Dems Need to Make The Case: Lieberman's A Right-Wing 'Proxy Candidate' for Rove/Cheney

READ MORE: Iraq, Dick Cheney, 2006, Karl Rove

Joe Lieberman is the de facto Republican candidate in the CT Senate race. That much is clear. What's less obvious (especially to the pundits), is that he's become a member of that party's hard-right Dick Cheney wing, and that he's now fighting an ugly Rovian campaign on its behalf.

Those facts, if properly explained, are the key to a Lamont victory in November.
Awareness of Lieberman's extremism should dry up the support he holds among Democrats who still think he's a "moderate" - but only if other Democrats get the message out to them.

I tuned into a few minutes of "Left, Right, and Center" today, and heard the moderator ask Arianna a question whose premise was: "How does Ned Lamont win the Republican votes he'll need to win the election?" Arianna's response was to cite this piece by Bob Geiger, which lists those Democratic Senators unwilling to publicly support their own party's nominee.

Arianna's answer, and Bob's piece, are excellent. But the question missed the point entirely. Lamont doesn't need to win Republican votes. He needs to win all the Democratic votes, and to mobilize the Democratic base. If he does that in Democratic-leaning Connecticut, while persuading a few moderates, he'll win.

The problem of those wayward Senators and their endorsements will take care of itself, if Democrats communicate the true nature of Lieberman and his campaign.

I have some sympathy for these straying Senators. They face two problems. First, many of them live in swing states or Red states, where it's critical to their political health that they appear both moderate and non-partisan.

Second, they've done the math: they realize that, under certain scenarios, the presence of Lieberman as a voting Democrat might be their only chance to retake the Senate. (That's why I compared him to Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction, " in asking whether Lieberman's campaign has been a Rove operation all along.)>>>>cont

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