We salute Ned Lamont, who pretty much DEFINED campaign 2006....

C-dems salutes NED LAMONT, and IF Democratic candidates and leaders in 2000, 2002, and 2004 had fought the way Ned did earlier this year in his "OUST Rethuglican-in-sheep's-clothes Joe Lieberman now!" insurgent Democratic primary campaign, then Bush and Cheney would never have 'won' the White House in 2000 in the first place, and (given the Bush administration grasp on presidential powers after the 2000 election), the Republicans would be even less popular today than they are.

To begin with, we remind.... If Al Gore had chosen a moderate, SOUTHERN WHITE MALE Democrat as his VP candidate in 2000 - as Bill Clinton did when Clinton choose former Tenn. Senator Al Gore for his own running mate - then Al Gore and the Democrats would have won the White House EASILY in 2000. Instead, Gore cluelessly BOUGHT INTO the Republican Right-Wing "moral values" Jihad against Bill Clinton, and out of ALL the people that Gore could have selected as his running mate, Gore selected the one visible Democrat MOST PROMINENT in chiming in with the Republican IMPEACHMENT of President Bill Clinton, an impeachment drawn up over Clinton's alleged lack of "MORAL VALUES."

Mr. Gore, you selected Joe Lieberman to be your running mate precisely because he was the Democratic critic who most visibly stabbed Bill Clinton in the back, so you pretty much deserved your own fate, to go down in history as the candidate who won the election but lost the White House. Or, to be precise, your campaign was shot down in flames first and foremost by your own VP selection, who #1. turned off Southern male white conservative Democrats (as Ohio is to Republicans, WINNING A SOUTHERN STATE, i.e., winning at least some Southern white male votes, is absolutely ESSENTIAL to a Democratic presidential candidate); #2. Did very little to boost your campaign (just run the video of Lieberman's coffee-break love-fest "debate' with Dick Cheney); #3. Lieberman was so classless and ungrateful to be chosen the VP nominee that he REFUSED TO GIVE UP HIS SENATE RACE to take up the honor of being the Democratic Party VP selection (a big clue to Lieberman's real character as an opportunist first, and standup fight-for-the-underdog champion second); and of course of all the Democrats who SOLD OUT Florida's African-American and minority voters DISENFRANCHISED by Jeb Bush/Katherine Harris dirty tricks in the Florida recount debacle, "Smilin' Joe Lieberman" had the distinction of both stabbing his running mate in the back AND selling minority voters down the river. All of which was rather predictable - having the security of a senate seat to fall back on was, after all, PRECISELY why Joe REFUSED to give up his senate race in the first place.

Well, enough about Al Gore's LOSING pick of a VP candidate in 2000. The 2006 elections merely demonstrated that Joe Lieberman has DEEP POCKETS from selling out American citizens & consumers to corporate predators, such as Lieberman's atrocious support for the credit-card EXTORTION 'reform' bill, and his equally appalling support for Bush's equally atrocious Prescription drug 'reform' bill; that Joe remains a polished politician; and that, having LOST the Democratic primary, Joe was able to CHANGE HIS SPOTS and run as a LIBERAL DEMOCRAT - with Karl Rove, George Bush's, and the Republican Party's extensive financial backing. (Millions and millions of Bush-Rove-Perry GOP dollars to help Republican-lite Lieberman pretend that he was a "bipartisan liberal Democrat" again.)

So, regardless of how many Connecticut Democrats voted for TRAITOR JOE, the fact remains that Joe Lieberman SOLD OUT his running mate in 2000, that Al Gore lost the White House when he selected Joe Leiberman as his running mate; and that Joe Lieberman will no doubt use every opportunity in his next 6 year term to SELL MORE Connecticut citizens and Democratic voters DOWN THE RIVER when corporate America waves a few dollars at their most Right-Wing in-the-pocket Democrat.

Now back to Ned Lamont. He might have lost his general election campaign in Connecticut last night to Lieberman's chameleon charm and Republican millions, but the 2007 Democratic House MAJORITY is a testament to Lamont's fighting, INSURGENT, "call-em-out and take on the media, Republicans AND sell-out-Democrats!" campaign.

We here at C-Dems would certainly have preferred for joe lieberman to have been shown the exit door, and will bet a hundred-dollars to one-dollar that sometime in the next 6 years Lieberman will AGAIN stab the Democratic majority in the back as he cozies up to corrupt "Moral Values" Rethuglican bullies and extortionists.

But for now, we want to THANK the Democratic candidate who was THE FIRST** out of the gate in 2006 to TAKE ON THE Democratic WAR wing of the Democratic Party, and FORCE IT to DISASSOCIATE ITSELF from the dismal, corrupt, and incompetent leadership of the Bush administration.

** We'll agree with John Murtha's home paper that Representative Murtha, a US Marine for 35 years before he became a Congressman, was the FIRST Democrat to publicly break with the "war wing of the Democratic Party." But Murtha had the advantage of being a sitting incumbent with an impeccable record of SUPPORT FOR THE MILITARY, and his criticisms were directed more at the Bush administration than the war-hawk wing of his own party. Not that we are for a moment detracting from Representative Murtha's courageous outspokenness against the war; we simply believe it was Ned Lamont who brought the discussion onto the front page of the news and editorial pages and FORCED the pooh-bahs of the party to take notice.
http://www.tribune-democrat.com/homepage/local_story_312010824.html
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More generally, election 2006 has reinforced some general lessons that should be rules:

#1. Democrats MUST DEFINE THE DIFFERENCES between themselves and Republicans. This SHOULD be a no brainer, but as all of our blathering (above) just points out, UNTIL NED LAMONT came along, Joe Lieberman was happy to run as a "Rethuglican lite," and was one of the most secure Democrats in the entire senate.

#2. Democratic candidate MUST PAY ATTENTION to the NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNS of Republicans, and confront and REBUT those Smear-and-Fear accusations IMMEDIATELY. Already (tonight/early morning), Rethuglican trolls on HuffPost and elsewhere are saying "TWO YEARS OF A NANCY PELOSI DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS will GUARANTEE a Republican presidency in 2008." While a lot of this is, of course, wishful thinking, Democrats should certainly realize that they must REMAIN on PERMANENT CAMPAIGN, and that Republicans will UNDOUBTEDLY use EVERY OPPORTUNITY to SMEAR the Democrats... while CRYING for "BIPARTISAN Compromise!" when it suits them.

WILL Democratic leaders ONCE AGAIN FALL FOR this Republican THUGGERY masked as "bipartisanship"?

Will the Democratic 'leadership' realize that STANDING UP TO REPUBLICANS is what voters WANT from their elected officials... DESPITE what the ghoulish "mainstream media" says??

The sad corollary of this point - that Republicans WILL remain on permanent campaign, never miss an opportunity to SMEAR Democrats, and will use their media (whores) advantage to CLAIM BIPARTISANSHIP when it suits them... is that Democrats should, MUST, REMAIN ON THE OFFENSIVE.

Indeed, we actually have A VERY SMALL WINDOW of OPPORTUNITY to PROSECUTE the battle against Republican malfeasance, as the Iraq war GETS WORSE, and, potentially, ANOTHER MAJOR TERRORIST ATTACK could take place somewhere, STRENGTHENING both the authoritarian hand of the Bush-Rethuglican government, and their PROPAGANDA BATTLE against Democrats.

THIS is an INEVITABILITY. The US situation in Iraq is close to the US situation in Vietnam in 1966, and we Americans get to relive poor Lydon Johnson's alternatives: either you CONCEDE South Vietnam to the VC and NVA (and thereby be portrayed in all history as "the first president to LOOSE an American war"), or you POUR MORE TROOPS INTO THE QUADMIRE. Today, keeping the US force levels at 150,000 troops in Iraq merely paints a big target on those troops, as insurgents there become more skillful, organized, coordinated, and powerful. (Not to mention that out Shiite "allies" are no longer so enamored of their "alliance" with us, the US having destroyed the Sunni regime there for them.) Here at C-dems we feel that Lyndon Johnson is one of the tragic figures of history. The Vietnam war killed him just as surely as an assassin's bullet killed President Kennedy (and other bombs and bullets killed 58,000 US servicemen in Vietnam). Jack Valenti's amazing fly on-the-wall biography of Johnson's first term in office reveals that Johnson KNEW that Vietnam was going to be a loose-loose QUAGMIRE, but he had NO CHOICE in 1965... a Failure to commit US ground troops meant "losing" South Vietnam WITHOUT a real FIGHT. As a Southern Democrat who grew up under FDR's "New Deal" Johnson understood that the "FIRST COMMANDMENT" of a Southern Democrat in politics was "you COULD be 'liberal' or populist in your policies and program, BUT TO BE SEEN as 'SOFT ON COMMUNISM" was an instant political death sentence in the conservative, formerly slave-states, and still segregationist South.

We don't mean to relive old history, bring up old nightmares, or rain on the Democrat's victory parade, but the next two years DEMANDS that Democrats RUN A PERMANENT CAMPAIGN, DEMAND that they (Democrats) GET CREDIT for programs that Americans have come to love and depend on (Social Security, pension oversight, health care assistance, etc), and above all that Democrats GO ON THE OFFENSIVE against the Bush administration's dismal handling of NATIONAL SECURITY.

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President Johnson's 1964 nightmare: either GIVE UP South Vietnam WITHOUT A FIGHT, or committ US ground troops to an expanding war.....

Transcripts of Johson's phone call to Ted Bundy, _1964_
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/vietnam/lbjbundy.htm

<< Pres. Johnson: I will tell you the more, I just stayed awake last night thinking of this thing, and the more that I think of it I don't know what in the hell, it looks like to me that we're getting into another Korea. It just worries the hell out of me. I DON'T SEE WHAT WE CAN EVER HOPE TO GET OUT OF THERE ONCE WE'RE COMMITTED. I believe the Chinese Communists are coming into it. I don't think that we can fight them 10,000 miles away from home and ever get anywhere in that area. I don't think it's worth fighting for and I don't think we can get out. And it's just the biggest damn mess that I ever saw. >>

and
http://future.state.gov/educators/lessons/vietnam/43444.htm