Common Sense

The headlines today read “Beware incumbents.” That about sums it up.

The talking heads, though, are blathering and they just don’t really get it. I’ve heard more than one person today say something to the effect that this race will embolden the left in the party. If they had been paying attention, they would realize that the war didn’t have as much to do with Lamont’s win as it would seem. And if that’s all there was to the Democratic primaries, then Cynthia McKinney, who is as liberal as the come and as crazy, lost last night to a much more conservative Democrat in Georgia.

This isn’t a left-right thing. This isn’t a bloggers-establishment thing. This is a status quo versus change thing. And we want change. Lieberman said that “I don’t want these folks to take over my party or American politics.” I added the emphasis there. You know, Joe, bloggers aren’t evil liberal people that came out of nowhere. The people that are taking over the party are the people in the party. It was never your party, it was always ours. You were merely elected to represent us.

That’s the crazy thing about all of this. The people want our representatives to represent us.

Joe can’t handle that. He’s much too selfish. He thinks its his seat instead of the people’s seat. And frankly, fuck him for even being that conceited.

The Republicans are taking the tack one would think. They say its a shame that Lieberman loss because he was “strong on defense.” That loony logic is exactly why Lieberman wasn’t a good representative for Connecticut. Their idea of “strong on defense” has led to a war between Hezbollah and Israel with the knesset a hop, skip and a jump away from shooting a nuclear missile into downtown Beirut, and a war in Iraq where we’re drawing up plans to reduce all of our troops when civil war is officially declared.

The Democratic Party has united behind its new nominee. Almost everyone who has supported Lieberman in the leadership is now behind Ned Lamont. Even Christopher Dodd, the other senator from Connecticut. The only people supporting Lieberman are very conservative Dems and Republicans, who aren’t voting for the Republican.

No, this all boils down to Lieberman wasn’t doing what he was supposed to do. He was supposed to represent our party in Congress, and he didn’t. Cynthia McKinney was supposed to as well, but she was more concerned with herself. We saw it in Texas in our primary, too. Everyone everywhere are unhappy with the way things are. If it was just the whackjob left of the party that put Lamont over the top, then we wouldn’t have seen 43% turnout for a primary in a midterm election year. I men, Prop 2 in Texas only got us 15% turnout, tops.

We’re seeing the rise of real democracy in the United States. The people are speaking for themselves and using new tools to organize and be more effective. The Internet makes their voices travel far and wide. It is a great thing.