Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Following President Barack Obama into Connecticut, here to raise money for the senatorial campaign of Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, came former president Bill Clinton. Mr. Clinton headlined a rally for Mr. Blumenthal at Wilbur Cross High School in New Haven. The rally was followed by a fundraiser considerably more modest than Mr. Obama’s earlier fundraiser in gold plated Greenwich. Connecticut always has been fertile ground for Democrats hoping to fill their campaign coffers by uprooting golden truffles in the state’s campaign rich Gold Coast. No doubt Mr. Clinton and Mr. Blumenthal were anxious to empty the pockets of those millionaires in Connecticut who had not previously been hit-up by Mr. Obama. Mr. Clinton is no stranger to the state, and he certainly is no stranger to controversies. Mr. Clinton’s support of Sen. Joe Lieberman during the now famous Lieberman-Lamont kafuffle got him in Dutch with the more excitable elements of Democratic progressivism. The proprietor of...

Jane Hamsher, the political femme fatal who ran on her site a picture of Sen. Joe Lieberman in blackface to help Greenwich millionaire Ned Lamont’s campaign, is attempting a little triangulation of her own now that President Barack Obama seems to have made common cause with the redundantly wealthy denizens of Wall Street. She has combined with the decidedly non-progressive Grover Norquist to throw Rham Emanuel down the mineshaft . Emanuel is Obama's Disraeli. The Norquist/Hamsher combo is very unusual. Norquist is one of the best conservative-libertarian organizers on the planet. In fact, if the Republicans ever do regain the reigns of power in Washington, before the country is flat broke, it would be well if they allowed Norquist to form the entire government -- including the Supreme Court. “If Obama/Rahm want to triangulate against progressives (and they do), they’re not the only ones who can make cause with people on the other side of the aisle. If that’s wha...

The New Yorker cartoon – on the front page of the magazine, no less – is a monument to tasteless commentary. But there is a difficulty in protesting it. The idea seems to be to satirize stupid commentary on Sen. Barack Obama. The cartoon shows him in Islamic garb: Take that all you people who suppose that Obama is a Muslim, rather than a practicing Christian. His lovely wife Michelle is dressed as a 60’s radical, wearing an afro and carrying a Kalashnikov rifle: Take that all you bottom feeders who have suggested that Michelle lacked pride in her country, and so on… and on. An American flag is shown burning in the fireplace, a slam on opinion from the right that Obama’s failure to wear a flag pin signals an absence of patriotism. Now, all this is not funny. Satire is not supposed to be funny, especially for those who “don’t get it.” And, judging from much of the commentary surrounding the New Yorker’s tasteless cover art, the great unwashed American – who is not a subscriber to the Ne...

Politico is reporting that the love affair between Sen. Barack Obama and such stalwarts of the progressive movement as Jane Hamsher , proprietor of Firedoglake.com, has crashed on the rocks of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. One imagines that Sen. Chris Dodd, who has been pushing legislation that would punishing telcom companies for co-operating with the Bush regime, is not overly pleased that Obama has decided to support a bill containing an immunity provision for the offenders. Further irritating the progressive anti-war left, Obama's position on immunity for the telecoms puts him in the same bullpen with the much detested Sen. Joe Lieberman, the hobgoblin of little minds on the left. “It angers the blogosphere to its core,” said Hamsher. “We want to be able to know: What did you do? If we can get that information, we can make sure they don’t do that again. We can get the public engaged. “[A] lot of people tried to convince themselves that he [Obama] was a progressive ...

Jane Hamsher , always brimming with the testosterone of progressivism, takes aim over at firedoglake, the blog site she maintains, at two impertinent revolutionists who have strayed from the fold. “If you'd been sitting in Le Pan Quotidian restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard yesterday afternoon you would have seen me pitch back in my chair and howl with laughter when Digby told me John WATB Harris and Jim "Pool Boy" VandeHei were leaving the WaPo to honcho a groovy new interactive news media site: "'Harris and VandeHei note that their move is tied to a new vision of political reporting. It uses every medium on the web — text, video, and interactivity — to pull back the curtain on political stories and narrow the gap between reporters and their audience.' “Tears…tears…oh lordy, it's just too funny…I can just hear the sales pitch for this future dinosaur (probably the same one they made for Hot Soup): ‘We'll tap the great untapped center, the people ...

Q: How’s Joe (Lieberman) doing? A: The patient is recovering. Q: From? A: The mugging. Q: Ha!!! A: He’s up in almost all the polls -- anywhere from 10% to 15%, depending upon which soothsayer you consult. But Lieberman has received a drubbing, mostly for two reasons: He was too friendly to President George Bush, universally reviled here in the “provision state;” and, in his political life, Lieberman has not been a take-no-prisoners Democrat, like John Kerry or Ted Kennedy, both unbending opponents of everything Republican. Unpopular wars have a way of bringing out the partisan in everyone. Partisanship is in these days; mutual co-operation – collegiality, as they call it in the U.S. Senate – is out. Q: Because we are in an election? A: No, I think the political templates have shifted. We are witnessing a change in the political culture, a hotting-up on both sides, comparable to global warming. Q: And the change has been prompted by the war? A: Only in part. Partisan difference rumble u...

Anonymous said... He's going to give the Iranians a reason not to build a nuclear bomb Like what, give the Ayatollah his lapsed membership in the Round Hill Club? -- Connecticut Local Politics The anonymous blogger has a point: Most terrorists are fairly hard-headed, and there may be no permanent solutions in the Middle East, only a past soaked in blood and a doubtful future. Diplomatists talk as if it is possible to negotiate the suicide pack off the chest of the suicide bomber. They are wrong. The post-primary blogs have a different tone and message than the pre-primary blogs, which suggest considerable movement in Connecticut’s political templates -- for primaries are different than general elections. Primaries are intra-party struggles for prestige and power; general elections are much broader in scope and purpose. In showing Sen. Joe Lieberman the door, Lamont supporters – a Pequod crew of anti-war protesters, energetic college and high school students, gone-to-seed-former sha...

It didn’t take long for the snake to rear its corrupting head in progressivism’s Garden of Eden. Sadly, it would appear that everyone – even the white knights of Daily Kos, like their patron, billionaire supporter George Soros -- are in it for the money. The Hartford Advocate , a sister publication of the Hartford Courant, has noted in a story, “Just Kos?, that the struggle between the New Republic, a center left puiblication, and Daily Kos, the epitome of far leftism, parallels closely the division within the Democrat Party between primary challenger Ned Lamont and sitting Senator Joe Lieberman. The flare-up between the New Republic and dailykos.com has parallels with the Connecticut Democratic primary race between incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman and Greenwich businessman Ned Lamont. First, it exemplifies the conflict between the hawkish, centrist wing of the party (the New Republic /Lieberman) and the anti-war left (liberal blogs/Lamont). “But besides ideological similarities, allegi...