Cracks & Fissures

Yesterday we paid our most recent visit to the Ben Cardin-Kweise Mfume race war in Maryland over who will get the Dem nod to try to hold onto the Senate seat of the retiring Paul Sarbanes (or, to put it another way, the race war to determine who will get his ass kicked by the Man of Steele). But race is not the only temblous faultline running through the Democrat Party. There's also an ideological one, rooted most conspicuously in the Donk response to the war against Islamic Fundamentalism, and it is quaking most violently in Connecticut, where Senator Joe Lieberman, despite being fifteen points ahead of his Kos-hack challenger, is laying the contingency groundwork for an independent run in the fall:

Lieberman, 64, a three-term senator whose outspoken support of the war in Iraq has brought months of grief and inspired a strong primary challenge from Greenwich businessman Ned Lamont, announced his decision this afternoon at a brief press conference at the State Capitol.

"I've been a proud, loyal and progressive Democrat since John F. Kennedy inspired my generation of Americans into public service and I will stay a Democrat, whether I am the Democraitic party's nominee or a petitioning Democratic candidate on the November ballot," Lieberman said. He added that he would, even if re-elected as a petitioning candidate, remain a member of the Senate Democratic Caucus.

Even should he lose in August - and the most recent public poll shows him leading Lamont by 15 percentage points among likely primary voters - Lieberman would retain his status as a registered Democrat. His name would not, however, appear on the ballot line with other Democrats.

As a Republican, and non-resident of the "like Massachusetts, only dirtier and with less character" state, I don't have a dog in this hunt. There's no chance of this seat going "red," and while I respect Lieberman's principled stands both in support of the war and to remain a member of his party, it's not as though the former has had any significant influence over the party that is so ungratefully spurning him. For that matter, it isn't as though "the anhedonic Ben Stein," as I once dubbed him, isn't squarely in the middle of his caucus' overall mainstream. So as far as the issues I care most about are concerned, they won't be impacted much one way or the other by another Lieberman term or a Lamont upset.

What does get my attention is this Ed Morrissey observation:

I suspect that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will have some uncomfortable moments in the next few weeks. Undoubtedly they will hope that Lieberman will win the primary and let them off the hook. They may do more than just hope, which may result in a nasty split between the hard-Left and the DLC factions, just as the midterms approach. It looks like the Democrats may well wind up with the split that appeared imminent in the GOP until a couple of weeks ago. [emphasis added]

The difference between the Kos-hacks and DLCers is really less ideological than it is tactical. DLCers recognize that liberalism is no longer a majority philosophy in America and, thus, the need for guile and deception if the Democrats are to keep enough voters fooled to regain and maintain power. The Kos-hacks, on the other hand, refuse to concede anything, demand that their party be as openly, loudly, and obnoxiously radical as they are, and wage an unremitting jihad until the GOP is beaten down and destroyed and the voters not persuaded but battered into submission. And because the DLC won't acquiesce to this political kamikaze-ism, the hard-Left has added the DLC, and pols like Joe Lieberman, to their hit list.

What makes this amusing is that, if one listens to the Extreme Media, it is the GOP that is always on the jagged edge of flying apart over something (abortion, fiscal policy, immigration), while Dem rivenings are always played down or blacked out entirely. But the nutroots rebellion against "poor ol' Joe" cannot be hidden, and like the provebial iceberg, only a small fraction of it will be visible above the surface until it produces the inevitable electoral collapse.

Senator Lieberman will still be around in all likelihood. But it is his distinguished, big-thighed colleague from New York that will have her work cut out for her.