And Joe Lieberman "might be" a mouth-breathing trout-sniffer.

I've grown endlessly tired with Harry Reid, with his addicition to pork, his lame little speeches, his incompetence, but his assurances to Lieberman that his committee assignments were safe is beyond the pale. Lieberman is not a Democrat and he should be forced into the Senate basement and left to scrounge assignments from his Republican friends. Hell with that guy.

I live in Connecticut and supported Ned Lamont who defeated Holy Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary.  Well, Lieberman won in the general election, in part by simply lying -- as Orr says by calling himself a "loyal Democrat."  As everyone knows, in this election Holy Joe is supporting John McCain.

On another blog, there is a discussion of what it means to be a chickenhawk.  I think Lieberman certainly qualifies since he now drum beats for war yet managed to avoid service during Vietnam.

One of his closest Connecticut political allies and supporters is my Congressman, Christopher Shays, a self-styled "moderate" Republican, who claims the title even though he is a loyal supporter of George Bush.  Because I think it is urgent that Shays be defeated this fall -- which will among other things set the stage for ousting  Lieberman four years from now -- I'm cutting and pasting below my post from the McCain/chickenhawk blog.

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The most supreme chickenhawk is my Congressman (CT 4th CD) Christopher Shays.

During Vietnam Shays was excused from combat because he claimed that he was a conscientious objector based on religious reasons.

Well, Shays hasn't changed his religion but in the run up to the Iraq War, Shays was one of the most strident cheerleaders for war, citing the danger of weapons of mass destruction.  He still defends his position, and says he would have supported war even if he knew at the time that there were no weapons of mass destruction.

As a youth Shays was either a chicken or a simple minded fool, or perhaps both.  Today he is simply a simple minded fool who pretends to be a "moderate" yet supports Bush/Cheney 80% of the time.

He is being challenged this year by an excellent Democratic candidate -- Jim Himes.  Himes was a Rhodes Scholar from Harvard, a banker at Goldman Sachs turned affordable housing executive, a formidable fund raiser ($1 million cash in the bank as of yesterday) and a solid progressive.  I urge all TNR readers to go to his site, himesforcongress.com, and if you can help his campaign.

You know, the 'esteemed' Senator was BEGGING Obama to come campaign for him in CT, really liked his positions in 2004. What could he possibly have learned, except that he might have a shot at VP with McCain, and he never will with any Dem?

Lieberman may be a self righteous jerk, but, if memory serves, the Democrats got rid of him, not vice versa. Besides, it is totally true that Obama's views are far to Lieberman's left. That, at least, is not hackery on the part of Lieberman. Your readers wouild be better served if you countered the arguments of the likes of Kristol and Lieberman, instead of calling them names.

r-ennis: I'd hesitate to say Lieberman is a warmongering Fascist - "but he’s got some positions that are far to the [right] of me and I think mainstream America."

Is that better?

Leiberman is Harpo to McCain's Groucho.

Dan

Peter: I wondered why the chicken-ninny charge wasn't aggressively deployed against Shays during the 2006 campaign.  Shays went from conscientious objector to war-mongering braggart. (He proudly reported that he was the first member of congress to "follow" the troops into Iraq.)

Still, Lieberman is just as bad if not worse. During that other war of "choice," Vietnam, Joey made liberal use of student deferments. Turncoat Joey had problems with the Southeast Asia adventure, no doubt heightened by his fear of lying face down, shot dead, in a rice paddy.

Let's contrast Lieberman with liberal, Jewish, gilded educational pedigree, Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal. Blumenthal, who, no doubt, probably wasn't eager to serve in Vietnam, enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve, and unlike the Decider, was never accused of missing drills, double-counting make-up drills and refusing to submit to physicals. (An refusal by Bush that apparently didn't meet with any disciplinary action.)

I'm sure the lack of integrity and patent cowardce of Shays and Lieberman will be poo-pooed by the poo-ppoers. But, as Beinart admitted, if a draft was in effect. . .

r-ennis is actually right, if only because the large majority of the Democratic party has views that are "far to the left" of Joe Lieberman.  The irritating part of that quote is that he started to say "I wouldn't call him a Marxist," but then *corrected* "I wouldn't" to "I'd hesitate to," suggesting that he has doubts about it.

Bill Kristol as I read him did not say Obama was a Marxist and Alan SP is right that it would have been better if Lieberman said he isn't ,which he is not, directly. But what Kristol, Will and Krauthammer are saying is that Obama's "cling" remarks smacked of the Marxist notion of false consciousness with a dollop of religioun as opiate thrown in, which notion may be part of some  pointy headed left wing discourse, but which does not commit the notion sayer to being a Marxist.

Actually, Chris, what Lieberman did is worse than you think . Back in 2006, Obama stuck his neck out

He annoys me to kingdom come, but until November he's still our Senate majority, so let's not piss him off more, OK?  With McCain and Obama both Senators, controlling the Senate, and with it the schedule and ability to call votes, is huge.  I'd much rather have Harry Reid tossing curveballs at McCain than Mitch McConnell trying to throw knucklers at Obama.  "Throwing him into the basement" would simply throw the Dems back into it!  Common sense, people!

And what exactly would those positions be?

I wrote a letter to the NY Times in 2006 when he was up for reelection supporting him as a moderate who was willing to cross the aisle and work with Republicans effectively. I had no idea he'd actually stay there. I regret having given him my support.

Chris and Jason 's feeble protests notwithstanding, it looks like Obama is in fact a closet Marxist

BHLnyc,

I concur. When Lamont won the primary, I lamented a shark-jumping point for the Democratic Party. Now it's clear that neither of them had a head of sense. There is only TNR, all by its lonesome self.

Joe Lieberman, fresh from a Fox News appearance smearing Barack Obama --a man whose endorsement he pleaded

Better a marxist than a warmongering, moralizing egotist. Of course, the idea that Obama is a marxist is absurd. Any black man is bound to realize history is a bit more than the story of class struggle.

Jamie, below , expresses his displeasure over a new poll finding that Connecticut voters, if they had