My, how times do change. In a blatant ploy for attention declaration of his disapproval of the health care reform plans currently on the table, Joe Lieberman has announced that he will vote against a reform bill that contains a public option—even with an opt-out provision for individual states—and that, if it came to it, he’d likely join a GOP filibuster of Harry Reid’s reform bill.
Yes. Needless to say, many on the left—individuals and news outlets alike—are none too thrilled with Lieberman right now. (“Joe Lieberman betrays his state, party & country,” The Nation editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel Twittered in reaction to the news.) And while there’s been talk, lately, about the questionable wisdom of picking fights with organizations that buy ink by the barrel…equally dangerous, apparently, is finding oneself at ideological odds with organizations in possession of an extensive photo archive.
To wit: notice anything similar about the following stories?
TPM:
Update:
And, FTW…The Huffington Post:
Perhaps the left and the nutroots will run another spectacularly wasteful and meaningless campaign against him in 2012. You know, had the left not been such pricks to Liebermann, he would still be a Democrat.
#1 Posted by mike h, CJR on Tue 27 Oct 2009 at 04:19 PM
He hasn't been a democrat for about a decade. This is the guy who let Michael Brown sail through his FEMA confirmation. The DLC was loyal to him instead of the democratic voters who preferred Ned Lamont. This is how he rewards loyalty.
#2 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 27 Oct 2009 at 11:54 PM
Wall Street
Art students
9/11 snow job
Chicken hawks
Moving company
Propaganda media
DNC stealth neocons
Anti-semitism accusers
The chosen the superior
2-3% of the US population
Extortion blackmail bribery
By deception ye shall wage war
AIPAC's Israel-first dual-nationals
For profit NotFederal NoReserve scam
~ Words are plentiful deeds are precious
#3 Posted by nader paul kucinich gravel, CJR on Wed 28 Oct 2009 at 01:20 AM
@mike h: He is not a Democrat because he lost a democratic primary.
#4 Posted by Dave, CJR on Wed 28 Oct 2009 at 08:55 AM
Keeping the conversation on the journalism, one of the ways the MSM betrays its co-terminus outlook with urban Democrats is the treatment of Lieberman vs. the treatment of Republican 'mavericks'. When McCain was seen as running against his party's rank-and-filers in 2000, he got terrific press. When Sen. Jeffords defected to the Democrats in 2002, he was put on the cover of NEWSWEEK in heroic poses. But when Lieberman dissented from his party on Iraq and won running as an independent in 2006, the press framing was "Why do the Democrats continue to tolerate this guy in their caucus?" (Lieberman still caucuses with the Democrats, Dave, as does "independent" Bernie Sanders. In spite of all the ridicule of conservatives for using the term 'socialist' to describe the Democrats, this primitive-left Vermonter votes exactly as the mainstream of the Democratic Party votes.)
More recently, Olympia Stowe has gotten the MSM treatment - flinty, independent, unbossed, etc. - for bucking her party in the health care machinations. But when a prominent Democrat challenges his party's leadership, the MSM and mainline Democrats are, as is depressingly common, at one in portraying such actions as eccentricities and betrayals.
I don't know if the Washington press has fully internalized this news in its framing and vocabulary, but new Democratic administrations inevitably run into trouble with left-wing overreach, as witness the elections that followed 1964, 1976, 1992. The dissent isn't just Lieberman; moderate Democrats are making Reid and Pelosi look progressively inept, and embarrassing their leader in the White House. The judgement on a mainstream press that still uses The New York Times as its assigment editor is that they never saw this coming, and maybe this is because they listen too much to their urban-Democratic friends and neighbors, while having no real sensitivity to independent, let alone conservative American.
#5 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Wed 28 Oct 2009 at 12:37 PM
As an addenda, this problem with the writers telling us more about their own politics than about the subject at hand is reflected, unfortunately, in Megan's piece. Some of those former GOP politicos - a Senator from Pennsylvania immediately comes to mind - are obviously cynical and attention-grabbing, but their motives are seldom impugned the way a Democrat 'maverick's' are. Or maybe I missed that Megan Garber piece linking to the National Review on the subject of Sen. Spector, or ascribing a love of attention to Sen. Snowe. The MSM is not so much reliably pro-Democratic as it is reliably anti-Republican, and this distorts political reporting.
#6 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Wed 28 Oct 2009 at 12:42 PM