Debating over a corpse?(on the right)(Joseph Lieberman's political tale)

New York, July 11

EYES do not wander from the race in Connecticut, kicked off by a debate between the incumbent, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, and the challenger, Ned Lamont. Commenting on the race, David Brooks, a seer and a columnist for the New York Times, has ventured that it foretells what may be a remarkable divide. If Lamont beats Lieberman, the message to voters across the U.S. will be that the Democratic tent is on an exclusivist roll. None may feel at home in it who tolerated, let alone encouraged, the war in Iraq. It challenges the imagination to wonder what will be the political declamations at the Democratic convention in 2008 if the Democrats are to be the party that kicked out sitting senator Joe Lieberman six years after he was named their vice presidential candidate, notwithstanding that 90 percent of his Senate votes have been with his party, opposing President Bush.

A close study of the transcript of the July 6 encounter brings to mind the sad state of debate between candidates of the same party. Here they were, together for one hour, and divided, really, on only the issue of whether our military venture in Iraq a) should be terminated by fixed schedule, and b) was worthwhile to begin with. The challenger, Lamont, didn't spend much time on how we should never have got into Iraq to begin with. This was so because manifestly he didn't want to appear a statue of indifference while Lieberman went on about life under Saddam Hussein. Lamont's refrain is about Getting Out, not about how We Should Not Have Got In. In 1972, the Democrats were in terrible shape. The Vietnam War was just about done, but retrospective regret that it had ever been undertaken could not be expressed except as regret that LBJ had been president during the years in which the pursuit of a free Vietnam had been U.S. policy. What happened politically was a Republican victory in 49 states. If Lamont succeeds in discharging Lieberman as an unacceptable Democrat, voters by the millions ...