When Bill Comes To Town
Bill Clinton, the Democrat's heavy artillery, went to Connecticut tonight to campaign for Joe Lieberman. To a packed audience, Clinton enthusiastically endorsed Lieberman and damned with faint praise his challenger, Ned Lamont.
WATERBURY, Conn. - Bill Clinton, campaigning to save an old friend from defeat, appealed to Connecticut Democrats Monday to put aside their opposition to the war in Iraq and send embattled Sen. Joseph Lieberman on his way to a new term in office.
Democrats "don't agree on everything. We don't agree on Iraq," Clinton said, calling the conflict the "pink elephant in the living room."
But "the real issue is, whether you were for it or against it, what are we going to do now. And let me tell you something, no Democrat is responsible for the mistakes that have been made since the fall of Saddam Hussein that have brought us to this point."
In a 20-minute speech to a capacity crowd in an ornate theater, Clinton went easy on Ned Lamont, whose challenge gained traction when he accused Lieberman of being too close to Bush on the war and other issues.
"He seems like a perfectly nice man. He's got every right to run and he's waged a vigorous campaign," the former president said.
By contrast, he lavished praise on Lieberman, a third-term lawmaker whose once formidable lead in the polls has vanished.
Clinton said Lieberman has long been a loyal Democratic vote on issues as diverse as organized labor and the environment.
Clinton was greeted with cheers louder than Lieberman received from the audience, and the words "Four More Years" were clearly audible in the crowd.
Lieberman wasn't nearly as deferential to Lamont as Clinton was. "My opponent is peddling what I would call a big lie, and that is I'm not a real Democrat," he said.
And he proudly recalled that Clinton first volunteered to help him in 1970, when he was running for the state legislature in his first campaign.
"I'm in a big fight here," he said more than once during the day, and the polls, the recent addition of campaign staff and the decision to seek help from Clinton were all evidence of that.
The former president wasn't the only nationally known Democrat campaigning for Lieberman as the lawmaker sought to rebuild support among Democrats who long supported him.
Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, an ardent critic of the war, praised Lieberman for his stand on other issues. "If you want to meet a leader on the environment, a leader on all the difficult choice issues, you got one here," she said at a campaign stop at a candy store.
I read some of the blog entries for ardent supporters of Lamont on Boxer's appearance in which they crowed about how they had scored major points against Lieberman and Boxer. They did not to the average voter. They looked and/or sounded fanatical, driven and crude ("I almost shit my pants" is how one video ended.) In one way, it would be amusing to watch the Democrats try to deal with a netroots victory in Connecticut. But it truly would be damaging to the country to have only one viable party. Reasonable struggle between the two parties leads both parties to better efforts I think. Having a fringe element in control would not be a good thing at all. Chasing hawkish Democrats out of the party would be an unmitigated disaster for the Democrats. I don't know if they could recover from it.
UPDATE: Jim at Gateway Pundit saw the same nastiness.
