Hawky Joe and the Naderites

The revolution will indeed be televised, analyzed, and blogged ad nauseum between here and November, and probably until 2008. Ned Lamont is the unlikely standard bearer, a rich schlep who happened to be standing around when hardcore anti-war Democrats needed a candidate who would meet their highly orthodox criteria for going up against Hawky Joe in the Connecticut nomination ballot. Now that the “hard-to-left” political tactic has been validated we can expect fireworks leading up to the 2006 mid-term elections. Raw disgust for George W. Bush and contempt for interventionist foreign policy have a new gust of political oomph, and Cindy Sheehan is out on the dance floor showing off her moves.

Of course, Ned Lamont only won the nomination. Now his views will be scrutinized, and even the most ardent antiwar Democrats may be forced to admit that this guy has the right ideology on paper, but lacks substance. If the citizens of Connecticut wanted a seasoned defender of their interests on the senate floor and in the cloakroom – what they got in Lamont might have be more of a nice haircut and a stuffed shirt. He can nevertheless be counted as ‘yes’ vote for impeachment.

But where does this leave Hawky Joe?

The old centrist isn’t going away. He’s running as an independent.

This creates a moral dilemma for a certain swath of our domestic political tapestry – the hardcore indie-rock socialists and Greens who have previously yelped and dickered over the lack of choice between the political parties. Back in the days of Nader a high-minded ideology emerged that maintained that voters deserve more choices in the form of third party candidates. The media should have less say in which candidates are elected, and the voice of the people should be heard over the wishes of fixers and insiders who otherwise govern the political process.

The jury is out on whether Lamont was delivered to the doorstep of the electorate by insiders in “the media”. The newfangled ‘netroots’ - the bloggers and Blackberry-wielding upstarts – they certainly played a role in the Connecticut race. They share one common feature with bloggers on the Right – they want ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’ status depending on what suits them at the given political moment. The extent of their influence will be hotly debated, since the answer has such a large potential impact on the how, in the future, politics are done in America.

But another question persists: Will the most vocal advocates of third party “choice” have the slightest amount of sympathy for Hawky Joe? People like my friend Andrew Warner regularly make an impassioned defense of independent candidates – and the time-honored principles of civil liberty - defending our right to express even opinions that others find reprehensible (such as, for example, defeating terrorism). Joe Lieberman has been set aside by his political party and is now running as an independent. He is without question a conservative on foreign policy - and everyone forgets the issues about which he is liberal, since the war is the only issue that matters. He may not be what the Greenies have in mind when they express their principles, but he’s an independent just the same.

In the next three months there will be many, many pundits, politicians and commentators in both public and private who will be urging Joe Lieberman to drop out of the Senate race. That should be very familiar to the hardcore Naderites who spent the last two elections getting harangued by their Democratic friends. Will any defenders of choice stick to their principles and support Hawky Joe’s right to stay in the game, or does the hardscrabble polemics of the antiwar cause trump everything else?

This article has been cross-posted to the Cincinnati Beacon, which always features lively debate in the 'comments' section.