Ouch! Lanny Davis smacks down the hard left

It’s a clash of the hard left and the more ‘moderate’ wing of the Democratic party, as Clintonista Lanny Davis sticks it to Lamont’s hardline supporters (try to ignore his blatherings about the right wing):

Now, in the closing days of the Lieberman primary campaign, I have reluctantly concluded that I was wrong. The far right does not have a monopoly on bigotry and hatred and sanctimony. Here are just a few examples (there are many, many more anyone with a search engine can find) of the type of thing the liberal blog sites have been posting about Joe Lieberman:

Ò€’ “Ned Lamont and his supporters need to [g]et real busy. Ned needs to beat Lieberman to a pulp in the debate and define what it means to be an AMerican who is NOT beholden to the Israeli Lobby” (by “rim,” posted on Huffington Post, July 6, 2006).

Ò€’ “Joe’s on the Senate floor now and he’s growing a beard. He has about a weeks growth on his face. . . . I hope he dyes his beard Blood red. It would be so appropriate” (by “ctkeith,” posted on Daily Kos, July 11 and 12, 2005).

Ò€’ On “Lieberman vs. Murtha”: “as everybody knows, jews ONLY care about the welfare of other jews; thanks ever so much for reminding everyone of this most salient fact, so that we might better ignore all that jewish propaganda [by Lieberman] about participating in the civil rights movement of the 60s and so on” (by “tomjones,” posted on Daily Kos, Dec. 7, 2005).

Ò€’ “Good men, Daniel Webster and Faust would attest, sell their souls to the Devil. Is selling your soul to a god any worse? Leiberman cannot escape the religious bond he represents. Hell, his wife’s name is Haggadah or Muffeletta or Diaspora or something you eat at Passover” (by “gerrylong,” posted on the Huffington Post, July 8, 2006).

Ò€’ “Joe Lieberman is a racist and a religious bigot” (by “greenskeeper,” posted on Daily Kos, Dec. 7, 2005).

And these are some of the nicer examples.

One Sunday morning on C-Span I debated Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel on the Lieberman versus Lamont race. Afterwards I received a series of emails–many of them in ALL CAPS (which often suggests the hyper-frenetic state of these extremist haters)–that were of the same stripe as the blog posts, and filled with the same level of personal hate.

But the issue is not just emotional outbursts by these usually anonymous bloggers. A friend of mine just returned from Connecticut, where he had spoken on several occasions on behalf of Joe Lieberman. He happens to be a liberal antiwar Democrat, just as I am. He is also a lawyer. He told me that within a day of a Lamont event–where he asked the candidate some critical questions–some of his clients were blitzed with emails attacking him and threatening boycotts of their products if they did not drop him as their attorney. He has actually decided not to return to Connecticut for the primary today; he is fearful for his physical safety.

Scary, eh?

Moreover, the support he gets from these haters should not be attributed to Mr. Lamont–nor should he be blamed for their extremism, bigotry and intolerance. But he ought to denounce them. He hasn’t as yet.

That’s not telling the whole story, though. It’s not that he just hasn’t denounced them. He denied having an association with them. Which was a outright lie.

Davis’ omission of that little factoid aside, it’s nice to see a prominent member of the Democratic party acknowledge in so many words what an increasingly wide number of party faithful have become: enraged, foaming-at-the-mouth, anti-war, military-despising, hate-Bush moonbats. Davis was just too nice and PC, apparently, to actually use those words. I, only the other hand, don’t feel bound by any such PC restrictions :)

More: In related Lieberman news, the Associated Press has declared today, and rightly so in my view, that the Lieberman race today will be the one to watch, along with the McKinney/Johnson runoff in Georgia. The direction of the Democratic party is, IMO, on the line today.

Oh, did you catch this piece from the WaPo this morning? They’re trying to spin frustration with Lieberman as dating back to issues dating back further than his support for Operation Iraqi Freedom. While I’m sure there was a degree of frustration, Democrats felt their disagreements with Joe Lieberman ‘tolerable’ – the Iraq war has changed all that, obviously. It’s a sin to stick by your decision on supporting “Bush’s war” and Joe may very well pay the price for that today.

Update: ST reader Karl at Leaning Straight Up appropriately titles his post on the topic: Liberal Epiphany: Bigotry and hate aren’t just for right-wingers anymore

Others blogging on this: Michelle Malkin, Don Surber, Joe Gandelman, Ankle Biting Pundits, Powerline, Blue Crab Boulevard, Liberty and Justice

Regarding today’s primaries/runoffs: Mary Katharine Ham has a comprehensive list of what primaries to watch, and how to stay updated on them via the web.


PM Update: Joe Lieberman’s campaign site has been hacked. Click here to find out the details.

I’m swamped right now, but will be back later to discuss the primary results as they come in and update with any new info related to the hacking incident.

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