[Peace-discuss] Obama's support for the right

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Jeff St. Clair writes] So Barack Obama may have been raising
$$ for a Lieberman to run outside the party against an antiwar
Democrat! Why don't anti-war Dems ever threaten to run as Indies?

   Lieberman Won't Rule Out Independent Bid
   By STEPHEN SINGER
   ASSOCIATED PRESS

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - Sen. Joe Lieberman, facing a challenge
from within the Democratic Party for renomination, said Monday
he has not ruled out seeking a fourth term as an independent.

"I have not foreclosed the option," Lieberman said at a news
conference at the Connecticut state Capitol. "If I wanted to
run as an independent, I would. I'm running as a Democrat.
I've been a Democrat all my life."

Ned Lamont, a Democratic activist and anti-war candidate from
Greenwich, is challenging Lieberman for the party's nomination
this year. He has been garnering support from some Connecticut
Democrats dissatisfied with Lieberman's support of the war in
Iraq and his perceived closeness with President Bush's
administration.

The party will endorse a candidate at a convention on May 20.

Lieberman said he is not upset with fellow Democrats for
opposing the war in Iraq. He, too, has criticized certain
operations of the war and the Bush administration's handling
of postwar Iraq, he said.

"I feel very strongly the world is safer without Saddam
Hussein in power. We have to complete the job in Iraq,"
Lieberman said.

He asked that Democrats not solely judge him on the war, but
also his record on the environment, economic development and
his support for civil rights and civil liberties, he said.

Republican Paul Streitz who is seeking his party's nomination
to challenge for the Senate seat, said he would gain if
Lieberman runs as an independent.

"A Republican would win, obviously," he said. "It would split
the Democratic vote."

Lieberman was in Hartford Monday to speak at a conference on
global warming, and his critics also were there.

Keith Crane, a member of the Branford Democratic Town
Committee, stood outside the conference room, holding a sign
that said, "Some of my best friends are neo-cons."

Crane, who said he backs Lamont, will be a delegate at the
state Democratic convention.

"I worked my butt off to be a delegate and he says if he
doesn't get the nomination, he'll be an independent," he said
of Lieberman. "He's not here for the environment. He's here
for the political environment."

Howard L. Reiter, chairman of the political science department
at the University of Connecticut, said an incumbent senator
running without a party is not unprecedented.

Sen. Thomas Dodd was censured by the U.S. Senate in 1967 for
financial misconduct and was denied renomination by the
Democratic Party, which backed Joseph Duffey. Dodd ran as an
independent and lost the general election to Republican Lowell
Weicker, who was defeated by Lieberman in 1988.

"That's the precedent, but you have to go back 36 years,"
Reiter said.

Lieberman, his party's vice presidential nominee in 2000,
unsuccessfully sought the presidential nomination four years
later.

_______________________________________________

---- Original message ----
>Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 09:51:21 -0500
>From: "Morton K. Brussel" <brussel at uiuc.edu>  
>Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Obama's support for the right  
>To: "C.G.Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>
>Cc: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>
>Disgusting. Obama really is a phony. I'm not surprised that
he backed  
>Lieberman, their values increasingly appearing similar. Obama
is  
>closer to Hillary than to Durbin.  It'll be interesting to
see how  
>the Connecticut Democrats respond. --mkb
>
>On Apr 10, 2006, at 7:21 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>
>> [Pro-war senator Lieberman of Connecticut is being challenged
>> in the Democratic primary by an anti-war candidate, Ned
>> Lamont.  Which side is our junior senator on?  Alex Cockburn
>> explains.  --CGE]
>>
>>
>> ...in Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman faced a decidedly cool
>> audience at a big Democratic dinner at the end of March and
>> got bailed out by his brother senator from Illinois, Barack
>> Obama, who told the crowd to haul out their check books and
>> make sure Lieberman gets returned for another term. What kind
>> of a signal is this? Here is Obama, endlessly hailed as the
>> brightest rising star in the Democratic firmament, delivering
>> (at a closely watched political dinner, with Lieberman's
>> primary opponent, Ned Lamont, sitting in the crowd) a ringing
>> endorsement to his "mentor", Lieberman, Bush's closest
>> Democratic ally on the war in Iraq, and overall pretty much a
>> symbol of everything that's been wrong with the Democratic
>> Party for the past twenty years. What a slimy fellow Obama is,
>> as befits a man symbolizing everything that will continue to
>> be wrong with the Democratic Party for the next twenty years.
>> Every time I look up he's doing something disgusting, like
>> distancing himself from his fellow senator Dick Durbin for
>> denouncing the torture center at Guantanamo, or cheerleading
>> the nuke-Iran crowd...
>>
>> <http://counterpunch.org/>
>> _______________________________________________
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>
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