JOE LIEBERMAN, MARTYR-WANNABE

I usually try to sum up the stories I post about, but the latest Lieberman thing gives me a headache, so I'll refer you to Steve Benen. Basically, Barack Obama has confronted Lieberman -- a perfectly appropriate move given his role as McCain's sidekick and surrogate. Lieberman is now whining that Obama is being mean to him. Wingnuts are leaping to Lieberman's defense. And Steve and others are speculating that Lieberman will be driven from the Senate Democratic caucus -- not this year, but probably next year.

But I disagree with Steve about this:

... I wonder if Lieberman has considered the implications for his reputation -- not with the party, and not with his constituents, but with the media establishment he loves (and which loves him right back). Lieberman's interesting to pundits and talking heads because he's unusual. The media can't get enough of unusual. Lieberman was on the Democratic ticket eight years ago, he had Obama campaigning for him two years ago, and now he's McCain’s Mini-Me. The media can't get enough.

But come January, if he's just another neocon caucusing with the Republican Party and attacking Obama and the Democratic Party, he's not quite as fascinating anymore....

But see, he's counting on the fact that he won't be "just another neocon caucusing with the Republican Party" -- he'll be the guy who was fascistically driven out of the fascist Democrat Party by the fascist jackboot Democrat fascists.

Every sob story you've ever seen or read about unpersons and brutalized political prisoners is going to be dredged up when Joe gets bounced. The Cultural Revolution will be invoked. Right-wing magazines will feature faux-Maoist cover paintings of Lieberman kneeling in a public square with a sign around his neck as his "shamers" -- Obama, Harry Reid, and so on -- surround him, armed and wearing Red Guard uniforms.

Lieberman dreams of this day. And I hope it will come and, when it comes, no one apart from the Bushite/Roveite end-timers gives a crap about poor persecuted Joe and his suffering.