Unmitigated Gall Department
I see that Al Sharpton is denouncing the Lieberman campaign for its flyer that tried to make an issue out of Ned Lamont’s membership in a snooty, presumably lily-white Greenwich country club. Sharpton, who’s endorsed Lamont, complains: “This country club stuff reminds me of how people smeared Bill Clinton. It’s ironic that they have a picture of Clinton on the cover of the flyer.”
Actually, what’s ironic is that Sharpton would bring up the fact that Clinton was once “smeared” with “country club stuff”–since it was Sharpton himself who did the smearing.
Yet another reason to be for Lieberman – Sharpton is against him…
Mark, that flyer is awful. The phrase “I didn’t pay as much attention to that before the race began, to tell you the truth”. “THAT” in that sentence isn’t referring to race IN GENERAL (which is what the statement “He didn’t pay that much attention to race” above it implies), it’s referring to race in the specific instance. It’s a stupid flyer to say “oh, yeah, that’s a good flyer, I’ll endorse that”. Page 1 was fine. If he left it at that, no big deal. It’s a stupid move. I don’t care necessarily who wins, but Joe is acting like a little bit$h.
Ordinarily, I’d consider this type of attack below the belt, but because of the dynamics of this campaign, I think its appropriate. Here’s why:
It seems pretty clear that, but for Lieberman’s position on Iraq, there would be no primary challenge to his campaign. But for whatever reason, Lamont’s supporters don’t want to admit this, so they have concocted this fiction that its about deviations from the party throughout his career. But since Lieberman has been a very loyal Democrat outside of foreign policy (and school vouchers), Lamont has been forced to play up votes that were extremely minor, symbolic and/or actually supported by other Democrats at the time.
As a result Lieberman is being pillored as insufficiently pro-choice because he opposed the filibuster of Samuel Alito (which 29 other Democrats did) — even though he voted against confirmation, Lieberman is criticised for his environmental record despite a lifetime 95% rating from environmental groups, and Lieberman criticised for bashing Clinton for his personal transgressins (while acquiting him of any impeachable offensive) when most other Democrats followed his lead (and, in so soing, salvaged the 1998 midterm elections from a potential disaster to a surprising success). Since playing up of minor and/or symbolic party deviation is acceptale for Lamont, why not for Lieberman, who seems to be doing nothing more than ripping a page from the Lamont/ Kos playbook.
The flyer is fairly silly, so I’ll half-agree with Mike. On the other hand, I can’t imagine that anyone doubts that Lamont is a really unserious Senate candidate. He didn’t pay attention to the exclusiveness of his rich-boy country club until the election? Even without Lieberman mucking up the message, that’s still a shockingly idiotic thing to say.
Ryan, I’ll half agree with your half agreement. I think it’s him admitting that once he decided to run he had to think long and hard about any appearances he may have been giving off. Which is akin to saying “Oh, I hadn’t really noticed it was an “exculusive” club in the race sense, but now that you mention it there are indeed few black people around here”. I don’t think it’s a silly thing to say, per se, but I can see how it could be construed as silly.
You don’t see how that’s silly? He didn’t decide to pay attention to the groups he was associating with until he decided to run for the Senate and image mattered?
“I can’t be bothered to care about racism, but I can’t have anyone actually know that about me!”