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| Lieberman |
Former U.S. Senator from Connecticut Joe Lieberman, a bit like the eupeptic Hubert Humphrey, is a happy political warrior, gleefully defending a vanishing middle ground among his fellow Democrats and so called MAGA Republicans.
He is a man of what used to be called “the vital center” in
American politics, and his natural optimism is deeply engrafted on his
character.
In the view of moderate Democrats -- a very thin residue
within the party of Jackson, Jefferson and (John) Bailey, Connecticut’s last
Democrat political boss, the hard right and left now bracket American politics,
which, some have argued, has become Hobbesian in its passions.
A remedy for extreme measures and bad political manners
embraced by the Democrat and Republican brackets is the elixir now being sold
by Lieberman’s “No Labels” party.
Lieberman probably will recall Barry Goldwater’s quip – if
you cut off California and New England, you’ve got a pretty good country.
Goldwater was describing the Democrat Party’s lurch leftward. Lieberman has
been in politics for quite some time, and his memory, unlike that of President
Joe Biden, is in good repair.
Goldwater saw the neo-progressive takeover of President John
F. Kennedy’s liberal Democrat Party steaming down the track long before
Governor of California Gavin Newsom was permitted by the California electorate
to make a mess of his state.
Lieberman was challenged in a Democrat primary by now
Governor of Connecticut Ned Lamont – and lost the primary. In the general
election that followed, Lieberman ran as an independent and, much to the chagrin
of neo-progressive Democrats, won reelection, after which he decided to leave
the U.S. Senate.
Connecticut’s Attorney General for six years, Lieberman first
ran for the U.S. Senate against Lowell Weicker,
who accurately described himself as “the turd in the Republican Party
punchbowl.” Unamused, Connecticut Republicans joined with Connecticut Democrats
in showing Weicker the door.
Weicker later ran for governor of the state on his own
independent party line and won, leaving Connecticut after a single term in
office with a Weicker produced state income tax. Weicker died five months ago
fully locked and loaded with neo-progressive encomiums.
And now, Lieberman, with some help from traditional Democrat
Party liberals disenchanted with the severe neo-progressive left turn taken by the
party of Jefferson, Jackson and Bailey, has undertaken the formation of a new
centrist “No Labels” party.
Not yet a political party, “No Labels” is a consummation
devoutly to be wished whose mission it is to support bipartisanship and
centrism through appeals to what it calls a "commonsense majority.”
“There is nothing so uncommon,” a wit once said, “as common
sense.”
The Republican Party had been trending conservative long
before Ronald Reagan’s presidential victory in January 1981. Neo-progressivism,
substantially different than progressivism, is the new kid on the political
block, and this effort – essentially to move President John Kennedy’s liberal
party towards a post-Marxian, Antonio Gramsci vision of socialist/communist
governance – has been far more successful than its most passionate proponents
in the United States may have anticipated. Gramsci’s revised Marxian vision of
the future was discussed here, by yours truly, in a Connecticut Commentary
post: “Connecting The Dots: Critical Race Theory
And Gramsci Marxism.”
The open question is: Has the bottom fallen out of the common
sense, bipartisan, Jefferson, Jackson and Bailey liberal political party?
Recent voter polling that gives Donald Trump a significant
edge over Joe Biden, an ardent neo-progressive president, suggests that
intensely practical Americans are decidedly unwilling to surrender essential
constitutional liberties for a mess of neo-progressive porridge.
The latest “ask” from Connecticut’s neo-progressives, led by
presumptive “moderate” Governor Ned Lamont – that the sale of gas powered
vehicles in the state should end within a few years -- was recently shelved as
a serious policy proposal, but several Democrat leaders in the state were
brought forward to quell the tattered nerves of electric car proponents.
The internal combustion engine assassins told us that they
were not abandoning a measure that would allow neo-progressive Democrat
politicians to muscle the 99% of Nutmegger's who own gas powered cars in favor
of the 1% who own electric vehicles. The policy choice would be adjusted, not
abandoned, by a closed-door conventicle of neo-progressive Democrats and taken
up in the near future to be used as political wedge issue to haul in votes from
the one-percenters.
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