GregsOpinion.com

Yes, this is mainly comic relief. Simon Rosenberg did not remain loyal to Senator Joe Lieberman or the Lieberman domestic, economic and foreign policy philosophies during the primaries. That was the DLC. Rosenberg and the NDN flirted with Dean, the Deaniacs and DAILY KOS. I remember how Rosenberg seemed to be defending Dean on his then-new Blog and how the Deaniacs took over the Blog. The few moderates who dared post comments were actually shouted down on Rosenberg's Blog. This was most ironic, I thought.

Of course, Joe Lieberman's fate was largely his own fault. Lieberman never should have waited so long for Gore to make up his own mind. The Senator from the great state of Connecticut should have been out raising money hand over fist when he was still the putative front-runner in 2003. Senator Lieberman should also have been moving quickly to corner the market on the best political operatives in the Democratic Party. Another problem with Lieberman was that he lacked charisma and was not a particularly gifted campaigner. I say all these things, despite being a big Lieberman supporter.

I dearly hope that Evan Bayh does not make the same mistakes Lieberman made, presuming Bayh runs for President.

That's the thing about being the "putative" front-runner... Americans demand an "anointed" front-runner.

What's with Rosenberg claim that "red states are gaining population, the blues (sp) ones losing."? I thought that Massachusetts was the only state to lose population in the last census.

I'm still bullish on Lieberman becoming the nominee someday. Any Democratic nominee who's on record as wanting to appoint Kweisi Mfume to the Supreme Court, is great for the GOP. =)

Evan Bayh will not make the same mistakes. Thanks for the article.

Chris Elam -- I would be more than happy to leave Supreme Court choices in Lieberman's hands. We would end up with a responsible Supreme Court, which would shy away from judicial activism of the far right or left. I only wish that it were possible to give Lieberman these powers as President. Alas, he shall never be President.

You left out the context of Lieberman's statements during his controversial appearance at the NAACP convention in the primary campaign. Lieberman originally was not going to attend, knowing that the Black caucus and NAACP considered him "too conservative." Having made a political gaffe or what the press regarded as a gaffe, Lieberman fell all over himself trying to be gracious in the speech that he ultimately gave to the NAACP convention.

George W. Bush himself may lose some additional support if he keeps moving ever farther to the right in his judicial nominations.

In retrospect, I would say that the three candidates who would have made the best nominees in 2004 were Lieberman, Edwards and Clark.

--If Senator Joe Lieberman could have gotten the nomination somehow, he would have been perfectly positioned to run against George Bush and Dick Cheney, although I disagreed with his support of the Iraq invasion. Lieberman was a Hawk, with endless credibility on defense and foreign policy. Bush and the Republican far right could not have portrayed Lieberman as out of touch with mainstream cultural and moral values. Joe Lieberman's problem would have been his lack of charisma, not that I regard either Bush or Cheney as having much charisma.

-- Senator John Edwards was a moderate on cultural issues, moral values, etc. He was reasonably strong on defense, despite appeasing Dean and voting against follow-up funding for the troops and military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Global War on Terror. Edwards was a great speaker out on the hustings and had populist appeal. Edwards was from the South, which would have been a big plus. However, he may have been too protectionist. Also, he lacked experience and, consequently, "gravitas" in the eyes of some pundits and voters.

-- Gen Wesley Clark obviously had credibility on defense and foreign policy. Like Edwards, Clark was from the South. He was basically a moderate overall, but lacked experience as a campaigner, was inexperienced in the realm of domestic policy and sometimes tried to "out-Dean" Howard Dean. The last, from my perspective, was Clark's biggest mistake and failing.

Scoop Jackson Democrat - You are making me chuckle.

Lieberman's quote where he promises to nominate KWEISI MFUME to SCOTUS needs to be looked at in context? Whatever. I'll let that one slide with a nod and a wink.

John Edwards had "populist appeal"? You've got to be joking, sir. The Kerry campaign HID HIM AWAY for the last six weeks of the campaign! He didn't even WIN HIS OWN HOME STATE. Only if he had been the nominee! Bush would have ROLLED!

Bush has tons of appeal. Even the talking heads like Begala and Estrich will acknowledge that. That's why he's the first President since Ronald Reagan to win a second term with a Majority vote.

I'm a Dean supporter through and through, so many of you may take my opinion with a grain or table spoon of salt, but I don't see how Lieberman would have been a better nominee. Having a conservative run against a conservative, albeit a Democratic conervative, wouldn't exactly have inspired a lot of us to go to the polls. Someone had to at least pay lip service to the tons of us in the party who were against the Iraq War from the get-go.

I also don't see how Rosenberg getting the DNC chair is any real vindication for Joementum. He's not my first choice, but he does understand the two things I think are essential in the interim before the next election cycle: utilizing the netroots community to build party infrastructure and regaining the party's hold on minority communities in the southwest. Some of us see the southwest as the next battleground wherein we can win the EC.

Those are the reasons why so many of us can see a DNC headed by Simon, not because in hindsight we wanted Lieberman instead of Kerry.

I'm a Dean supporter through and through, so many of you may take my opinion with a grain or table spoon of salt, but I don't see how Lieberman would have been a better nominee. Having a conservative run against a conservative, albeit a Democratic conervative, wouldn't exactly have inspired a lot of us to go to the polls. Someone had to at least pay lip service to the tons of us in the party who were against the Iraq War from the get-go.

I also don't see how Rosenberg getting the DNC chair is any real vindication for Joementum. He's not my first choice, but he does understand the two things I think are essential in the interim before the next election cycle: utilizing the netroots community to build party infrastructure and regaining the party's hold on minority communities in the southwest. Some of us see the southwest as the next battleground wherein we can win the EC.

Those are the reasons why so many of us can see a DNC headed by Simon, not because in hindsight we wanted Lieberman instead of Kerry.

"Someone had to at least pay lip service to the tons of us in the party who were against the Iraq War from the get-go."

*Prepare salt*

So, for instance, we wouldn't see something like the nominee devoting an entire nominating convention towards extolling his military service? We wouldn't see a nominee say something like "Yeah, I'd vote for authorization to go into Iraq knowing what I know know?"

Joe would likely have led to a few Deaniacs sitting on their duffs in November. But just as no less an authority than Howard Dean himself found out ... there aren't enough Deaniacs to win an election in the first place.

right on, greg!

Chris,

You're memory of quotes isn't all its cracked up to be. I'm well aware of the instance you refer to and it does not amount to "a promise" in any way other than the overactive imagination of GOP activists.

Well, aren't I lucky? I get to respond to a conservative Republican and a Dean supporter.

Chris Elam -- Thank you, first of all, for confirming that Republicans don't regard Lieberman as Bush-lite, even if the Deaniacs and Kossacks do.

Let's take your points in sequence. The Kwasei Mfume remark was emblematic of Lieberman's problems as a campaigner. Lieberman wanted to campaign as the second coming of Harry Truman, JFK and Scoop Jackson, all rolled into one. However, the post-Vietnam ultraLiberals control the party. The Black Caucus and NAACP, unfortunately, have become very, very Liberal, if that is the word for it. Lieberman, knowing that he needed the support of quite a few post-Vietnam Liberals and that there were not enough centrists and pro-Defense Liberals to go around, occasionally diverged from his core beliefs in his speeches and engaged in minor demagoguery. I wil grant you that. First, he wasn't going to go to the NAACP convention at all, believing that it was a lost cause. Then, having given in to the NAACP's bullying -- which Lieberman never should have done, he oozes insincere praise for Mfume, who would just as soon have seen Lieberman out of a job. This was one of the low points of Lieberman's campaign.

It wasn't a pretty sight, but Lieberman stooped to such demagoguery less often than did the other Democratic candidates, your sainted Bush and Cheney. One other time that Lieberman stooped to such minor demagoguery was when he inserted praise for Carter's human rights policies in his Convention speech, whereas Carter's foreign and defense policies were pretty much anathem to Liberman. Lieberman had only meant to praise Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Truman, and JFK, but saw that the Liberals on the convention floor were not warming to him. Lieberman never wavered from his pro-Defense and hawkish foreign policy views, which sometimes provoked boos. Lieberman remained true to his free trade philosophy, which was hardly popular with the AFL-CIO and many factions within the Democratic Party. Lieberman bragged that being a moderate to conservative Democrat on cultural and moral values, as well as being pro-defense, would give him credibility with general election voters that most of the other Democrats could not hope to have.

If you think that Lieberman would have stacked the courts with ultra-Liberals, I think you are badly mistaken. (Crazy?) I think that Nate, our Dean supporter, would disagree with you over the prospect that this would have happened under a Lieberman Administration, something which unfortunately will never exist.

With regard to Edwards, I did not say that the North Carolina Senator had great populist appeal in the general election. I said that he had such appeal in the primaries. Kerry, unfortunately, did not make enough use of Edwards, who was a better and more appealing candidate than Kerry himself. Kerry was what dragged the Democrats down to defeat in North Carolina. I Edwards had been at the top of the ticket, the story might have been different. Kerry and the Liberal image of the Party dragged down our candidates in Red States and Districts all over the country. Edwards could not change that any more than Bentsen could save Michael Dukakis and the out-of-touch 1980s Liberals from themselves.

i dont believe joe is bush lite

Nate -- You don't have to worry about Rosenberg. Simon Rosenberg is no DLCer anymore. Perish the thought. I know how Dean supporters hate the DLC. I do remember that you Dean supporters even despised Kerry, falsely describing him as a sell-out, Bush-Lite and a traitor on Iraq early on.

Lieberman from my view is no Conservative, no more so than were Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Truman, JFK or LBJ. I say that even though I personally opposed the Iraqi invasion, while supporting a vigorous prosecution of the Global War on Terror. The good Senator, who hardly deserved all the character assassination from the Left, believes in a muscular, pro-democratic internationalism of the Wilsonian and Cold War Liberal variety. Looking back, you may see the great giants of the Democratic Party that I mentioned above as Conservatives, but I most certainly do not. The post-Vietnam Liberals have led us astray on defense and foreign policy, robbing us of credibility. Moreover, they have led us from one defeat to another from 1972 to today, with the exception of 1976 when Carter falsely posed as a moderate and pro-Defense, when he wasn't. Clinton received his comeuppance for his original bait-and-switch Presidential bid in 1976 when he ran against Reagin in 1980. Funny how Reagan heaped praise on FDR, Truman and JFK, but Carter did not. Clinton brought us back to power, winning two straight elections, but the Deaniacs also revile him, now don't they? In any case, back to Lieberman, most ideological rating schemes show Lieberman to be a Liberal, although not in the same league as Teddy Kennedy and John Kerry.

As someone who liked Dean early on, I never found Lieberman to be "Bush-lite." Did folks not read his 2000 debate and speech transcripts? Do they not read his voting record?

"Bush-lite" implies an incompetence and dishonesty, which just aren't true of Joe.

I never thought of Lieberman as "Bush-lite". I guess I view Lieberman as a conservative more because of his hawkish stance on foreign policy which does indeed feed into the assertion that the ultra-Liberals have run the party and led us astray on foreign policy. But I don't think that is exactly true of the current incarnation of the party.

I feel that the Democrats are a much more moderate group as a whole and led by groups such as the DLC that have managed to keep us centered. Don't worry, I come not bash the DLC, just to mention it and similar groups like the NDN.

While it may have been a sort of DLC clone at its inception, I think it has become much more independent and able to come up with new ideas. I'm not so much worried that if Simon Rosenberg gets the DNC chair that he'll be too DLC or too far to the right or anything like that; I'm more concerned with who actually has an idea of how to build our party so we can actually win a presidential election in this century.

There weren't enough Deaniacs to win the nomination, but there also weren't enough Democrats to win on election day. I think we'd all agree something has to be done about that.

tx, tell that to the Kossacks!

Hahaha... Kinda like when all the libs ran around screaming about when Bush said "imminent threat", and "mission accomplished"?

Nate -- Yes, you are right. There weren't enough Dean supporters, enough Kerry supporters, or enough Lieberman supporters. However, I still do believe that the leadership of the Party has not been strong enough on defense and foreign policy in recent years. I think that was one of the many lessons of the recent elections.

Chris Elam -- I don't agree with the modern Liberals and the Dean supporters on a lot of things. However, the "mission" was not "accomplished." The war is not even close to being over yet. On the contrary, thanks to the poor planning of the Bush folks and their renunciation of traditional military doctrine, realities on the ground, geopolitics and just plain common sense, we are in danger of losing this war, which would be disastrous. Furthermore, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and company never came up with a causus belli that they could defend whether you are talking about WMD, the Global War on Terror (GWOT) or the freedom/democracy rationale. We have not found WMD. The war in Iraq is not an extension of GWOT, except in the sense that Bush has created a power vacuum that the Jihadists, al-Qaeda and Baathists are rushing to fill. Even if we do manage to pull off the elections, we may be facilitating the election of a Shiite government, which will be linked to Iran. This is just a mess, pure and simple. Bush's hopeless conduct of the war in Iraq was one of the few reasons that led me to vote for Kerry as opposed to abstaining. Despite Kerry's sorry record on defense and foreign policy in the Senate, I hoped that Kerry would at least listen to the best of our flag rank officers (serving and retired), military planners, etc. in putting in place a viable strategy, when none seems to now exist.

Chris Elam -- I don't agree with the modern Liberals and the Dean supporters on a lot of things. However, the "mission" was not "accomplished." The war is not even close to being over yet. On the contrary, thanks to the poor planning of the Bush folks and their renunciation of traditional military doctrine, realities on the ground, geopolitics and just plain common sense, we are in danger of losing this war, which would be disastrous. Furthermore, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and company never came up with a causus belli that they could defend whether you are talking about WMD, the Global War on Terror (GWOT) or the freedom/democracy rationale. We have not found WMD. The war in Iraq is not an extension of GWOT, except in the sense that Bush has created a power vacuum that the Jihadists, al-Qaeda and Baathists are rushing to fill. Even if we do manage to pull off the elections, we may be facilitating the election of a Shiite government, which will be linked to Iran. This is just a mess, pure and simple. Bush's hopeless conduct of the war in Iraq was one of the few reasons that led me to vote for Kerry as opposed to abstaining. Despite Kerry's sorry record on defense and foreign policy in the Senate, I hoped that Kerry would at least listen to the best of our flag rank officers (serving and retired), military planners, etc. in putting in place a viable strategy, when none seems to now exist.