June 9, 2008
Pseudo-moderate, Senator Joseph Lieberman, has been keeping himself in the news. On June 5, Jake Tapper of ABC News described the encounter between Barack Obama and Lieberman on the Senate floor on June 4, when Obama returned to the Senate as the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee. Here’s what Tapper had to say about the incident:
They shook hands. But Obama didn’t let go, leading Lieberman – cordially – by the hand across the room into a corner on the Democratic side, where Democratic sources tell ABC News he delivered some tough words for the junior senator from Connecticut, who had just minutes before hammered Obama’s speech before the pro-Israel group AIPAC in a conference call arranged by the McCain campaign. … The two spoke intensely for approximately five minutes, with no one able to hear their conversation. Reporters watched as Obama leaned closely in to Lieberman, whose back was literally up against the wall.
Senator Obama was showing off a physical characteristic we aren’t used to seeing in Democrats. It’s called a spine. Since Lieberman’s re-election to the Senate in 2006 as an Independent candidate (after losing the Democratic primary to Ned Lamot) the Democrats have been struggling to keep Joe in their “Big Tent”. The Senate Democratic Caucus (or Conference) consists of 49 regular Democrats and 2 Independents, one of whom is Joe “The Tool” Lieberman, who calls himself an “Independent Democrat”. The Democrats are desperate to maintain their 51-percent majority in the Senate, so they have been doing all they can to make sure The Tool is a happy camper. All that changed when Barack Obama became the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee. Such notable individuals as former speechwriter for George H. W. Bush, Peggy Noonan and even Rupert Murdoch have predicted a “Democratic landslide” in the 2008 elections. The Tool has been throwing his weight around quite a bit with his endorsement of John McCain. Obama has made it clear that Lieberman’s star is fading quickly and he is being cut loose — now.
As the junior Senator from Connecticut, Lieberman has worked his way onto the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, including its Subcommittees on: Clean Air and Nuclear Safety, Private Sector and Consumer Solutions to Global Warming and Wildlife Protection (where he is Chairman), and the Subcommittee on Public Sector Solutions to Global Warming, Oversight, and Children’s Health Protection. He is also on the following Senate Committees: Small Business and Entrepreneurship, the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (where he is Chairman), as well as the Senate Armed Services Committee. If the predicted Democratic landslide occurs — watch The Tool lose all of these appointments.
As a defector from the Democratic Party, The Tool is not only campaigning for John McCain, but he has joined the ranks of those partisans who refer to the Democratic Party as the “Democrat” party. Accordingly, he has a vested interest in seeing that such a landslide does not occur and that Barack Obama has no “coattails” in the 2008 election, which would add more Democratic Senators, making The Tool a useless commodity. As a result, Lieberman is doing all he can to sabotage Obama’s election possibilities. Anyone who has the chutzpah to call himself “bipartisan” or a “moderate” while talking about a “Democrat Party” would do well to read Hendrik Hertzberg’s article in the June 9, 2008 issue of The New Yorker. (You can read it online for free.)
On the day after The Tool was taken to the woodshed by Obama, Lieberman issued an e-mail to his “Fellow McCain Supporters”. He noted that he had previously been “the Democrat Party’s nominee for Vice-President” and went on to note that he was creating and chairing a new “grassroots organization”, called “Citizens for McCain”. He described this group as “an organization within the McCain campaign for people who put country before political party and support the candidate for President who has a proven record of bipartisanship”. His first misrepresentation in this e-mail was to mis-characterize this group as a “grassroots organization”. A look on Wikipedia.org will tell us the following about the meaning of the term “grassroots”:
A grassroots movement (often referenced in the context of a political movement) is one driven by the constituents of a community. The term implies that the creation of the movement and the group supporting it is natural and spontaneous, highlighting the differences between this and a movement that is orchestrated by traditional power structures.
Sorry Joe, your group doesn’t qualify as “grassroots”, since it was orchestrated by a Senator, already working from “within the McCain campaign” and who is a member of numerous Senate Committees, including the Armed Services Committee. The previously-quoted Wikipedia entry goes on to state:
Faking a grassroots movement is known as astroturfing. Astroturfing—as the name suggests—is named after a brand of artificial grass, AstroTurf.
By January, 2009, The Tool will have lost all of his Committee memberships and he will likely find himself as a powerless backbencher. When his Senate career ends four years later, he might be able to start a lucrative, new career: selling AstroTurf.