Yet again, it is all about Lieberman:Foxnews asks "Will Connecticut senator's independent run help embattled GOP candidates?"

Joe's response? "Well, they should have thought of that before they had the primary."I have watched the video, which is difficult to stomach and which I will not reproduce here since it is Faux News, and there seem to be two ways to read this quote. One reading would be that Lieberman thinks that instead of voting their conscience, Democratic primary voters should have instead capitulated to his threats to leave the party. The other reading is that the party establishment, which gave their complete support to Lieberman during the primary, should never have allowed the primary to happen in the first place. Either way, Lieberman clearly views his run as revenge against Democrats for actually engaging in party democracy. So, either voters should be swayed through threats, or votes should not be allowed to take place. No matter which reading is accurate, Lieberman's sheer disdain for democracy is overwhelming. As far as he is concerned, democracy is only useful as long as it allows you to remain in power, and now he is just a tough parent punishing bad children who actually had the gall to vote for someone else. This is pure, arrogant, aristocracy, through and through.

Connecticut Blog has more on Lieberman's arrogance

This needs to be done, for reason I will explain in more detail later on. For now, it is good to know that some Democrats in DC are looking into it. If this Connecticut for Lieberman nonsense actually takes place, they better follow through:A group of Senate Democrats is growing increasingly angry about Sen. Joe Lieberman's (D-Conn.) campaign tactics since he lost the Democratic primary last week.

If he continues to alienate his colleagues, Lieberman could be stripped of his seniority within the Democratic caucus should he defeat Democrat Ned Lamont in the general election this November, according to some senior Democratic aides.

In recent days, Lieberman has rankled Democrats in the upper chamber by suggesting that those who support bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq by a certain date would bolster terrorists' planning attacks against the U.S. and its allies. He also sparked resentment by saying last week on NBC's Today show that the Democratic Party was out of the political mainstream.

Democrats are worried that Lieberman may be giving Republicans a golden opportunity to undermine their message.

"I think there's a lot of concern," said a senior Democratic aide who has discussed the subject with colleagues. "I think the first step is if the Lieberman thing turns into a side show and hurts our message and ability to take back the Senate, and the White House and the [National Republican Senatorial Committee] manipulate him, there are going to be a lot of unhappy people in our caucus." The Lieberman camp wants Democrats to ignore Connecticut at all costs. This is probably because he is now the de facto Republican nominee and is going to run on a strategy designed to win Republican votes using Republican money and Republican support and then still take Democratic committee seats. Yeah, that seems fair. He has already made clear that he will do this by trashing Democrats around the country, and refusing to denounce Republican attacks that work in his favor.

In order to put an end to this trashing of our own party and for the Democratic nominee in Connecticut to win, we are going to need a lot more pressure on Lieberman from the Democratic establishment. Specifically, once he is certified on the ballot as the Connecticut for Lieberman candidate, and all challenges to his signatures have been dropped, we are going to need the Democratic leadership in the Senate to strip him of his committee assignments. As exit polls showed, the remaining Democrats and Independents who are supporting Lieberman are doing so because of his "experience." Stripping him of his committee seats would end that, and deal a crippling blow to his campaign without costing the DSCC a single dime. That would be a perfectly justifiable move because he is running against the Democratic nominee, because he is trashing every Democratic from here to kingdom come in so doing, and because we have precedent. Specifically, Frank Lautenberg did not regain his seniority when he re-entered the Senate in 2002. Considering that, why should Lieberman be given special treatment for leaving the Democratic Party and then actively trying to undermine it? Actions have consequences, and the price for ignoring the will of Democratic voters, and then trashing the Democratic Party for your own benefit while simultaneously feeding at the Democratic Party seniority trough must be made clear. If Lieberman wants to run on his own, then he should be forced to get seniority on his own. Party seniority is earned through consistently receiving the endorsement of the will of Democratic voters, and Joe Lieberman has lost that. The second Lieberman is certified as the Connecticut for Lieberman candidate, it is time that he is only allowed Connecticut for Lieberman seniority.

You better believe there will be more on this later.

William Beutler on Chuck Pennacchio:Right here at MyDD though, Chris Bowers is backing Pennacchio, even though he acknowledges he can't win. (I don't begrudge Chris the ideological stand, but it still strikes me as misdirected energy -- after all, Democrats are nowhere near becoming a pro-life party.)AnthonySF on the Connecticut primary:I've said before that trying to oust Joe Lieberman in a primary is a slight waste of resources when there are other races around the country (Montana, Rhode Island, Missouri) that need urgent attention.Hillary Clinton today:"Progressive blogs beat up on Republicans and other Democrats, while conservative blogs beat up on Democrats and progressives." As we all know, there are many other examples of this line of thinking popping up in Democratic circles this year. There are many people who claim that the progressive movement is wasting resources that could go to fighting Republicans by running primary challenges against other Democrats.

This is a flawed way of thinking. It is based on the assumption that the people who donate to, volunteer for, and create buzz on behalf of Democratic candidates / progressive causes will give a fixed amount of resources no matter what those candidates do and how those causes are run. That simply isn't not true, and even though many people like William Buetler and Hillary Clinton talk as though it is true, they know it is not true. If there were really a fixed amount of resources available for Democratic campaigns and progressive causes, there would be no need for any campaign to hire any fundraising staff. Instead, each campaign would simply receive its automatic, fixed share of resources via a single, one sentence reminder to donors, volunteers and progressive media, and then move forward.

Obviously, that is absurd, and isn't the way it works on any campaign. In order to raise money, all large campaigns hire fundraising staff, make contracts with direct mail vendors, build donor databases, send out fundraising emails, and make sure the candidate conducts significant call time. The reason campaigns do this is because everyone knows that in order for people to donate their money, their time, or their creative juices to a campaign or cause, they need to be convinced that the campaign or cause is worth it. This is why direct mail pieces are drafted and edited multiple times. This is why street and door-to-door canvassers are trained on their pitch every day by progressive organizations. This is why the candidate is often asked to deal personally with the large donors. Campaigns know that the better job they do convincing activsts that their campaing is worthy, the more resources they are likely to receive.

Those who argue that primaries are a waste of money ignore how activist participation within the Democratic primary process is an important means of convincing many progressive activists that the Democratic Party is worth fighting for and being active in. Whenever a progressive activist participates in a Democratic Party primary, that necessarily means that the activist now cares about the direction Democratic Party itself. In the long run, it can only help the Democratic Party to have more activists who care about the party. If more and more activists are convinced that the Democratic Party is something worth fighting for, in the end primary challenges will actually generate far more resources for Democrats than they will drain.

Since 2003, I can think of several movement candidates who have caught the national eye, including Howard Dean, Christine Cegalis, Ned Lamont, and now Jerry McNerney. Starting with the only example form the previous election cycle, can anyone seriously argue that Howard Dean's 2004 Presidential campaign drained resources from the Democratic Party? Since saying that you helped Howard Dean raise $50 million online is one of the easiest ways to secure a job as a Democratic staffer in D.C. these days, I doubt there is anyone in D.C. who would make that argument. Further, can there be any doubt that Howard Dean's campaign was one of the main reasons, if not the main reason, that the Kerry campaign was able to raise $100M online during the general election? I don't know of anyone who would make that argument either. As one of the first candidates representing the new progressive movement, Howard Dean brought droves of activists into the Democratic Party. I was among them. Back in early 2003, I was still a registered as "no party," but now I sit on the Pennsylvania State Democratic committee and help raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Democrats. Carol Jenkins, my fellow committee person in Ward 27, Division 23, was also re-energized by the Dean campaign, and now she is our new Ward Leader.

Movement candidates running in Democratic primaries are one of the best means of convincing many activists within the new progressive movement to care about the Democratic Party on both a national and local level. This is why Ned Lamont's primary campaign, especially if he wins, will generate more resources for Democrats nationwide than any other Democratic campaign this electoral cycle. Instead of draining Democratic resources, this campaign will do what the party committees and the congressional leadership have generally struggled at in 2006: inspire a large segment of the activist base into fighting full-force for Democrats in 2006. Best of all, people will be inspired to act through positive means (actually caring about the Democratic Party) rather than negative means (simply being anti-Republican). The same can be said about the campaigns of the other candidates I mentioned, although in a more localized context.

Of course, if Lieberman bolts the party and then Democratic leaders decide to throw the principle of party democracy out the window and endorse someone other than the Democratic nominee, then we will see a major waste of resources. That would be the single best way to drain resources from the party in advance of the elections this fall, since it would be the single best way to convince tens of thousands of progressive activists to stop caring about the Democratic Party altogether.

Jeez, can anyone in Washington actually wait for a primary to even start before declaring a winner? From Washington Whispers, via Political Wire:We know, we know, the race for the White House is a long way off. But there is already a growing buzz on the Democratic side that there are just three worthy candidates likely to end up in a pitted primary battle starting in 19 months: New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold, and one-term ex-Virginia Gov. Mark Warner. Here's the 411 from a top Democratic maven: Clinton is the, well, elephant in the room, the "uber" candidate; Warner gets the mainstream moderates; and progressive Feingold is attractive to the activists who seem to be taking over the party. I am not going to disagree that some candidates who are running seem highly unlikely to gain real traction. Bayh, Biden, Daschle, Dodd and Vilsack all seem to be trying to compete with Hillary Clinton on the same terms as Hillary Clinton. That is not going to work. You simply are not going to defeat Clinton by trying to be Clinton through soaking up party support and large donors (see my post on this from last year). In a different vein, I also have a very difficult time seeing Kerry as viable again. He has done virtually everything right over the last eight or nine months, and yet he still does not seem to be gaining any traction.

However, I can still see paths for people other than Clinton, Warner and Feingold. Edwards is the most obvious--he is actually leading the only Iowa poll and has the highest favorable ratings of anyone making serious noise about running (both offline and online). This is not even to mention that unlike just about everyone else, he has a real narrative--two Americas--through which he can articulate his political philosophy and his policies.

Also, with a new western state caucus before New Hampshire, rising Latino political power, and connections running deep in the party throughout the country, I think it would be foolish to discount Bill Richardson. General Clark probably still has a chance too.

This is not even to mention two Democrats who are not currently making much noise about running: Barack Obama and Al Gore. In the netroots poll and Dailykos fantasy polls, Gore soars about the other twelve contenders. When it comes to the junior Senator from Illinois, Obama is the most popular Democrat in the nation by far, even more popular than McCain. A rock star like that can never be overlooked.

Of course, even apart from the particulars of why the Democratic nomination is still much more than a three-person race, the entire notion of Washington insiders starting whisper campaigns in summer 2006 about the 2008 primaries is part of a larger pattern where neither the political nor the media establishment respects democracy within the Democratic Party. Over the past several decades, the establishment has grown used to a series of in-house benchmarks being the determining factors in viable campaigns: fundraising, media attention, and party endorsements. However, that is not the way things work anymore. Now, it is necessary to inspire the activist base that is growing more and more powerful in Democratic primaries. In CA-11 and MT-Sen, two candidates, McNernry and Tester, fell well behind their rivals in all three of the above categories, yet they still went on to comfortable primary victories because they inspired the local activist base. In IL-06, Cegalis almost defeated Duckworth despite also being crushed in the three in-house categories I mentioned above. And we all know what is happening in Connecticut. Washington does not control the primary process anymore.

Granted, the Washington Whispers column in question did try to take account for the newfound activist power, by noting that Feingold was viable because he seemed to have the support of the activist base. As a Feingold supporter and a member of the activist base that is "taking over the party," I just want to point out that inspiration is fickle and can change rapidly. This time last year, Feingold was in the middle of the pack among the activist base. Jack Murtha went from total unknown online to the favorite netroots member of the House of Representatives. General Clark went from a comfortable lead among the activist base to fall back into the middle of the pack. This far out, there is more than enough time for new candidates to inspire, and for currently inspiring candidates to slide backward. With the power to close out primaries no longer in the hands of the Washington establishment, no one should take anything that has happened at this stage of the primary process as fixed in any way. Anyone can inspire the base if they act properly. Even Hillary Clinton could start capturing the imagination of the activist base if she starts acting differently, or if Bill Clinton, who remains the most popular Democrat of all among the activist base, starts actively campaigning on her behalf. Nothing is set in stone. Not only do we need to wait and see who is running, but we also need to wait and see who can most consistently inspire the activist base. When it comes to that, there are more than just three potentially viable candidates, and to act otherwise is pundit hackery at its worst.