The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

Words matter. Labels matter. Although it has become vogue to say, "Voters are tired of labels" they remain powerful. How we define the meaning of those labels is critical. Those of us who call ourselves "liberal" have learned this the hard way. As a liberal activist who slogged, blogged and endured, I find myself reflecting about the word "liberal" and the abuse it's absorbed with Obama's inauguration less then three weeks away.

It seems like only yesterday I volunteered for the Dukakis campaign in college as my candidate defensively denied he was a liberal. At the time voters associated the word "liberal" with convicted rapists. In the last days of the '88 campaign, Dukakis finally declared himself a liberal and attempted to define it on his own terms. Alas, it was too little too late.

As a blogger I get invited to many political events Now as a parent and scientist I can't make many of them, but I still meet more candidates and politicians than the average voter. So I hear lots of political speeches. Usually, since I am meeting similar minded people, I like the speech. But only occasionally do I find the speech to be dead on and exemplary of what ALL Democrats should be shouting from the top of every hill. Things like: Liberal IS patriotic, pro-Choice IS pro-life and marriage equality is about nothing but fairness. Oh, yeah, and how about we have to get out of Iraq. This is what I heard from Steve Harrison, a fairly traditional man running for Congress, and I would like to introduce you to him.

New York City has only one Republican Congressional Rep, Bush Lap Dog Vito Fossella. This guy opposes securing America's ports, flip flops on privatization of Social Security, and has voted to support Bush's Iraq quagmire at every opportunity. Fossella has voted the Bush Republican Party line more than 90% of the time. Hence his designation as Bush Lap Dog. Steve Harrison is the man who can defeat Lap Dog Fossella and actually represent New Yorkers.

Today's Washington Post editorial by E.J. Dionne correctly identifies the reason Lieberman is being successfully challenged for his Senate seat.

"The opposition to Lieberman is motivated by an effort to reverse the trend to the right. It's true that Lamont's campaign has been energized by widespread opposition to the Iraq war and the fact that Lieberman has been one of the most loyal Democratic defenders of President Bush's Middle East policies.

But Lieberman's troubles are, even more, about a new aggressiveness in the Democratic Party called forth by disgust with the Bush presidency -- an energy comparable to the vigor that a loathing for liberalism brought to the Republican right in the 1970s and '80s.

Like the earlier generation of conservatives, today's Democratic activists are impatient with accommodating the powers that be. They demand that Democrats stop trying to chase a "center" that has veered ever rightward since 1980. Instead, they want to haul that center back to more progressive terrain. That's why so much of the political energy in Connecticut seems to be with Lamont."