A debate that would have been mostly a blip on the national news except for the fact that the incumbent running for re-election has stirred up a hornet’s nest of enemies who are working feverishly to boot him out of office.
But enough about anti-war Democrats and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman….
Actually, WAS it enough? Early news reports indicate that the debate was less a Lincoln/Douglas war/antiwar debate that will be quoted and re-run for generations due to its ideas than an updated Reagan/Carter debate with Lieberman using a “there you go again” comment. And, if reports are accurate, it boiled down to this:
Joe Lieberman is in the fight for his political life and, as Tony Soprano would put it, he ain’t gonna go down without a fight for no one…
Just look at some of the news coverage and you can see a debate that ostensibly had a large focus on the war but it actually was more about hard-boiled, old-fashioned power politics where each Democratic candidate symbolizes a wing of the party that wants to be dominant. The full transcript is HERE.
U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman sought to distance himself from the Bush administration during a televised debate with his upstart Democratic primary challenger Thursday, telling him: “I’m not George Bush.”
Lieberman’s opponent, political newcomer Ned Lamont, has gained in statewide polls by accusing Lieberman of straying from his Democratic roots. Just six years after being his party’s nominee for the vice presidency, Lieberman has fallen into disfavor among some Democrats for his perceived closeness to President Bush and support for the war in Iraq.
One passage here suggests Lieberman has watched a lot of videos the past few days, looking at classic high-stakes debate “knock out” lines.
Like who does this bring to mind?
“I know George Bush. I’ve worked against George Bush. I’ve even run against George Bush. But Ned, I’m not George Bush,” Lieberman said during the debate, televised nationally by MSNBC and C-SPAN. “So why don’t you stop running against him and have the courage and honesty to run against me and the facts of my record.”
If you said the late Texas Senator Lloyd Benson in his famous “you’re no Jack Kennedy” riff aimed at Dan Quayle, you’re right.
The problem for Lieberman: he is seeking DEMOCRATIC votes and Lamont’s point — which some Connecticut can agree with even if they don’t support Lamont’s candidacy and even if they support the war — is that Lieberman’s record is under fire by some for his being too supportive of Bush on issues other than the war.
From one perspective, Lieberman is represents an under-fire approach of bipartisanship. From the perspective of those on the Democratic left who believe their party must accentuate differences from Republicans to effectively challenge the ruling party, Lieberman can’t be counted in the battle that they have chosen to fight the way they want to fight it.
He isn’t a soldier that can be counted on and was even kissed by the opposing side’s commander (but not on the lips as Tipper was by Al Gore).
To some, Lieberman is the quintessential centrist being edged out in an age of intense polarization by forces within his own party who value ideological purity and political purges above “big tent” umbrella coalitions and aggregating interests; to others, Lieberman is the quintessential DINO.
Even the New York Times piece chronicles what seems to be a bare-knuckles politically donnybrook, rather than the war debate some had predicted:
Senator Joseph I. Lieberman questioned the credibility of his challenger Ned Lamont, and Mr. Lamont called his opponent a friend of the Bush administration as the two tangled over the war in Iraq on Thursday night in their only scheduled debate.
In the one-hour debate in the Connecticut Democratic primary, Mr. Lieberman distanced himself from President Bush and criticized his opponent, saying he had wavered on the war issue and would be ill-equipped to serve in the Senate.
The sharpest exchanges came during the first 15 minutes of the debate, which was televised by C-Span, with Mr. Lieberman persistently interrupting Mr. Lamont, saying that he had changed his mind several times about American policy in Iraq over the last several weeks. And Mr. Lamont, for his part, tried to hammer the point that Mr. Lieberman was not standing up to President Bush and was trying to play down his support for the war.
MSNBC’s national affairs writer Tom Curry captures the old-fashioned political bloodbath aspect of this high-profile debate:
The Joe Lieberman television viewers saw on Thursday night in his debate with maverick challenger Ned Lamont was not the mellow, sleepy-voiced, decent, religiously observant man we used to know. No, this was Joe Lieberman, the savvy, battle-hardened, and very aggressive politician.
Face to face with his rival, Lieberman came across as a man absolutely determined to save his career in the Senate, a man who wasn’t going to bother being genteel. He was throwing punches and seeming at least at one point to rattle his younger, less experienced foe.
Lieberman faces Lamont in the Aug. 8 Democratic primary, but has started to gather signatures to get on the ballot as an independent if he falls short in that primary.
While Lamont did go on the offensive at points during the debate — for example, accusing Lieberman of undermining fellow Democrats in Congress — the Greenwich, Conn. millionaire was relatively tame compared to the super-aggressive and sometimes rude Lieberman, who interrupted Lamont a number of times during the 60-minute event.
The importance of this quote:
Curry isn’t writing for a blog that has been defending Lieberman and is trying to keep him in power or writing for a blog that has repeatedly blasted him and worked against him. He’s a more detached set of eyes and ears (and we are SURE each side will argue Curry is too liberal or too conservative, etc.).
If “swing voters” and people already not sold on Lamont have the same perceptions, than Lieberman’s debate could wind up being a plus. Lieberman is not going to win over Lamont voters, no matter what stance he takes. His election (or defeat) has now become a symbolic act. No matter what happens, he will emerge with less national stature (because he has become a highly symbolic and divisive figure to many on the right and left and somewhat polarizing). More Curry:
After it ended and the two men had a 15-minute “cooling off” period, I approached Lamont, who asked me what I’d thought of the debate.
When I said the tone seemed quite different from the 2000 debate Lieberman had with vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney, Lamont, seeming somewhat abashed, remarked, “That’s what I should have said!” — meaning he should have said it during the debate.
Lamont added, “When it’s debating a Republican, it’s like a tea party,” but “when he’s debating a Democrat he shows his passionate juices.”
Lamont believed that he scored in the debate by challenging the incumbent on emergency contraception and on his support for the energy bill which President Bush signed in to law last year. Lamont seemed genuinely satisfied with his performance.
There’s more but he then poses the essential question:
The question is: is Lieberman’s vote for the Iraq war the most significant fact in that record for most Connecticut voters? We’ll find out on Aug 8.
Meanwhile, it is supremely ironic that Joe Lieberman — who is at times as exciting as a glass of room-temperature buttermilk — has become a rallying point for both sides.
To the left: his defeat would be a way to send a message to the Democratic politicos and party elites that the days of Clintonesque triangulation are over and that the way to win elections is to embrace and promote an unabashedly progresssive agenda (let centrists go elsewhere). To the right: a way to beat back to the left to show them that JFK and Bill Clinton were not rarities, that Democrats who are more centrist on domestic affairs and tough on foreign issues are Democrats who can actually win elections because building coalitions works.
So you think this was Lincoln Douglas quality?
There you go again……
UPDATED: Some more press reaction.
So far in the campaign, Lieberman, as the targeted incumbent, has been on the defensive. Not so Thursday night.
In marked contrast to his tepid performance in the 2000 vice-presidential debate against Dick Cheney, Lieberman came out swinging. At the same time, he came off as more relaxed than Lamont. He began the debate by casting Lamont as a flip-flopper on the campaign’s most prominent issue, the Iraq War. During the course of the first 15 minutes, Lieberman accused Lamont of taking at least six different positions on when to get out of Iraq. He came prepared with props – “pieces of paper� with clippings of supposedly varying positions Lamont and his campaign have taken on the issue. And he came prepared with a rhetorical gimmick – repeating the charge that Lamont keeps offering a different position, and tallying up those alleged changes with a “There you go again.�
Lamont stated that, unlike Lieberman, he supports firm deadlines for withdrawing troops from Iraq: “It’s time for us to get our troops out of harm’s way in six months, out of Iraq over 12 months.â€?
Lieberman often interrupted Lamont, or spoke longer than his allotted time, prompting Lamont to say, “This isn’t Fox News, sir,â€? a network known for its confrontational style…..Lamont said the senator cheered on Bush when the president was misleading the country and it was time to ask the tough questions…
…Ken Dautrich, a political science professor at the University of Connecticut, said the most striking thing about the debate was how much Lieberman was on the attack
“He was very aggressive, and appeared defensive. He seemed to be angry that he was being challenged by a Democrat. I’m not sure that will play well with Democrats who are themselves angry with Bush and Lieberman’s support,� Dautrich said.
On the other hand, Lamont came off as the newcomer by allowing Lieberman to dominate the discussion, he said.
In the end, it was probably a tie, with the senator not doing much to change the minds of those angry with him and Lamont “failing to define who he is and why he would be better for Connecticut,� said the professor.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.