Another Reason Joe Lieberman Should Not Stay a Senator

Some of Lieberman's spear-carriers get nastier:

New York Observer: Mr. Lieberman’s supporters have come to suggest that much of the burgeoning liberal opposition to his candidacy is motivated by anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiment.... Dan Gerstein, a political consultant and informal advisor to the Lieberman campaign... says he has detected what he calls a “growing strain of anti-Semitism on the far left,” which he believes is in part fueling the strident opposition to Mr. Lieberman....

[L]iberal bloggers say that the anti-Semitism charge is just a feint to draw attention away from the broad and increasingly well-disciplined opposition to Mr. Lieberman among the party’s grassroots. “There is a suspicion that the blogs are not challenging Lieberman for the reasons they say they are,” said Ezra Klein, a writing fellow at The American Prospect who has been critical of Mr. Lieberman. “That it is indicative of some larger and more pernicious influence. It’s a little bit harder to say that these are a bunch of liberals who have gotten organized and don’t like Joe Lieberman.”

Ezra Klein responds:

TAPPED: AM I AN ANTI-SEMITE? Possibly. I am, after all, quoted in a New York Observer article hinting that there's more to blogger opposition of Joe Lieberman than meets the eye -- namely, a deep seated revulsion towards Zionism (death to the infidels remix). Not to kvetch over this, but that's a meshugina interpretation of the primary. When Jason Horowitz called to ask me about anti-Semitism's influence in the blogosphere, my first response was similar: Say my name, real slowly, and then ask again. To posit that the land of Glenn Greenwald, Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias, Max Sawicky, and Lindsay Beyerstein carries some grudge against Jews is a bit rich. And that doesn't even approach the veneration for Paul Wellstone or the support for Russ Feingold.

What my quote was actually saying, before it got chopped off, was that it's a pleasant fantasy for certain self-righteous elements of the party to recast this battle as a brave war for religious tolerance rather than an ideological and tribal confrontation over one man's repeated abandonment of progressivism. To brush off the stones and arrows flung by the bigots, after all, is both easy and heroic -- it's more of the Great Man myth peddled by the same folks who got us into Iraq because simply chasing down some isolated terrorists wasn't grandly historical enough for them. To face up to a war gone wrong, the inherent hollowness of reflexive "centrism," the psychological oddities of a Democrat who seeks all his praise amongst Republicans, and the simple truth that this blogger insurgency has found a powerful resonance within the Connecticut electorate would require a much more honest and searing reassessment on the part of Lieberman's backers. Better, rather, to pull out the kill card and shut down the conversation through fatuous accusations of anti-Semitism...