LPA: The defeat of Joe Lieberman at the Democratic primary in Connecticut is a small victory in a larger war. The idea that a politician can completely disregard the wishes of a majority of his constituents is nothing new. The politicians in this country have been doing it for years. The war in Iraq is just a symptom of what is really going on in this nation, .The majority of the public do not support it, it was started on half-truths and outright lies, and the administration has not been held accountable. Meanwhile the tragic carnage in Iraq goes on, now turning into a civil war which our country unwittingly fostered, by invading a country that had not harmed the United States and had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
Joe Lieberman supported that war. The people of his party that defeated him at the polls did not. The sad thing about all of this, is that the end has still not played out. Joe Lieberman will run as an independent, and because of the number of registered independent voters in that state, he could still win the election. The fact that he lost the primary is still a victory for all the people that worked together to defeat a man that refused to accept the will of the voters. Senator Lieberman has accused the people that defeated him of being the “fringe” of the Democratic Party, the “left” as they refer to it. The “liberal left” is what they call the activists that want a change to true representative government. The supporters of Senator Lieberman are blaming the bloggers for stirring dissent within the Democratic Party.
That is the one of the most ignorant statements that I have ever heard. Dissent is not caused by people writing against a candidate. The dissent is already there for the writer to comment on. Blaming his loss on “liberal left blogs” is akin to blaming the loss of an election to unkind editorials in a newspaper. Senator Lieberman holds himself up to be a “uniter” in a Washington that is rife with partisan politics, but when he portrays himself as a victim of “The Radical Left” he is just as much a divider as the people he claims to fight against.
The Liberal Party of America is not endorsing any candidate. Ned Lamont is a multimillionaire that used a large part of his own funds to win the Primary. While some may call that admirable, we see it as another example of how the wealthy can buy their way into Congress. We are not saying that Mr. Lamont is a bad person because he is wealthy, we may endorse him when the time is right, what we are saying though, is that our elected officials should not need millions of dollars to run for office. If that is the case, than we will only have the very wealthy representing all Americans in Congress. We do not believe that the founding fathers drew up the Constitution to return this country to the rule of the aristocrats. We do not believe that the haves should rule over the have-nots. We believe in equality under the law and equality in our elected government. The only way that we will have equality in our political representation is through real and meaningful election reform. Elections should not be bought by individuals or corporations. To have corporations pour billions of dollars into our political campaigns make them “super-represented”. Then our nation becomes a
corporatocracy. That is very close to fascism.
We have seen how the will of the people can take a Senator’s own party away from him for not listening to the will of the people that elected him. Now we must take our government back from the PAC’s, lobbyists, the mega-rich, and the corporations that are now in control of both houses of Congress. This is not a Democratic or Republican issue. It is an American issue. Just as with Global Warming, the time to act was yesterday.