Joe and the Volcano

Senator Joe Lieberman's failed bid in the Connecticut Democratic primary has been the subject of constant and continuous buzz on the most popular left wing blogs for weeks now. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say Lieberman has been the bloggers' obsession.

Why is this? Are Lieberman and his senate seat so important as to justify the crowding out of other events and political developments? The fighting in southern Lebanon has received cursory coverage on these sites, and other Congressional races have been mentioned only in passing. The Iraq War has all but disappeared.

Has Lieberman become a symbol of a larger conflict that's brewing, and a lightning rod for progressives who hope to wrest control of the Democratic Party from its moderate, Democratic National Committee (DNC) wing?

Hollywood producer Jane Hamsher's Firedoglake.com blog has posted 250 entries under the subject "Lieberman," and 225 under "Lamont" this year. Only the subject of "Bushco" has more. Ten Lieberman posts have gone up in the last three days.

The latest, posted by Hamsher, is drawn from the August 15 transcript of Don Imus's MSNBC televised radio program, in which Imus threatened to ban all Democrats from his program who "bailed on Lieberman."

"Well, they ALL bailed on him," Imus said. "But what we’ll also…I mean, we have a lot of information about—uh, and maybe we can even dig up some old footage on Chris Dodd, who’s trying to run for President, and a bunch of other people and uh, you know, this could get ugly."

The fact that this trivia was posted on a major blog, as well as both the bloggers' and the media's obsession with one politician's loss of one primary, show that it has already gotten ugly, and that the larger issue is a fight for control of the Democratic Party.

At DailyKos.com, which has posted 199 entries on Lieberman in the last four weeks, one of today's several posts about Lieberman/Lamont (August 15) carried a transcript of CNN Anchor Chuck Roberts's on-air apology directly to Lamont for having referred to him as "the Al-Qaeda candidate:"

"You know, I owe you an apology. Last week, I led into an interview with a guest analyst and really botched the set-up. The guest had wanted to discuss the Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman statements suggesting that terror groups -- Al Qaeda type, to use Cheney's words -- would be buoyed by your win, but I posed it badly, stupidly ad-libbing about 'some saying Lamont is the Al-Qaeda candidate.' No one, in fact, used that construction. Anyway, I wanted to correct the record, and I'm glad we had this chance to do it."

Kos front-page writer SusanG followed the quote with her own analysis of bloggers' clout: "Shows what concerted pressure from the little people here at Daily Kos, Huffington Post, Media Matters, Think Progress and Crooks and Liars can do, doesn't it?"

At Duncan Black's "Atrios/Eschaton" blog, which has become so consumed with Lieberman that it could conceivably be renamed "The Lieberman/Lamont Blog," the proprietor has begun taking material directly from Ned Lamont's site and reposting it, as he did today (August 15) with:

"A group of Senate Democrats is growing increasingly angry about Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (D-Conn.) campaign tactics since he lost the Democratic primary last week.

"If he continues to alienate his colleagues, Lieberman could be stripped of his seniority within the Democratic caucus should he defeat Democrat Ned Lamont in the general election this November, according to some senior Democratic aides..."

However, the final word on Lieberman, and the sudden support he is receiving from Republicans and conservatives have suddenly embraced him in the wake of his loss, is provided by the cartoonist Tom Tomorrow.

"Affable Joe Lieberman was the victim of an online Jihad," says Tomorrow's prototypical blue-suited conservative. "It was a liberal inquisition conducted by far left blogofascists who will accept nothing less than complete ideological purity! This is a disaster of unprecedented proportions. The very legitimacy of our democracy has been thrown into question."

"In other words," Tomorrow's penguin replies, "a majority of Connecticut Democrats voted for the candidate they preferred."

The Connecticut primary really was as simple as Tom Tomorrow's penguin describes it, but the fallout from it is just beginning. It was a close vote, but in the end blue-state voters showed a decided preference for ending the Iraq war and jettisoning those who would waffle on the war question.

In the days following the primary, House and Senate Democrats lined up almost unanimously behind Lamont, a political newcomer now suddenly and unexpectedly thrown into a ready-made role as a leader, spokesperson, and weather vane. A few, like Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, refused to commit to him, hesitant to abandon their old friend Joe.

In the next few days and weeks, the stars of the Democratic Party, many of whom have tried to walk a tightrope in regard to the war, and maintain an ambiguous position in order to try to please everybody, will suddenly find themselves having to decide which way to go -- to the right, toward the DNC and the old coalition-and-compromise ideology, or toward the left, the direction Connecticut voters have pointed.

The battle for the heart and soul of the party is about to begin.