Demagogue

Writing yesterday in the Washington Post, columnist Harold Meyerson shares my annoyance at hearing Senator Joe Lieberman complain that he lost Tuesday's Democratic Senate primary because of "partisan polarization." Meyerson writes:

Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman is as seasoned a pol as anyone can find, but he seems to have forgotten the very purpose of elections.

... "I know I'm taking a position that is not popular within the party," Lieberman told (columnist David) Broder, "but that is a challenge for the party — whether it will accept diversity of opinion or is on a kind of crusade or jihad of its own to have everybody toe the line ..."

... Now, maybe I've had this backward all my life, but I thought that elections were held to enable voters to choose between candidates espousing different points of view on the most important issues.

Lieberman seems to believe that elections exist to enable voters not to choose — indeed, to "accept diversity of opinion."

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Even Connecticut residents who were not single-issue Iraq voters had to be pissed if they visited Lieberman's campaign website in June and took a survey that asked them to choose "which issues are important to you." There was a list of eight issues -- Iraq wasn't even mentioned. But "Cleaning up Long Island Sound" was.

Lieberman was a candidate in major denial.