Sen. Joe Lieberman's political future is on the line in the Connecticut primary today, and it looks like he's got a very tough race against Ned Lamont. According to Cokie Roberts, the doyenne of ABC's "This Week," electing Lamont over Lieberman would be a disaster for the Democrats; it would mean that the anti-war faction of the Democratic Party has taken over, and, harking back to a previous generation, look what it did for them in 1968 and 1972. Martin Peretz says it's a "dream come true for Karl Rove."
The problem with that logic, as Glenn Greenwald points out, is that a pretty sizable majority of Americans -- Democrats and Republicans -- believe the war in Iraq is a disaster and do not want to "stay the course."
It is virtually impossible to see how this war will ever become more popular, but easy to see how it will become more unpopular still. Under the circumstances, opposing this failed and unpopular war appears to be anything but political suicide. To the contrary, emphatic opposition to this war is, far and away, the Democrats' strongest political weapon. The war in Iraq, from start to finish, belongs to Bush and his unfailingly loyal Republican congressional allies. Strong, clear Democratic opposition to the war will enable Americans to use the 2006 election to express their anger over this war. For those who live in a world of facts and reality and not a self-contained Beltway bubble, a referendum on the deeply unpopular war is one that Democrats will win decisively.So if electing Ned Lamont means that the Democrats have shifted "to the left," then it would appear that in terms of the war in Iraq, so has most of the country.
