Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

The phone bank experience also taught me something very important about those who identify themselves as ‘Independent” voters.  The label has nothing to do with the reality. The majority of calls to these voters resulted in conversations with bitter, belligerent, hard-line right-wing nuts.  Their “issues” included one-off screeds against gay marriage, non-whites, gun control, taxes, and religious freedom for anyone but their own religion.  Nor were these people even remotely self-conscious of the supreme paradox their claim of independence coupled with their unquestioning conformity to the status quo represented.

Other Connecticut bloggers have commented that their time trying to attract independents might have been better spent attempting to talk reason to Republicans.  I agree. In Connecticut, true Republicans have more in common with Democrats than so-called independent voters do.  And in saying this I am not in any way inferring that the two parties are the same – merely that the two parties exercise more sanity than the uncompromising extremists do.  Based on the voting results, Republicans and Democrats in Connecticut are simply more likely to intelligently split their votes than the hard-core segment of independents I talked to did.

Connecticut Democrats and Republicans will vote for character first while Connecticut independents tended to hopelessly glue themselves to uncompromising positions on single, polarizing issues that are often logically entangled with other equally polarizing issues. 

The archetypical politician that Democrats and Republicans may nominate are not so much divided by partisan differences but by their matrix of positions that clash with the magic issue absolutists.  Lieberman and others refuse to acknowledge or recognise this and continue to insist that partisan politics is the problem in Washington.

As a practical matter, even though Lamont lost, Joe Courtney managed a victory in the second congressional district thanks in part to Lamont’s position.  The dual effect of new Democratic voters and disenchanted Republicans who supported Lamont’s message of hope resulted in a winning margin of less than two hundred votes for Courtney in a contest still being recounted.

However, the Courtney victory is a worthwhile contest to examine.  Contrast Lieberman’s victory margin with Courtney’s and you can see that Lieberman was not elected because voters approved of a pro-war or pro neocon agenda.  If that logic were to hold then Rob Simmons, Courtney’s opponent, would have won as well.  Simmons and Lieberman campaigned as political twins united by a mutual admiration of George Bush’s diseased politics.  If voters favored their shared positions, Courtney would not be the new congressman for the 2nd district.  This is an important point.

Those who celebrate Lieberman’s victory as a triumph of the right or a reaffirmation of Lieberman’s political veracity are mistaken.  Lieberman has been exposed as a Mini-me court jester for Bush’s deflated administration.  Today, he speaks for special interests only no matter what badge he pins on himself. 

And his constituency is little more than misguided Connecticut Republicans who think winning an election is the same as electing a man of integrity and Connecticut special interests that were willing to sell their votes and political souls for the implied promise of a kickback.

David Sirota’s wrap-up of the Lamont campaign is an excellent analysis.  As we look forward to the 2008 election let’s refine our campaigning techniques to reinforce the progress that this election cycle has ushered in.  And let’s remember to honor and celebrate Lamont’s emergence as a national inspiration toward enlightened Democratic leadership.