Say it isn't so, Joe

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman

Dear Joe:

I don't know where to send this note, so you'll just have to trust your clip service to get it to you. 

The reason I don't know where to send this is I don't know what side of the Senate aisle you're sitting on. I know you became an independent out of necessity when Jimmy Dean (no, not the sausage king, but then again...) and his beard, Ned Lamont, snatched the Democratic nomination from you two years ago.

At the time, you had the reason for the vote against you pegged correctly. You said voting against you in the primary was a way your constituents could give you a message without hurting you. They would vote against you in the primary, then vote for you in the general election. 

We all knew you would run as an independent because you weren't about to let these guys force you out. And we believed in you, Joe. Hell, I even worked for you, standing out in the rain to make sure you won, to make sure the message sent to you by Democratic voters didn't hurt you.

I was not in step with you on the war in Iraq. I couldn't help but agree with people who came up to me when I was leafleting for you, shouting in may face, throwing things at me. They said you were wrong on the war (remember, this blog is rated PG, so I can't say what they said).

 I told them you were wrong about the war, but that was overshadowed by all the things you were right about, like the economy, the Middle East, pollution, big oil. 

Besides, I told the screamers, you had seniority in the Senate and you would work hard to do things that benefited Connecticut. And you were needed to vote with the Democrats against the Bush wrong-thinking policies.

So what happened? You went to work for John McCain, a guy who is against all the things for which we re-elected you. He's against a senator bring home contracts for his state. He's even wrong about bringing home contracts for his nation. He yelled about the Boeing contract for tankers for the Air Force. He had it so wrong, and now, years later, we're right back where we were, except that the military pilots will be refueling at decades-old tankers instead of new ones. What's that going to cost in lives?

So instead of sitting in the Senate, bring home Connecticut's share, you want bouncing around the world with McCain, carrying the bag for him.

You went to work for this latter day Admiral Stockdale (the addle-brained vice presidential candidate from 1992 who ran with Ross Perot) who is still yelling about winning the war in Iraq at the same time that Condi Rice is over there negotiating a treaty to allow us to withdraw combat troops from that nation. He's been wrong about so many things. Do you, Joe, really think that anyone who makes less than $5 million a year is middle-class?

And now, they say out are about to deliver the unkindest cut of all. 

You are going to speak at the Republican National Convention, the same place where the religious right, the neocons, the economy-wreckers, the group that turned a modest surplus into a wicked national deficit in eight short years, the progeny of the Young Americans for Freedom, will laud the record of Bush, Chaney, Rove, Gonzales, Rumsfeld and the others who have so stained America that their stink will permeate the nation long after they are sent skulking from office. You want their legacy to continue? You want a man who would make George W. Bush look like the Dalai Lama on the world stage to lead America?

Say it isn't so, Joe. Please say it isn't so.

Until next time...