The Aftershock Begins

I just was over at Michael Barone's blog and found out that blogger Brendan Loy is abandoning the Democratic Party as a result of Ned Lamont's primary victory over Joe Lieberman. Here's some tasty snippets of Brendan Loy's wrath:

But regardless of all that, the hard reality is that the voters have spoken, and their message was loud and clear: there's no longer room for Joe Lieberman in the Democratic Party. And alas, tonight's result will reverberate through the November elections and into the 2008 presidential campaign. It's really much more than just a single primary in a single state; it's a shot across the bow of moderate Democrats everywhere. And so, whatever further ramifications this result might have, there's one thing it definitely means, one result that is officially cast in stone, as of today:

I am no longer a Democrat.

As you read Brendan's post, (It's must reading, IMHO) keep this in mind: What the extreme left has done is tell moderates that they aren't welcome in the party anymore. The impact of this will be big this fall. It'll be huge in 2008. I don't see this as automatically bringing disenchanted Democrats into the GOP, though some definitely will make the switch. Where there's a noticeable shift, I suspect, is in reliably red states, making those states redder. It also might affect states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, which could easily flip into being red states.

Democrats don't consider Lieberman a Democrat anymore. That's the cold, hard truth of today's results. He's been kicked out of the "big tent" because his loyalty wasn't blind enough, because his conscience wasn't pliable enough. He's been replaced by the shiny new millionaire who said all the right things to win over the hearts and minds of the netroots. The war in Iraq is wrong, wrong, wrong; President Bush is bad, bad, bad; and Joe Lieberman is a traitor, a traitor, a traitor. That's the undeniable message that Democratic voters from my home state have sent out across the land this fateful day.

It's a sad day when the Joe Liebermans and Brendan Loys of the world feel ostracized and alienated from the Democratic Party. I sincerely doubt that Scoop Jackson, Hubert Humphrey, JFK, FDR and Harry S. would recognize today's Democratic Party. I sincerely doubt that they'd caucus with them, either. Why should they? Their brand of patriotism wouldn't be welcome in the Nutroots Party.

Brendan's right on the money when he talks about the Nutroots gang as Bush-haters, the extension of which is hating anyone who agrees with President Bush.

This might seem like an overreaction to a single primary result in a single state, but really, it's just the straw that broke the donkey's back. As I said, the Democratic Party and I have been drifting apart for some time now. I believe it began on a Tuesday morning in the fall of 2001; I can't exactly remember the date, but let's just say a certain catastrophic event happened which changed the world in the eyes of most people, but not of many liberals and Democrats. Oh, they were sad and mad, just like everybody else. But as the weeks and months wore on, I learned to my dismay that the far left didn't see 9/11 as a world-changing event or a paradigm shift, but rather, just a minor historical blip that didn't require any adjustments whatsoever to their worldview or their policy ideas.

Brendan's distress is obvious. He'd worked hard to make the Democratic Party a 'big tent party', only to have the Nutroots gang tell him that they didn't want a big tent, that they wanted a pure tent. Shame on them for holding that view.

That's how you become a minority party for a generation.

Stop past Brendan's blog and read the entire post.

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Posted Saturday, August 12, 2006 1:53 AM

July 2006 Posts

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