WE'LL SHRINK THIS TENT UNTIL NO ONE FITS IN IT:

Learned Aggressiveness: Regardless of the outcome tomorrow in Connecticut, the netroots have already won. (Ezra Klein, 08.07.06, American Prospect)

Writing in The Washington Post, Dan Balz gave voice to this reductive outlook, opining that, “[a] victory by businessman Ned Lamont on Tuesday would confirm the growing strength of the grass-roots and Internet activists who first emerged in Howard Dean's presidential campaign. Driven by intense anger at President Bush and fierce opposition to the Iraq war, they are on the brink of claiming their most significant political triumph, one that will reverberate far beyond the borders here if Lieberman loses.”

What Balz doesn’t realize is that the time for “woulds” and “ifs” is over -- the reverberations have already rippled forth. The phase of this race bearing significant implications for the Democratic Party already happened, and whether Lamont wins or loses tomorrow is almost entirely immaterial to the political triumph of the netroots. Their scalp was claimed, mounted, and hung on July 7th, the day Joe Lieberman, an affable, popular incumbent who’d been his party’s celebrated vice-presidential candidate only six years earlier, was forced to mount a stage against some nobody named Ned Lamont and defensively debate his right to call himself a Democrat.

It's a triumph when you establish that a Senator with his liberal voting record has no right to call himself a Democrat?

MORE:
Liberal McCarthyism: Bigotry and hate aren't just for right-wingers anymore (LANNY J. DAVIS, August 8, 2006, Opinion Journal)

My brief and unhappy experience with the hate and vitriol of bloggers on the liberal side of the aisle comes from the last several months I spent campaigning for a longtime friend, Joe Lieberman.

This kind of scary hatred, my dad used to tell me, comes only from the right wing--in his day from people such as the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, with his tirades against "communists and their fellow travelers." The word "McCarthyism" became a red flag for liberals, signifying the far right's fascistic tactics of labeling anyone a "communist" or "socialist" who favored an active federal government to help the middle class and the poor, and to level the playing field.

I came to believe that we liberals couldn't possibly be so intolerant and hateful, because our ideology was famous for ACLU-type commitments to free speech, dissent and, especially, tolerance for those who differed with us. And in recent years--with the deadly combination of sanctimony and vitriol displayed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Michael Savage--I held on to the view that the left was inherently more tolerant and less hateful than the right.

Now, in the closing days of the Lieberman primary campaign, I have reluctantly concluded that I was wrong. The far right does not have a monopoly on bigotry and hatred and sanctimony.

Though it is hard not to hate people who could write such stupid things.

Memo to Mr. Davis: Here's the difference--Alger Hiss was guilty, but you don't deserve a beating for supporting Joe Lieberman.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 8, 2006 3:35 PM