Moderation In The Pursuit Of Ego Is No Virtue

by digby

Neil the Ethical Werewolf, subbing over a Ezra’s place yesterday, made some excellent points about the Lieberman challenge:

Criticizing “extremists” in your party and making opponents of the war look like unpatriotic radicals does nothing to help Claire McCaskill and Harold Ford win their Senate races. By painting a picture of unpatriotic extreme antiwar Democrats, Lieberman damages the party’s brand and hurts Democrats everywhere.

Triangulation makes sense as a strategy for individual candidates, but it’s not a strategy that an entire party can engage in. In a country with an established two-party system, the media will define the space of moderate opinion relative to the parties themselves. No party will be able to gain a lasting reputation for moderation by compromising and moving towards its opponents. All that’ll happen is that the space of moderation will be narrowed, and opinions that previously were considered moderate will be regarded as extreme.

[…]

I don’t want my safe-seat Democrats triangulating into moderate positions. I want them to explore new territory on the left, so that when our Arkansas and Nebraska Senators triangulate off of them, they end up in positions that are fairly good, or at least non-destructive. And that’s why I have no use for Joe Lieberman. Where Lamont would stretch the field leftward as a moderate personality with progressive views, Lieberman compresses it and perpetuates negative stereotypes of Democrats. It’s time to remove him from politics, and threaten anyone who follows his path with a similar fate. There’s more.

One of the things I think has not been discussed is the value of Joe not being elected as a Democrat if he wins the general election as an independent. Him not being allowed to speak for the party is a positive, he only hurts the ballclub. He’ll have to join the GOP team and just be one of a large crowd of rabid liberal haters. I’m sure it will not be nearly as ego gratifying. That’s a shame.

I realize that these Lieberman posts may be somewhat boring to some of you. But it’s important to me that grassroots Dems arm themselves with the cogent argument for why we are supporting this primary challenge. There is a willful misunderstanding on the part of the MSM and the establishment as to our motives, which does not surprise me, and I think it’s important to use the platforms we have as bloggers to make our case. Sometimes that requires redundancy. I hope you will bear with me, and consider the arguments I make and to which I link. I think we can change this silly out-moded narrative the establishment has concocted if we work at it. At least, I think it’s worth a try.

.