Pacific Views

Ticket To Anywhere

In a case of exactly the kind of in-house sniping that I was complaining about the other day, Joe Lieberman said this:

...During an appearance here at the National Press Club, Mr. Lieberman was asked about the increased attention in the news to Dr. Dean. Mr. Lieberman said: "A candidate who was opposed to the war against Saddam, who has called for the repeal of all of the Bush tax cuts — which would result in an increase in taxes on the middle class — I believe will not offer the kind of leadership America needs to meet the challenges that we face today."

..."As I said in my prepared remarks," Mr. Lieberman said in response to a question about Dr. Dean, "I believe that that kind of candidate could lead the Democratic Party into the political wilderness for a long time to come. It could be, really, a ticket to nowhere." ...

Because you know, we aren't in the wilderness now. We have so much to lose, that yes, perhaps we should consider greater caution, try to...

Sorry, the political valium just wore off. How much more out of it do you get than losing control of every single branch of government? How much more wilderness are you crossing when Democratic voters across the country have denounced the party as spineless? Whether it's a deserved tag or not, some blood needs to be pumped into our message.

Saying that Bush's decisions were mostly peachy isn't going to cut it. There's room within the Democratic party for people who have a more militant viewpoint than I do. Room for people who dig tax cuts. But on the whole, this is not a way to distinguish ourselves from the opposition. Especially when the implication that the Bush tax cuts mainly benefit the middle class is an administration propaganda piece, based only very loosely in reality.

Additionally, the Democrats whose suppport Lieberman is trying to get are more likely than the general population to have personally taken the stances he's lambasting Dean for.

Blog for America, the official Dean blog, points out the transcript for Dean's Monday appearance on Larry King Live, where he responded to Lieberman's comments in the following manner, emphasis mine:

KING: Your reaction?

DEAN: Well, obviously I don't agree.

I think the four candidates from Washington that voted for the war, Senator Lieberman, Senator Kerry, Senator Edwards and Representative Gephardt basically gave the president carte blanche in October to launch a preemptive strike and the evidence wasn't there.

Let's look at what the president said. He told us that he was buying -- that Iraq was buying uranium from Africa. That wasn't true. He told us -- or the vice president that Iraq was on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons. That wasn't true. The president told us there was a clear link between al Qaeda and Iraq. That wasn't true. The secretary of defense told us he knew exactly where the weapons were, right around Tikrit and Baghdad. That wasn't true. So if I could figure that with my foreign policy team as a governor from Vermont, my question is why should we be led by people who couldn't figure that out and who voted to give the president unilateral authority to attack Iraq?

KING: Are you hurt, though, that a fellow Democrat taking you on like that?

DEAN: Listen, if that's the worst I get in this campaign, I'll be in good shape.

Look, these guys have worked hard. They want to be president. Any one of them would be better than the president they have now. But what our party really has to have is some backbone. We are not going to beat George Bush by voting for things like No Child Left Behind, which is a huge middle class tax increase, property tax increase. We're not going to beat him by doing as Senator Lieberman and others did, voting for some of the president's tax cuts because those tax cuts have really harmed our economy and taken jobs away from Americans; and we're not going to beat the president without casting a critical eye on the statements that he made leading up to the Iraq war, when so many of them have now turned out not to be so. ...

What I liked: He responded to the issues, and didn't burn bridges with voters who supported the other candidates. He disagreed without personal attacks.

Obviously, every politician has to draw distinctions between themselves and their opponents, but this is a great example of how that can be done with professionalism and respect. How it can be done while recognizing that these other Democrats are still in the same party, and while they may be engaged in a zero-sum game with each other, that the primary can't be a zero-sum game for the voters.

I still haven't decided entirely who to support, but if it came down to Lieberman or Dean, my choice at this point would be clear.