Blue State Warfare

The Washington Post, in their breezy, Style-section feature story about Ned Lamont's bid for Lieberman's senate seat, sees a recipe for a more muscular, Blue State politic in the November mid-terms:

No matter what happens, the Lamont surge looks and sounds like a towel snap at the status quo. This is not merely about the war, say strategists with both camps, but the larger question of what Democrats should do to regain power -- and in the absence of power, how they should behave in opposition. Should they move to the center and accommodate the red-state voters who have sidelined them two elections in a row? Or move to the left and fight, consequences be damned?

Leftward and fight, say a bunch of highly agitated bloggers, who have been pouring their fury into cyberspace and whipping up money and crowds for Lamont.

Bring it.

Because frankly, I'm quite tired of pointing out to my hard-left friends that their politics are out of the mainstream. Let's unleash the contrarian, anti-war, Bush-frantic rhetoric that has previously been contained in the echo chamber of the Kossack blogosphere and see if it will work at full amplitude in a national election.

For too long I've said to these folks things like "I know you and your friends feel strongly about these issues, but you're a loud 20-25% of the country, and you're repelling the rest of us." In response they usually say "How can a smart guy like you support Bush?" Not only is this wrong, it misses the point to such a spectacular degree that there isn't much more to say. (With us or against us, I guess.)

Democrats are polling very well in many races. It's possible they'll have a strong showing in November and re-take the Hill. But a victory might be pyrrhic if it's viewed as an endorsement of the bottled-up ferocity and unhinged rhetoric of the lefty blogs. The politicians who are swept into office may overreach so massively with impeachment hearings and so forth - not to mention a foreign policy agenda that doesn't amount to anything more than hollering "Not!" at anything uttered by the administration - that backlash from the public will be felt within two years, in time for the presidential.

So let's do the experiment, and see if this hardcore lefty ideology can win an election and govern the country.

Update: Some supplementary linkage. One of the Kossacks is convinced that, according to CBS/NYT polling numbers, the rest of the country is behind them all the way. And over at the Huffington Post it's apparently considered funny to have a laugh at Lieberman's expense using offensive racial stereotypes.

Update 2: The Huffington Post item has been edited, obviously after complaints. It had included a picture of Clinton with Joe Lieberman, doctored such that Lieberman appeared to be wearing minstrel-show 'blackface'.