The Lieberman-Lamont race is not simply a litmus test on who gets to stay in the party and who gets to go. It is just like a business. If I am the CEO of Pepsi, and I find out that an employee was going to Coke and griping about how poorly the company was run, I would fire them. In the same way, Lieberman is going to FOX News and talking about how bad other Democrats are and why Bush is such a great man. Therefore, that alone is enough for us to fire Lieberman in November.
In the same way, let's say I was designing a new product for Pepsi - say, a drink to compete with Mountain Dew's Code Red. Let's say I had an employee who was telling me to my face that it was a great idea and that I was CEO and people had better get used to it. Now, let's say they were to go behind my back and tell other people it was a terrible idea. That would be a firing offense - I can't do everything at once in my company. Therefore, I have to hire people who I can trust with a high degree of certainty. I would fire that individual without hesitation upon proof of their guilt, because I cannot trust that individual to tell me the truth.
Now, let's go to the issue of believing in one's product. Let's say I am the CEO of Levi's and was asking a group of college interns to create an ad campaign for my company. Suppose they had to do a presentation for me. I would not be impressed if they were to come in wearing Lee. That would tell me right there that they did not believe in my product.
The same applies to Democrats. For too long, the problem has been that Democratic politicians did not believe in their own messages. Instead, they have let the Republicans dictate the message of the day to the media, and then turn around and say, "Me, too!" That would be like my car design execs at Ford driving Toyotas all the time. It's just like Pavlov's dog - all Rush Limbaugh has to do is frame the message of the day, and the Democrats will act like Pavlov's dog and say, "Me, too!"
Joe Lieberman is a perfect example of this kind of behavior. Instead of criticizing the Bush administration's war, he wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal where he made one factual error after another and blindly defended the President's message. Another time, he said that Bush was going to be President for the next 3 ½ years and we might as well get used to it. In Florida, where he was supposedly campaigning for Kerry, he called Bush a "great man." You think people didn't notice? How else do you explain the fact that Florida went for Bush by 400,000 in a year when Democrats were supposedly motivated to avenge 2000 and turn out?
I would never suggest that we have to have a purity test, because people cannot be molded into a convenient set of checkmarks. It would deny the uniqueness of each individual. But we do have to develop our own messages and stick with them. If you support adding more troops to the Iraq conflict, does that mean you are not a Democrat? No. But if you can't explain:
1. Why I am a Democrat;
2. Why I am not a Republican;
3. How are my positions on the issues consistent with this...
...then you are not a Democrat, but Bush-lite.
When voters are presented with a choice between the phony Republican and the real Republican, they will vote for the Republican every single time. Just ask Tom Daschle and Martin Frost, who ran ads of themselves and Bush together in the same picture. Just ask Max Clelland and Jean Carnahan, whose support of the Iraq War Resolution did not prevent them from being swept out of office. Just ask Gray Davis, who one California voter told me was more of a Republican than Ahnold ever was. People don't care about your ideology as much as they do about whether or not you let them know exactly where you stand on the issues. They don't have to agree with you on very many of the issues - they can say that they don't agree with you on all the issues, but they respect your ability to spit it out.
That is why Lieberman is such a liability to the party. Try to present a unified front on Iraq, and Lieberman will write in the Wall Street Journal shilling for the Bush administration. Try to explain why Social Security is such a good thing to preserve, and Joe Lieberman will waffle around on it. Try to explain why the filibuster is so important, and Lieberman will gut it through the Gang of 14. Try to run Howard Dean, a man who would have offered a clear alternative to Iraq, and Joe Lieberman will accuse him of being in the warm spiderhole of denial.
Every time we have tried to offer a clear alternative to the Republicans, Lieberman has fought us every step of the way. The rogue employees above would be considered a liability to the company. In the same way, Joe Lieberman is a liability to the party, and therefore, has to go.
People may ask me why we are focusing on this race when we should be focusing on the Republicans. But that misses the point - Joe Lieberman IS a Republican. What is louder - words or actions? The problem is that Joe Lieberman's actions, and his hiring of Republican consultants and PR people, and his appearances on Glenn Beck and FOX, have shown that he is a Republican. Lieberman may protest his loyalty to the party all he wants. I am sure if I were to catch an employee trying to sell trade secrets to Coke that they would also loudly profess their loyalty to Pepsi. But why should I trust that employee's word, when he has already lied to me once? And why should we trust Lieberman when we only has his word for it that he will continue to caucus with the Democrats?
There is a reason why people like Ben Nelson did not get primaried out, and Joe Lieberman did. The reason is that Nelson did not repeatedly stab us in the back by going on FOX News and second-guessing other Democrats. He did not write an editorial to the Wall Street Journal, smooch Bush, appear on Glenn Beck, or say one thing to one group of people and another thing to another group of people.
There is another reason why Lieberman must go. If I were CEO of Pepsi, I cannot tell my people one thing and then have my assistant CEO tell them something totally different. Lieberman's deal to end the filibuster for judges would be like that rogue assistant taking seven of his fellow execs, cutting a deal with seven Coke execs, and saying, "The big shots can't solve these wars - let's all get together and make a deal of our own." In the same way, we can't have two different people act as Senate Minority Leader. But the fact is that we do. You have Harry Reid, who is trying to set the direction for the party and explain why we are different than Republicans. You then have veterans like Lieberman, who have a leadership role in the Senate, define themselves as a Moderate. So, a freshman like Ken Salazar, who wants to be a Moderate, sees Joe and says, "Look!" No wonder we have him voting with the administration on so many different things - he thinks that is the "Moderate" thing to do, thanks to Joe Lieberman. And then, he wonders why the real Moderates are so upset.