CT-Sen: One Year Ago, We Did It

Today marks the one year anniversary of Ned Lamont's victory over Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic Primary. It was a special day for me; so much so that I wrote my thesis on it. After a brief introduction, it began like this:

American political rivalries begin for many different reasons. The monumental yet brief rivalry between Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Ned Lamont began largely due to, among other things, a newspaper editorial. The article, written by Lieberman and printed in the Wall Street Journal on November 29, 2005, was deemed by many anti-war citizens to be the last straw. And while he was known as an independent thinker with bi-partisan tendencies, one issue that many Connecticut and national Democrats had little patience for by the winter of 2005 was the war in Iraq. But since late 2002 when he cast his vote to support the authorization of military force in Iraq, Lieberman had done nothing but act patiently and supportive with regard to the deteriorating situation in Iraq. "I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months," Lieberman wrote, "and can report real progress there."  Yet, even though this editorial fueled an already established discontent with Lieberman’s stance on Iraq among many Democrats and progressives across the state, the prospect of defeating him in his bid for re-election the following November seemed hopeless. One blog contributor who writes under the name of Genghis Conn posted an entry on his website on the day that Lieberman’s editorial printed that highlighted this feeling:

"So Lieberman, despite lukewarm support from his own party and a seeming inability to sense the national mood, will win in another walk next year. That's something we can all feel, well, moderate about."

What the blogger, nor hardly anyone for that matter, did not know was that another man had read the same editorial and had decided that he was going to do something about it. This man was Ned Lamont. Outside of the cable business and the country club circuit of up-scale Greenwich, hardly anyone knew his name. But over the course of the next few months, he would become a hero, an enemy, a rival, and a true Democrat depending on who you were talking to in Connecticut.

The story of the Lamont campaign does not need to be told here. If you have any stories you would like to share, feel free to leave them in the comments section (many people, including myself, would enjoy them). Rather, today should be the day that we remember Lamont's victory and think of it in terms of the next big election we face: 2008.

Last night, the Democratic candidates met in Chicago to court the AFL-CIO. And like the differences between Lamont and Lieberman, the differences between the Democratic 2008 field are just as vast.

The sharpest dialogue last night besides Hillary's "I'm your girl" bit came when Chris Dodd was asked about his comments about Obama's anti-terror speech of last week.

"I think it is highly irresponsible of people who are running for the presidency and seek that office to suggest we may be willing unilaterally to invade a nation here that we are trying to get to be more cooperative with us in Afghanistan and elsewhere," Dodd said Tuesday night.

Obama shot back, perhaps being the strongest I or anyone else has ever seen him on a debate stage:

"Well, look," Obama responded, "I find it amusing that those who helped to authorize and engineer the biggest foreign policy disaster in our generation are now criticizing me for making sure that we are on the right battlefield and not the wrong battlefield in the war against terrorism."

Hillary then jumped in to say, in not so many words, that a candidate for President of the United States has no business hinting at what he might or might not do in terms of going after terrorists.

"You can think big, but remember you shouldn't always say everything you think if you're running for president, because it has consequences across the world," she said

More than her vote to authorize the war and not apologizing for it, more than her personality, more than her "lobbyists are our friends" speech at YK, this was the exchange that did her in for me. For her to suggest that our candidates should not be clear about their foreign policy intentions in the era after Bush is insulting to not only Democrats, but to the whole country. Didn't we just go down that road with the last guy?

Just like in Connecticut last year, the Democratic Party is split between two factions. Until Lamont, it seemed as if the faction headed now by Hillary Clinton always seemed to win. One year ago today, we changed that. It is time for us to make the Democratic Party more like us and less like the other guys. We've done it before, now let's do it again.

If you ever needed proof that Hillary was Bush/Cheney/Lieberman Light, all you had to do was watch her in last night's debate.