Lamont

A few months back, the brilliant and flawed David Brooks said that blue/red was giving way to a new divide in American society that would play out in ideology and partisan politics: globalist interventionist elites on one side, populist isolationist realists on the other. Hillary Clinton v. Chuck Hagel.

I was reminded of Brooks's great insight watching a panel yesterday on C-Span of a December 8 conference at Yale on the Senate battle between Lamont and Lieberman, won by the wily Lieberman.

The panel was marked by a vituperative exchange between Liebermanite Lanny Davis, late of the Monica wars, and Lamontite Bill Hillsman of North Woods media, the populist genius behind Jesse Ventura. When Hillsman, wearing a striped western shirt, with his gut spilling proudly, called Lieberman a great liar who lacked independence, Davis in his blue suit became agitated and started yelling at the other panelist. When Hillsman accused mainstream Democrats of "sandbagging" Lamont by holding off on information and aid—in essence, dithering over its commitment to the official party nominee—Davis became apoplectic and prosecutorial. "Name names," he kept shouting. A former Connecticut Democratic party chair (whose name I didn't get) then named names, saying that Chuck Schumer and Bill Clinton had vacillated. Davis got even angrier, saying it was hearsay.

A good show. And it hardly mattered that the campaign was 6 weeks old. The wound is raw. David Brooks is dead on.

A few comments.

1. Brooks is an exponent of the globelites (as I am of the isopops); and let's be clear, his elite truly is an elite right now: it's a tiny minority. How many people maybe want to invade Iran? Or continue to rationalize the invasion of Iraq as a smart idea? Show of hands, please. Yet this elite is behind the wheel.

2. Brooks is our most sociological pundit, god bless him; but he is given to indirection, and he did not have the cojones to throw in my favorite metric, Jewishness. Lanny Davis is a classic arrived Jew; he broke ground in the 90s (along with me and Brooks and all the other Jewish meritocrats) and flowered in the establishment under the philosemitic Clinton. I have to assume Davis's view of Israel is diaspora-nationalist. Like the views of the Jewish financial heavies who left the Democratic party to stick with Lieberman. Like the views of Senator Lieberman's new in-law, Harvard's Ruth Wisse (rhymes with Weiss), a Jewish particularist to a faretheewell.

3. One of Brooks's professed idols is the late E. Digby Baltzell. The Penn sociologist will be forever famous for coining the term "WASP" in the 60s to describe the then-ruling elite. Forty years later, Brooks came up with his own acronym to describe the new elite: Bobos (for Bohemian bourgeois). Baltzell's acronym stuck, Brooks's is fast fading. Why? Bobos lacked WASP's sting. Bobos was a soft, lifestyle metric: Latte drinkers of the information age. By eliding the Jewishness of the new elite—and yes, Jews are just a component of the establishment, but a significant one—Brooks fell painfully short of his model.

Let's honor Baltzell's great work. In naming the WASPs, he turned on his own people, deriding them as a "caste" that was holding on to status—which Baltzell defined then as corporate exec positions and club memberships—in defiance of the talented. The elite must represent the true talents of the society, Baltzell said. Who were those talents? Jews, he said; brilliant Jews, lamentably camped in "gilded ghettoes," outside the establishment. Let them in! thundered the assimilationist Baltzell. And America did. Baltzell was blunt about the role of religion in elite culture; his 1964 classic was titled, The Protestant Establishment.

In Brooks's book Bobos In Paradise, there are countless reference to WASPs, as the bad old order. 12 lines in his index for WASPs. 0 for Jews (who are only glanced upon in the text). I know why Brooks doesn't want to talk about Jewishness, let alone turn on his elite. He worries, as many of my intellectual friends do, about the pogroms that will take place in Des Moines the minute the media elite say what any boob watching CSpan accepts: Jews are an empowered group, and deservedly.

J'accuse. By maintaining silence on this important matter that is close to their hearts, these journalists have violated their American oath: to inform the people.

As Brooks showed, and the Lamont-Lieberman debate confirms, this is a huge and important divide. Inasmuch as the globelite cannot admit that the war in Iraq was a tragic error, at a time when midstream America has come solidly to that conclusion, the elite is growing estranged from public opinion, and thereby violating Baltzell's democratic principle, that it's OK and necessary to have a ruling elite, but it must be representative. This divide plays out in terms of the Jewish presence in American public life. The Jewish leadership is globelite all the way. It is more implicated in the disastrous Iraq decisionmaking than the realists, and less implicated in the war's grimmest consequences (there are more Buddhists than Jews in the armed forces, as I reported). Lamont/Lieberman was one wedge. Now comes another: Talk to Syria. Any realist will tell you we have to do that; the (largely non-Jewish) Iraq Study Group said so too. But Jewish leadership is against it. Bush will be too—next year. To be continued.

Running as an independent has offered Joe Lieberman the advantage of broad, bi-partisan voters. The downside, of course, is that his name doesn't appear until way down on the ballot.

Dan Gerstein, Lieberman's spokesman, says that 1,200 volunteers have been dispatched to outside polling stations to hand out information to inform voters know where to find the Senator.

He said that some anecdotal feedback he has heard suggests that voters already know where Lieberman's name appears.

"It looks like that message got through," he said.

He said that the campaign's latest internal polls show Lieberman ahead by about nine points. But, given the tempestuous nature of Connecticut politics, he conceded that anything could change.

"If certain things go Lamont's way," he said, "we could lose this race." --Jason Horowitz

Today's Quinnipiac poll shows Joe Lieberman leading Ned Lamont 53-41 among likely voters, and 49-38 among registered voters.

Also worth noting: 62% of Republicans have a favorable view of Lieberman. Only 39% of Democrats feel that way about Lamont.

-- Azi Paybarah

In his column yesterday on the Lamont victory in Connecticut, Times columnist David Brooks took up his new cause—saving the Democratic Party—and said that Joe Lieberman, and not the "net roots," has the wisdom to see that "The civilized world faces an arc of Islamic extremism that was not caused by American overreaction, and that will only get stronger if America withdraws."

Withdraws? From what? The word "Iraq" never appears in Brooks's column. It used to be that he diminished Iraq as a "single issue." Now it's no issue at all.

P.S. Those on the left who gave Lamont his victory are also concerned about the "arc of Islamic extremism." We differ in that we think Iraq is hugely important: a catastrophic error in foreign policy that has filled the terrorist swamps.

After Lamont's acceptance speech last night, some of the people we have been speaking with have questioned the Lamont campaign's wisdom of positioning Al Sharpton directly behind Lamont just as he introduced himself as the Democratic nominee. Surely, they say, he realizes that he has to win a general election now.  read more »

Are they right?

-- Jason Horowitz

Also in the Observer this week, Jason Horowitz looks at the bad week Joe Lieberman had trying to motivate -- or even locate -- Democratic supporters in Connecticut.

And Steve Kornacki writes about the unusual phenomenon of ideological primary challenges in the Democratic Party.

It's going to be interesting, now that Lamont is the nominee, to see how enthusiastically Lieberman's Democratic colleagues in the Senate actually work against him.

Chuck Schumer's DSCC is already decked out for Lamont, and it's probably fair to assume that all of the other Senators who promised to support the winner are going to follow suit.

It looks like Lieberman will have the support of one prominent liberal Republican: Mike Bloomberg, whose backing should count for something in a general election.

-- Josh Benson UPDATE: Speaking of support from Republicans, George Stephanopoulos is now reporting that Karl Rove has reached out to Lieberman, on behalf of the president, with an offer of help.

The Times reports Lamont beats Lieberman, Lieberman charges 'dirty tricks' and calls for round two.

The Daily News reports Eliot Spitzer leveled an attack on George Pataki for lack of coherent urban policy.

Andrew Cuomo agrees with the Times Union lawsuit against Joe Bruno and Sheldon Silver for refusal to disclose discretionary spending.

—Nicole Brydson

The Lamont camp is watching the tallies come in and they like what they are seeing. It's still too soon to say, but there is a cheerful chatter in the background whenever a Lamont official picks up the phone. Hotline had Lamont up by more than 10 percent with more than 7 percent reported.

According to one senior official in the campaign, turnout easily topped 40 percent.

We're waiting to hear from Lieberman's office. --Jason Horowitz

According to sources in the Lieberman and Lamont camps, turnout in Connecticut is exceeding 35 percent. Conventional wisdom is that the higher numbers bode well for the incumbent Lieberman, but the Lamont campaign seems convinced that the numbers simply account for voters excited to vote the senator out of office. And as far as the whole Lieberman website goes, it's still down, and now, according to Dan Gerstein, the FBI is involved.

"The FBI has begun to interview people on our staff. They are taking this very seriously," said Gerstein.

--Jason Horowitz

On the campaign trail today, Joe Lieberman engaged in a little retrospective analysis of the campaign even as he remained resolutely forward-looking about his imperiled career.

When I asked him about campaign tactics outside a Stop and Shop in Shelton, he said that "in terms of the campaign, in various ways we let Lamont for too long peddle what I believe were lies about me which began to appeal to people, such as express your anger against Bush by voting for Lieberman, it makes no sense...We let that go for too long without taking it on."

The whole thing, Lieberman said, had provided him with an important lesson -- for his fourth term. Here's what he said he'll do differently in terms of communcating with his constituents:

"Try to get their attention when I am expressing the range of opinions I have about a complicated subject like Iraq. Because I think my opponent and to some extent the media were allowed to simplify my position on Iraq."

Meanwhile, the Hotline blog is reporting reports that turnout is "high and steady" in CT without any voting irregularities, even as the Lieberman campaign continues to allege that the Lamont campaign sabotaged its campaign website.

--Jason Horowitz

If anyone needs any more evidence that the Lieberman vs. Lamont primary is about much more than Connecticut, Kos points out that "the Stamford Advocate breathlessly reports that 70 percent of Lamont's contributors came from out of state, while completely overlooking the fact that 80 percent of Lieberman's did so as well."

We dropped a line to the other guy in the race, Alan Schlesinger, a Republican and asked him where his contributors came from.

"Mine are all in state except for about $1,000," said Schlesinger, 'It's a national race. This is all about big money manipulating the race."

--Jason Horowitz

Today's Times has a good piece about the leftwing rage toward Joe Lieberman for being George Bush's lapdog on the disastrous Iraq policy. Even the Daily Kos has come out for Lieberman's primary opponent, Ned Lamont, who wants Connecticut to be progressive again.

I'm all for Lamont; I want Lieberman and all the other so-called liberal hawks—and the rightwing hawks, too—to sleep in the bed they made for themselves in the thuggish faith that you can impose democracy by force in the Mideast, or anywhere for that matter.

But the article exposes the left's soft underbelly. Withdraw the troops? Well, no. Lamont says he wants the troops withdrawn from the Sunni Triangle immediately, then we should establish benchmarks for their complete withdrawal. The left's leader on the issue, Russ Feingold, says that we should have all troops out by the end of the year. Others talk about an "oil spot" strategy—similar to Lamont's idea, in which Baghdad is secured and then the peace spreads out over the rest of the country like an oil spot on your jeans.

The difficulty is that few on the left have any clear idea what to do. By and large, we feel an American withdrawal would cause more suffering. Myself, I say that the main thing we need to do now, and forcefully, is repudiate our current policy so that we can actually get other countries to help us try and stabilize the place. But is that a policy? Not really.

Believe me, I despise Bush and Lieberman as much as anyone, for the incalculable suffering they brought to a people they've never met, out of a fantasy about their own power and goodness. They should suffer politically for that, and in their dreams. The problem for my side is that the left's only political position is that rage. We hope to milk till November at least, when progressives will be empowered and neoconservative nationalism's back is broken. I suppose we can rationalize the fact that there's no responsibility in that program because we feel no responsibility. Hey, when we said, "Not In My Name," about this war, we meant it.

The moral difficulty is that it places us in a really bad position: hoping for more bad news from Iraq, pulling for the insurgents.

On March 1, 2003, at 12 a.m. Eastern time, 9 p.m.  read more »