As Joe Lieberman campaigns for John McCain and steps up his criticisms of Barack Obama, he faces a growing wave of counterattacks from liberal commentators.
Jonathan Chait takes aim in the current issue of the New Republic:
There’s hardly any sense in which Lieberman is an independent figure. He’s become a cog in the Republican message machine. He may be independent from liberal bloggers, but the conservative equivalent–partisan shouters like Sean Hannity–are his treasured pals. Lieberman even continues to embrace lunatic preacher John Hagee–whose many daft ideas include his belief that the Holocaust fulfilled God’s will–even after John McCain repudiated him.
Lieberman explains that he calls himself an “independent Democrat” because the Democratic Party’s foreign policy ideals “exist in me today independent of the current Democratic Party, which has rejected them.” This is a wildly egocentric interpretation. Democrats started questioning the war because the war was going badly, while Lieberman remained–to borrow a phrase–in a spider hole of denial. Most supported him in his 2006 primary fight but then endorsed the party nominee when he lost, because that’s what political parties do.
And Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo.com has posted a video commentary on the prospects of the Senate Democrats dumping Lieberman after November:
