By challenging the useless idiots in primaries:
The Democratic Party is never going to change substantively and again become a reform party with a serious agenda until some of its blood is spilled in the same fashion. For years, incumbent Dems have distanced themselves from fundamental convictions, confident the party’s “base” wouldn’t do anything about it beyond whimpering. Until now, the cynicism was well founded. Galvanized by the war, disgusted with weak-spined party leaders, the rank-and-file may at last be ready to bite back.
The fuse was lit for Lieberman a few weeks ago, when MoveOn.org let it be known that the web-savvy organization will support a challenger if that’s what its Connecticut members decide to do. “Our first allegiance is to our members,” explains Tom Matzzie, MoveOn’s Washington director, “and they are just as frustrated with the Democrats as anybody else. So they’ve given us the charge to change the Dems, and we’re taking that very seriously.” Politicians and media learned to respect MoveOn in 2004, when it proved its ability to organize people and money.
The center-right senator, meanwhile, is practically taunting the party’s loyal voters with his extreme embrace of Bush and Bush’s misbegotten war. “What a colossal mistake it would be,” Lieberman lamented recently, “for America’s bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will.” Party leaders in DC–Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean–all took shots at him. Rumors started that Lieberman must be fishing for a job in Bush’s Cabinet.
A showdown in Connecticut–rank-and-file voters versus the big money bankrolling the party–would provide a fabulous test case, sure to attract maximum funding from Lieberman’s patrons in business and finance. The prospects for denying him the party nomination in the primary look encouraging, Matzzie says, citing private polling he won’t discuss. Voters are bitter about Iraq but also about Lieberman’s toadying to corporate interests. If the senator gets past the 2006 primary, he would still be deeply wounded and vulnerable for the general election. It’s too early to know whether a viable Democratic challenger will emerge, but the search is on. Lowell Weicker, the much admired former governor and senator, has proclaimed that if nobody else of stature will take on Lieberman, he will do it in the general election as an independent. Weicker, a maverick and liberal Republican, has the stature to pull it off, though a three-way race might backfire by splitting the anti-Lieberman vote.
Democratic leaders in Washington naturally discourage the talk of insurgency, warning it could endanger the party’s chance of regaining a majority in the House or Senate. Some progressives doubtless agree. But this is the same logic- -follow the leaders and keep your mouth shut–that has produced a long string of lame candidates with empty agendas, most recently John Kerry in 2004. The strategy of unity and weak substance led Democrats further to the right, further from their most loyal constituents. And they lost power across the board.
MoveOn doesn’t believe in kamikaze politics, Matzzie says, and won’t get into the race unless local members are committed and have a plausible challenger. “We have to make sure we can back up our swagger,” he says, “so it’s not just talk.” Other antiwar forces are less cautious than MoveOn, more willing to support long-shot candidates and at least deliver a message to the hawks. Progressive Democrats of America, with activists across the nation, is pushing antiwar resolutions in state party organizations and searching for viable peace candidates. In California activists are shopping for a primary challenger to Senator Dianne Feinstein (antiwar heroine Cindy Sheehan has been approached). A candidate was lined up to run against House minority leader Nancy Pelosi until Pelosi got religion and endorsed Representative John Murtha’s call for speedy withdrawal. In New York a little-known labor activist, Jonathan Tasini, plans to run against Senator Hillary Clinton.