Matt, where does this come from?  If you mean the opposite of liberal wishy-washy "geniality" (love me love me I'm a liberal), well I can think of a number of other modifiers like clear, forceful, principled, no-bullshit, over-it,sink-or-swim, take-no-prisoners and those eternal media favorite, tough/macho/frontier-manly.  Words are important, and frankly bitterly to me is a waspish old queen railing against, well, everything as in every gay film character in through the '50s.

As for Maher (Ann Coulter's good buddy), jgarcia pretty much nails it.

Gotterdammerung

I suspect that Gellman, like Holy Joe and clearly the Bush gang, encouraged Olmert into his, to put it mildly, aggressive response to Hizbullah.  Like Iraq for the US this has turned out to be an unmitigated disaster for Israel, showing the true limits of its power.  The myth has been shattered.  How can Gellman & Lieberman and the rest consider themselves true friends of Israel when they (from their safely distant perches on the other side of the Atlantic) encouraged Israel down the path of folly.  The repercussions of this fiasco, like Iraq, will haunt us & Israel for years to come.  The Arabs have a proverb something along the lines of "Time is long and I"m behind you all the way."  Unfortunately these 2 military disasters have encouraged them in that belief with the result an increased instransigence in their position, to say nothing of having made fundamentalist Shiites, for gods sake, triumphant in both Iraq and Lebanon.

Another great post, Matt.  You've nailed the rot at the center of the Democratic Party, and why it's so easy and resonates so well when the Republicans and Media claim the Democrats don't stand for anything.

We saw it in Connecticut where the entire Democratic leadership to say nothing of the media try to rescue their good buddy Joe.  Of course, no one's around to ask Clinton, Schumer, Dodd and all the rest about how they've screwed us by narrowing Lamont's margin of victory.  Their own problems vis-a-vis control of the Senate are now worse than ever through their lack of forsight (can we say stupidity) and loyalty to a very disloyal insider vs loyalty to the party.

By standing up for Lieberman, when if they had any integrity they would have at best helped him out by just keeping quiet and letting CT play out, they showed that principles stand for nothing -- Iraq, no big deal; Cheney energy bill; no big deal; Schiavo, no big deal; Alito, no big deal; multiple appearances on Fox to denounce other Dems, no big deal; editorials denouncing Dems in the Wall St Journal, no big deal.  

And now Lieberman is unleashed with all the Rovian talking points that his media buddies will allow him to spew ad nauseum without stop until November in no small part thanks to the actions of the entire party leadership.

And they say we don't stand for anything.

Flailey, I suspect you live in Manhattan; outside the now, come on admit it, boring whitebread Manhattan there is massive displacement going on thanks to Bloomberg's subsidizing these goddam luxury condos that are going up everywhere.  I'm in Queens and and this excema of wealthy whites looking for adventure and a good bargain luxury condo has spread to my neighborhood (Long Island City).  Brooklyn, fogeddaboutit.

Frankly you sound a bit like Lieberman with your citing the civil rights protest credentials of your mother...do you really feel so guilty about your present stance to go that far back?

When we suffered the recent black-out Bloomberg was MIA, and when he surfaced it was only to congratulate his fellow CEO at ConEd....give me a break, the fucking Red Cross was out on the streets of Queens due to Republican (supported by Pataki & Bloomberg) deregulation.

No, Bloomberg has clearly come out and said New York is a luxury entity and if you can't afford it, tough.  And through tax breaks like those for Ratner, he's actually diminishing the housing stock by encouraging the construction/conversion of multi-family buildings into single floor luxury lofts and the like.

And you know what -- it's (not so) slowly killing off what makes New York great.  No offense intended but rich white people simply aren't that interesting and don't generate a whole lotta culture -- they're consumers of culture, not creators.  Look at the East Village, sorry, boring frat city these days, Williamsburg boring trustafarian.  

Bloomberg has this vision of New York as a city of rich, well-behave white bankers, lawyers, media folks and like and as is his right is implementing that vision.  Endorsing Lieberman is logical, after all none of the people he knows have kids dying in Iraq, none are being displaced, none having problems with not having insurance, none thinking how they can get their kids to college when they're paying 50% of their income in rent.  

Matt's post is, imho as a New Yorker, is spot-on.

The response to the Sharpton vs Clinton question is simple -- next time he simply has to say that he's a Democrat who will support the Democratic nominee whoever that might be, unlike his opponent.

I know it's hard to respond rationally when confronted with late 20s Germany type campaign disruptions, especially for WASPS from Greenwich (no slams please I'm only neutrally highlighting the culture Lamont grew up in), but he needs to keep the basics in mind to defuse incidents like this.

Exactly, Paul.  The man who really ran Texas govt under both Richards and Bush was the conservative Dem power-broker Lt Gov Bob Bullock. Constitutionally the Queen of England has about as much power as the Gov of Texas with all the "cabinet" and judges elected and the Leg all-powerful.  The Lt Gov runs the Senate & really holds the strings of power.  Still Richards did try to set a new tone & rubbed Bullock the wrong way; it's no secret he much prefered working with Bush who was completely pliant & Bullock actually govern.  The unusual structure of Texas govenment was pretty much overlooked by the media in 2000 (gosh, just a bit complicated I guess) but those of us familiar with it knew that Bush was entering the White House with zero governing experience.

Nonetheless, Gore would have swept the election had he made it about Texas, where the saying is Thank God for Mississippi (as the two states are almost always in the bottom 5 in education, the environment, health care, poverty etc etc).  Gore should have warned (correctly as it turns out) that Bush intended to turn the US into Texas, and just what a disaster that would be for the country at large.