Offering a Hand

I fully respect the Republicans to do everything in their power to obstruct Democrats for the next two years. It's the only thing they know how to do.

However, that's no reason to at least try to reach out to them. If nothing else, doing so will allow the Democrats to say, "We tried to work with them, but..."

Bernie Saunders uses the "reward" frame

Courtesy Bob Geiger:

“I spoke against the Lieberman motion and voted against it," said Sanders, who had made his feelings on the issue known before today's vote. "For me, the bottom line is that millions of Americans, with unprecedented energy, worked day and night to get Barack Obama elected and to move our country in a very new direction."

"I think it’s a slap in the face to these activists that someone who opposed those efforts in a very prominent way is awarded with a major committee."

Now how would have this fight played out if more Dems had talked about not giving Lieberman an award?

Howard Dean defends Lieberman decision

Just to give you an idea how invidious was the "punishment" meme, it even locked Howard Dean, netroots hero #1, into defending the decision:

Dean suggested that the decision should be political rather than personal, indicating that while "certainly [he] had anger" over Lieberman's actions during the presidential campaign, there was little space for what he regarded as a punitive action. When pressed by Hamsher about Lieberman's qualifications to chair the Homeland Security Committee, Dean said that he hadn't examined Lieberman's credentials in detail: "I was too busy trying to figure out how to win the election. [But] I certainly hope they did look at his record." [note how he doesn't even have the information necessary to begin a "reward" argument -- Chris]

Dean also spoke of the decision in generational terms.

"If you get a mandate for reconciliation ... is your first act going to be to kick him [Lieberman] to the curb?", Dean said. "If you're in my generation you say, 'yeah, damn right we should'".

But, Dean claimed, the younger generation's tone and strategies are different. "The younger generation's message is, let's put aside something that we can't agree on and do something about the things that we can agree on." At the same time, Dean acknowledged that he expected dissension, particularly within the netroots -- "I'm sure the sentiment online is one of outrage".

Emphasis mine.

I'm curious what information Dean has to back up his implication that older activists would be the ones primarily upset about this. That kind of feels like a "pull it out my ass" type of justification.

I love Dean. Still do. But I'm disappointed that he didn't have the rhetorical tools he needed to make a proper argument on this.

Just to be clear on something

My previous comments should in no way be taken as excusing the failure of the Democratic leadership. They have made the decision that it is okay to be seen as cowards for bowing before the mighty Joe Lieberman. That is their prerogative. And it is our prerogative to rake them over the coals for it.

But my habit after losing a fight is to always ask, "What did I do wrong?" Because there is always something I could have done better to improve the chances of success.

In this case, the thing I see clearly as a mistake was to let the desire to make Lieberman suffer get in the way of making a positive case for why Lieberman should not be rewarded for his perfidity. I know a lot of others out there made the exact same mistake because the calls for revenge against Lieberman far outweighed any more reasoned arguments for accountability.

The blood-lust for Lieberman was deep and I defy anyone to deny it.

Lieberman may be an ass but he is a smart ass. He saw, in our desire to make him hurt, the path to redemption.

Defeat Joe in 2012, but...

I agree with this sentiment. But if the campaign to unseat Joe is based primarily on revenge then it will fail, just as the campaign to take the Homeland Security gavel away from him failed.

People (usually) don't vote against someone to get revenge on them. They vote for someone who will do a better job. Lamont won the primary in 2006 because he made a convincing argument to Dems that he would be a better Democrat. But he failed to make the case to the Connecticut voters at large that he would make a better Senator.

Let's beat Joe. But let's be smart about it.

Lieberman Survives Because We Blew It

How did Lieberman manage to do it? How did he manage to win back the gavel of the Homeland Security Committee even after he (1) endorsed the other party's candidate for President, (2) openly called into question the patriotism of the Democrat's candidate and (3) campaigned for other Republican Senators over other Democrats?

There's a lot of screaming about gutless Democratic leadership and I agree with most of that criticism. But I think we need to step back and look at ourselves in the mirror, because it is we who gave Lieberman the ammunition he needed to win this fight.

From the very first this story has been framed as a story of "revenge" and "punishment" as part of a "purge" for "disloyalty". That framing allowed Lieberman to paint himself as the victim and put Democrat leaders in the untenable position of defending "revenge". The Senate leadership went along with it by repeatedly talking about wanting to "bury the hatchet" and "let bygones be bygones" and "not getting distracted by divisiveness." Even those Senators who despise Lieberman for his actions didn't want anything to do with a "purge".

But what if we had framed it differently? What if we had said that neither Lieberman nor any other Senator has a "right" to the gavel and that getting it was a "privilege" received as a "reward" for working with the caucus to advance the Democratic agenda. If the discussion had started out that way then the choice would have been obvious. You don't "reward" someone who has undermined your political agenda. Lieberman, like every other incoming chair, had to earn his position and he failed to do so.

The Democratic leadership didn't even try to frame it that way (because, frankly, I don't think they really had much stomach for this fight). But neither did we. We really were out for blood and we weren't hesitant to say so. Revenge should have had nothing to do with it. But the desire for blood overwhelmed those who have been hurt by Lieberman and that gave him exactly what he needed to win.

Throw obscenities at Democratic leaders all you want. But we failed as spectacularly as they did. And we should have known better. We understand the value of framing and messaging. But we let the desire for revenge get in the way of being smart.

Shame on us all.

Cruel and Unusual

I understand the concern that fights over procedural issues can bog down death penalty cases until death row inmates are more likely to die of natural causes then being executed.

But can anyone seriously argue against the proposition that a procedural roadblock to introducing evidence of innocence is not, in itself, a case of cruel and unusual punishment? Killing someone because addressing their probable innocence is to time consuming is not a reasonable argument. We're not living in the 1700s on a ship headed for the East Indies. On the issue of executing an innocent man, there is always time.

(context)

Don't give me shit and then tell me it's flowers

Steve Benen:

Roll Call added that a subcommittee punishment for Lieberman "may be seen as a stinging rebuke." A Senate Democratic aide said, "I don't know if it's enough for the net roots, but it's enough to say we stood up as Democrats" against Lieberman's actions.

Can we please cut the nonsense?

I agree. Back during the FISA debate, I was annoyed that Obama decided to vote for telecom immunity. But when he started making statements that were clearly designed to sell me the idea that he was doing something I should like, that was when I truly became pissed off.

When I am screwed I prefer to be screwed honestly.

As a bit of a premature post-mortem on this, I think part of the problem is the Democrats didn't go into the struggle to resolve the Lieberman question without a clear sense of what the fuss was about and what their response to it should be. This created the opportunity for Lieberman to obscure the real issue (that he can't be trusted) and instead turn it into a "unfair partisan punishment of those who disagree."

I won't like it if Lieberman is allowed to keep his gavel. But I can learn to live with and work around it. But when those who were to cowardly to stand up to Joe Lieberman try and tell me they did something courageous, well, that's just insulting my intelligence.

George Bush is a Muslim?

Operation Undermine Obama

I'm not sure I get the point of this video(*). Yeah, a lot of voters are seriously under-informed. I bet if you took 12 McCain voters and asked them similar "unbiased" questions you would get equally misinformed responses. The point is not that there is something wrong with Obama voters but that there is something wrong with the education system that allows so many people to be misinformed.

A co-worker brought this video to my attention, but his take from it was that "stupid" people should not be allowed to vote. I asked him how we would test for this. He didn't know. He was just outraged that "stupid" people should be allowed to vote.

(* - I kid. Of course I know the point. The point is to say that anyone who voted for Obama is an idiot therefore Obama is not a legitimate President and therefore anything done to undermine his Presidency is pro-American and patriotic.)

Update: Nate Silver has more.

Mission Accomplished

Nobody loves this dude.

Reasons for happiness

The wife is coming home tonight after being in Chicago since Thursday.

Tilt-Shift

This is way cool. Almost makes me want to take up photography as a hobby.