abide anyone who puts the nation’s security first. Dead wrong. Connecticut Dems are not particularly left wing. The Democratic Party has always been a big tent, and they’ve abided Joe Lieberman for 18 years. Most Dems in Connecticut and elsewhere are acutely concerned about the nation’s security. They’ve concluded – as have many Republicans – that Bush’s war is radicalizing the Middle East and recruiting more terrorists and enemies than we had before. We have to get out of Iraq, put it under an international authority until it can be petitioned into three separate states. Lieberman’s support of Bush and his insane war have stripped him of the right to call himself a Democrat and the moral authority to be in the Senate at all.

Every day the bad news from the Middle East gets worse. The only good news is this: All across America I’m seeing Dems more fired up than I’ve seen them in years. I’ve visited a bunch of congressional districts that had been in Republican hands and now seem poised on the brink of turning Democrat. The real lesson of Lieberman’s likely defeat is the Iraqi War has finally mobilized Democrats, helping them remember why they became Democrats and what it means to be a Democrat. And once fired up with the courage of their conviction, Dems have a good chance of taking back the House – perhaps even the Senate. And hopefully, in 2008, the presidency. Are you listening, Hillary?