"Republicans also sought to use the Lieberman loss as an opportunity to drive wedges in the Democratic base — following White House advisor Karl Rove's strategy of energizing conservatives while trying to make certain Democratic voters question whether they should vote with their party. . . ."

"The Republican response Wednesday was highly coordinated, tightly matching a set of GOP talking points distributed to activists and strategists. The effort also paralleled an internal strategy memo, first reported by the Los Angeles Times, that laid out the party's intent to mobilize its base for the election by highlighting Bush's actions in Iraq and the notion that Democrats were weak in their approach to 'foreign threats.'"

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Rep. Sandy Levin (D-MI) join Campaign for America's Future co-director Roger Hickey and Democratic pollster Guy Malyneux to participate in a teleconference discussing "the risk the midterm elections pose to the future of Social Security." The conference call begins at 11:30 am ET.

"Democrats Back Lamont in Race in Show of Unity," New York Times. LINK

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Michael Barone writes that the Connecticut primary reveals that the "center of gravity" in the Democratic Party has moved, from the "lunch-bucket working class that was the dominant constituency up through the 1960s to the secular transnational professional class that was the dominant constituency in the 2004 presidential cycle." He also writes that the core constituency of the Democratic Party wants to "stand aside" from the global struggle against "Islamofascist terrorism." He also uses the presence of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton by Lamont's side on Tuesday to suggest that the Democratic Party is "not necessarily on the side of Israel."

"Cheney: Nutmeggers egg on Al Qaeda," New York Daily News on the Republican response to Sen. Joe Lieberman's loss. LINK

Voter Anger That Cuts Both Ways

By David S. Broder

Rep. Chris Shays, the Connecticut Republican whose seat is a target for the Democrats this year, told me the morning after the primary that he is supporting Lieberman and thinks he can win a three-way race against Lamont and the weak Republican challenger, Alan Schlesinger. Other prominent Republicans are also poised to back Lieberman and raise money for him.

In the primary, Lamont found his most prominent support on the far-left flank of the Democratic Party. His organization was a hand-me-down from the Howard Dean presidential campaign, bolstered by a blizzard of Internet blogs from outside his home state. His roster of visiting campaigners was uniformly of the same political slant -- notably Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Rep. Maxine Waters of California.

the novice candidate will have an opportunity -- and an urgent need -- to moderate his stance and attempt to broaden his base.

DeLauro told me that Lamont has to be "more than an antiwar candidate" and that he has to balance his calls for an early withdrawal from Iraq with other positions that demonstrate that he and his party understand the need for a robust military and a commitment to oppose terrorism.

Bill Richardson, who is coordinating the party's effort in the 36 gubernatorial races this year, told me this week that he thinks the Iraq issue "will spill over" into those contests, adding two or three points to the Democratic side.

The opposition to current policy in Iraq is building -- and so is dissatisfaction with a Washington that seems to be drowning in partisanship and incapable of breaking its policy gridlock on immigration, energy or health care. The protests are coming from both the right and left, but the greatest frustration is among the broad swath of centrist voters who feel they have no voice. In this environment, incumbents of neither party can feel safe.

Joe Lieberman: Well, I think it's time for somebody to break through the dominance of both parties by the margins of the parties, which happens in primaries. I think it's time for somebody to break through and say, Hey, let's cut out the partisan nonsense. Yes, I'm a proud Democrat, but I'm more devoted to my state and my country than I am to my party. And the parties today are getting in the way of our government doing for our people what they need their government to do.

In the middle there is growing unease with the paths we're on. On the left there is a rising spirit of "Down, tear it down."

People who watch politics tend to think charges like this are dead as Tom Joad. They think such populism has been washed away by prosperity and subsumed by high employment. I don't think so. I think this issue hasn't even arrived yet.

Personal ties and gratitude aside, a newly elected Joe Lieberman, free of the constraints of the Democratic Party, might be a much more reliable supporter than an independent Republican moneybags with a lot to prove.

He's going to distance himself from his own success and point an accusing finger at the two parties that control Washington. Tone will be important here. He has to critique as if from a distance, but without bitterness, with a balance of good nature and conviction. And he'll have his surrogates go at Mr. Lamont personally: How nice to be a rich nincompoop who has finally found his existential reason for being in entering politics. But what does he have to offer but a grab bag of resentments?

If Mr. Lieberman can persuasively position himself as an outsider--as a famous independent, aligned with neither of the reigning roving gangs--he could win.

This is a potentially powerful route for Mr. Lieberman to take--a break from both major parties, a declaration of personal independence, a canny attempt to take advantage of the growing intraparty frustrations that are rising in both parties, and an attempt to get out from under what is Mr. Lieberman's biggest problem, his insiderism, the sense that he helped create the reality that has today's voters feeling pessimistic and frustrated.

Who was our senator when a cabal of globalists removed America's furniture in the middle of the night? The shoe factories gone, the making of things over, America's steel mills a memory, real jobs for real men--change that to real "people"--removed so we can all sit in plastic cubicles and BlackBerry with Bombay? Paint Mr. Lieberman as a globalist-establishment-sophisticate more at home in Davos than Danbury.

The disagreement between Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice is over the ramifications of U.S. support for Israel's continued offensive against Lebanon. The sources said Mr. Bush believes that Israel's failure to defeat Hezbollah would encourage Iranian adventurism in neighboring Iraq. Ms. Rice has argued that the United States would be isolated both in the Middle East and Europe at a time when the administration seeks to build a consensus against Iran's nuclear weapons program.

Instead, Ms. Rice believes the United States should engage Iran and Syria to pressure Hezbollah to end the war with Israel. Ms. Rice has argued that such an effort would result in a U.S. dialogue with Damascus and Tehran on Middle East stability.

Ms. Rice has garnered support from several senior Republicans on the Foreign Relations Committee, including chairman Sen. Richard Lugar. Members of the inner circle of Mr. Bush's father, the former president, have also been advocating for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon, with subsequent pressure on Israel for a diplomatic settlement with the Palestinians.

Ms. Rice's biggest supporter has been Brent Scowcroft, who served under the first Bush administration as national security advisor. Sources said Mr. Scowcroft, regarded as Ms. Rice's mentor, has been sending messages to his friends in Congress and the White House that U.S. support for the Israeli war could jeopardize relations with Gulf oil suppliers, particularly Saudi Arabia.

The sources said Mr. Bush's position has been supported by Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and to a lesser extent National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. They have urged the president to hold off international pressure and give Israel more time to cause strategic damage to Hezbollah as well as Iranian and Syrian interests in Lebanon.

French pranksters incite auto accidents
Newest twist in wave of mayhem created to film and post on the Internet.

U.S. pours millions into mercenary army
'Runaway use of secret companies'; $320 million to Blackwater in 2 years.

That's certainly what Lamont was telling Connecticut voters yesterday, in a message on his Web site: "Your vote will determine the national headlines tomorrow: 'Connecticut Democrats show support for war, President Bush' or 'Democrats in Connecticut foreshadow national call for accountability in Iraq.' Your call."

And here's a New York Times editorial : "The rebellion against Mr. Lieberman was actually an uprising by that rare phenomenon, irate moderates. They are the voters who have been unnerved over the last few years as the country has seemed to be galloping in a deeply unmoderate direction. A war that began at the president's choosing has degenerated into a desperate, bloody mess that has turned much of the world against the United States. The administration's contempt for international agreements, Congressional prerogatives and the authority of the courts has undermined the rule of law abroad and at home.

R. Jeffrey Smith writes in The Washington Post: "The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a war crimes law that would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel for humiliating or degrading war prisoners, according to U.S. officials and a copy of the amendments. .

"Common Article 3 is considered the universal minimum standard of treatment for civilian detainees in wartime. It requires that they be treated humanely and bars 'violence to life and person,' including murder, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture. It further prohibits 'outrages upon personal dignity' such as 'humiliating and degrading treatment.' And it prohibits sentencing or execution by courts that fail to provide 'all the judicial guarantees . . . recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.' . .

The problem: France wants to incorporate some ideas proposed by Lebanon and the Arab League, but the United States is only interested in what Israel wants.

The Associated Press reports: "U.S. Rep. Howard Coble, a close ally of President Bush, said the White House should admit that U.S. mistakes have plagued the post-invasion occupation of Iraq.

" 'Candor is not a sign of weakness,' the 11-term Republican from Greensboro said Monday. 'People in my district who stood in line to vote for President Bush aren't happy about Iraq.' "

(Cheney) The rhetorical questions: "Do critics of democracy believe we would be significantly better off with the reign of an Arafat? Do they believe that Iraq, which consists of a freely elected, multiethnic government whose leadership is fighting terrorism instead of supporting it, was better under Saddam Hussein than it is now? Do they believe that it was better to have the Taliban control Afghanistan, not Hamid Karzai? Do they believe we should support more repression within Arab societies?"

The false choice: "In the words of President Bush, 'The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.' Those who disagree with him must believe, by the power of their own logic, that continued tyranny is the route to a better world. The president has a fundamentally different view, and his remarkable effort to promote human liberty and American security sets him apart from his critics."

"Meeting in Hawaii, the policy-making body for the world's largest organization of attorneys endorsed the findings of its bipartisan task force, which last month issued a unanimous report portraying signing statements as an unconstitutional power grab by presidents. Under the Constitution, the report said, presidents have only two options when presented with a bill Congress has passed: sign it and enforce all its components, or veto it. .

It's hard to know what to make of today's airplane bomb hysteria, which is one reason I haven't written about it so far.

Or it would have such implications, if the official story were essentially true. One can choose one's degree of paranoia here, since the only information sources about the plot are the police and intelligence agencies involved, plus the political spinmeisters.

Are we dealing with professionals or amateurs here? Or is it a little bit of both, plus a healthy dose of hype from a couple of guys (Bush and Blair) who right now can use all the hype -- and raw, adrenalized fear -- they can get?

Maybe what matters most isn't the credibility of the plot -- using whichever meaning of the word you think most appropriate -- but the fact that five years after 9/11 British society apparently contains a large (and growing?) number of young Muslim men who would like to kill as many Americans as they can whenever and wherever they can.

In his post, Juan Cole cited recent poll results showing that 13% of all British Muslims surveyed think last year's London bombers are religious martyrs, while another 16% think their ends were justified even if their means weren't. That's almost 30% -- of a population of 1.6 million.

Given Holy Joe's record, I guess he's talking about things like abolishing habeas corpus, greasing the skids for right-wing zealots to take control of the Supreme Court, screwing lower income Americans on bankruptcy reform, cheering Bush's faith-based GOP patronage program, and, of course, invading Middle Eastern countries based on trumped up evidence of non-existent WMD, and then mindlessly backing the neocon cabal's prosecution of the war until it's far too late to do anything about it.

Them's some principles, Joe.

Special post-primary ration of Joe Lieberman bullshit:

When you constantly criticize the war, even after it's over, even after the world is so much safer with Saddam Hussein gone and the people of Iraq have a chance for a better life, you send a message of softness on defense," he said.

Fox News
Lieberman Calls Dem Opponents Soft Spendthrifts
July 25, 2003

I'm not whining about the unfairness of it all: I'm old enough to know that all is fair in love, war and "transactional lobbying." But I do see it as yet another example of the increasingly impermeable bubble that America now lives in -- a kind of virtual reality in which the government, both political parties and the major media tacitly agree to ignore threatening facts or uncomfortable contradictions if recognizing them would upset the "mainstream" consensus. And America's alliance with Israel is a cherished part of that consensus.

This mindset can generate some textbook cases of double think. The Washington Post Magazine, for example, recently ran a long article by its former Jerusalem correspondent, Glenn Frankel, which spent paragraph after paragraph describing the Israel lobby's power and influence -- and then smeared professors Mearsheimer and Walt as borderline anti-Semites for criticizing the power and influence of the Israel lobby.

The thing is, when a charge like anti-Semitism is repeated, over and over, high and low, to cover everything from David Duke's poisonous rants to the mildest criticisms of the Israeli war machine in action, it inevitably starts to lose its sting. If you've got any intellectual courage at all, you begin to think: I'm going to be accused of anti-Semitism no matter what I write, so why not write honestly, and let the readers decide who's telling the truth?

I mean, why should the correspondent from Ha'aretz get to have all the fun?

Next, Jon Chait expresses some skepticism over Brooks's enthusiasm for the prospect that a McCain-Lieberman ticket would raise taxes and lower benefits:

Wait a second — does David Brooks now agree that tax hikes as well as spending cuts are necessary? Funny, I can't recall him mentioning that belief a single time during the last five and a half years while Republicans have relentlessly moved in the opposite direction. Kind of odd that he's held back his view on the number one domestic policy question of the Bush presidency.

Finally, Matt Yglesias notes that on the most important issue of the day, McCain and Lieberman are the farthest thing you could imagine from "centrist":

Are there any Republicans whose national security views are clearly more hawkish than McCain's? I can't think of any. For that matter, are there any Republicans whose national security views are clearly more hawkish than Lieberman's? I can't think of any either. Of the politicians who seem to have clear convictions on the topic, these are, I think, the two leading militarists in the United States Senate.

A HIGHER POWER....Did you know that Bush family fixer James A. Baker III is busily beavering away on a task force to figure out what to do in Iraq? It's not exactly a secret (the New York Times wrote about it here), but I sure hadn't heard about it until I read "A Higher Power," featured in our current issue:

Since March, Baker, backed by a team of experienced national-security hands, has been busily at work trying to devise a fresh set of policies to help the president chart a new course in — or, perhaps, to get the hell out of — Iraq. But as with all things involving James Baker, there's a deeper political agenda at work as well. "Baker is primarily motivated by his desire to avoid a war at home — that things will fall apart not on the battlefield but at home. So he wants a ceasefire in American politics," a member of one of the commission's working groups told me.

Specifically, he said, if the Democrats win back one or both houses of Congress in November, they would unleash a series of investigative hearings on Iraq, the war on terrorism, and civil liberties that could fatally weaken the administration and remove the last props of political support for the war, setting the stage for a potential Republican electoral disaster in 2008. "I guess there are people in the [Republican] party, on the Hill and in the White House, who see a political train wreck coming, and they've called in Baker to try to reroute the train."

I was flipping through the channels briefly this evening and caught Sean Hannity saying that if the Connecticut primary race had been held next Tuesday rather than yesterday, Lieberman probably would have won.

Lieberman's complicity in the Bush Middle East crusade in addition to a startling lack of compassion for the victims of this war on all sides and introspection about the mistakes made has contributed to the worsening of our situation abroad, has undermined America's stature and capacity to influence world events, and has helped fuel terrorism

My friend Michael Tomasky who is editor of The American Prospect said on WNYC's "The Brian Lehrer Show" last night that this race was an anomaly -- no real impact on other races. I disagree with him. Whether Lieberman wins or not running as an Independent, this successful insurgency has powerful symbolic impact regarding the "defining character and policy objectives" of the Democratic Party.

As Tomasky has written and said before, the Democratic Party needs to revitalize itself and needs to sort out what it wants to be during its next phase. Topping Joe Lieberman is a vital part of that revitalization.

There’s an overwhelming consensus among national security experts that the war in Iraq has undermined, not strengthened, the fight against terrorism. Yet yesterday Mr. Lieberman, sounding just like Dick Cheney — and acting as a propaganda tool for Republicans trying to Swift-boat the party of which he still claims to be a member — suggested that the changes in Iraq policy that Mr. Lamont wants would be “taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England.”

In other words, not only isn’t Mr. Lieberman sensible, he may be beyond redemption.

There is also a fear that jihadists involved in other plots may decide to attack quicker than otherwise, because they fear those arrested yesterday may inform on them, or because they fear the authorities are about to arrest them.