Joe Lieberman Has a Mark Schmitt Problem...

Mark Schmitt thinks he ought to be a supporter of Joe Lieberman, but cannot bring himself to do so:

My Lieberman Problem -- And Ours | TPMCafe: I ought to be a Lieberman "dead-ender." I've respected him for 30-some years, I don't mind his idiosyncratic positions, I don't demand party loyalty, and I don't insist on any particular position on how to end the war. But I'm not....

[S]omething happened to Lieberman, and it's more than his position on the war. It is not... that he "symbolizes" all the other Democrats who voted for the war.... [I]t's simply his self-righteous anger, his hostility to those who differ. He alone among Democrats seem to think that opponents of the war are not just mistaken, but will cause us to lose. (Just as he alone can continue to describe the choice in the war as "winning" or "losing," as if "winning" were somehow still possible, as opposed to salvaging a bad situation.) He alone would say something like, "We criticize the commander-in-chief at our own peril." And he alone would suggest, as he did to David Broder, that Democrats who criticized Bush on the war were acting from "partisan interest" while he was thinking of "the national interest."...

Is that enough of a reason to oppose Lieberman? Sure, because it's a huge error on one of the most fundamental questions of our time. It's an error not of policy or of political loyalty, but of attitude. And it is not an error that I see others making.... Nor do I accept the argument that if Lamont wins, it represents a "purge" or shows that "there's no place in the Democratic Party" for Lieberman. I value competitive elections. Lieberman's not guaranteed a fourth term in the Senate.... If Connecticut Democrats want a Senator who had the right position on the war, or at least doesn't treat those who did have the right position with contempt, they are entitled to it...

Lieberman's "we criticize the commander-in-chief at our own peril line" is indeed despicable. More despicable, in my view, is his twenty years of anti-Israel rhetoric. It has been obvious since the late 1970s that for American politicians to coquette with the anexationist fantasies of Likud is to raise the chance that Tel Aviv will become a radioactive abattoir sometime in the next half century. Joe Lieberman surely knows this. But he keeps on coquetting. To curry favor and contributions from AIPAC by doing what you can to undermine the long-run security of Israel--that is truly beneath contempt.