Connecticut exit poll's surprising results

by Glenn Greenwald

A Connecticut exit poll, conducted by CBS News and the New York Times and obtained by Political Wire, supports some important (preliminary) conclusions, including several that conflict with the emerging conventional wisdom:

1) Seventy-eight percent of primary voters opposed the decision to go to war in Iraq -- no surprise there. But of those, only 60 percent cast their votes for Lamont, which means that 40 percent of war opponents voted for Lieberman. That fact, by itself, demonstrates that the Lamont win (and the Lieberman defeat) is hardly due exclusively -- or even primarily -- to the "single-issue" anger over the war, given that four of 10 war opponents voted for Lieberman.

2) Apparently, a more significant factor than the Iraq war was opposition to President Bush generally. Fifty-nine percent of all voters said that Lieberman "was too close to the President," and although no exact numbers are provided, it was that group which "voted overwhelmingly for Lamont." The most reliable factor in the Lamont win seems to have been not opposition to the war specifically, but a more generalized disapproval of President Bush and of Lieberman's support for the president.

3) Sixty-one percent of voters "rejected the notion of Lieberman running as an Independent candidate in the fall." That number is sure to grow as a) the image of Lieberman as the loser seeps in and b) most of the Democratic establishment abandons him and actively supports Lamont.

A message from Connecticut to national Democrats

We see this morning the purest sign of the vibrancy of our democratic process: national Democrats, who with virtual unanimity supported Joe Lieberman, are now rushing to express unambiguous support for Ned Lamont. Here is the joint statement from Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer:
"The Democratic voters of Connecticut have spoken and chosen Ned Lamont as their nominee. Both we and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee fully support Mr. Lamont's candidacy. Congratulations to Ned on his victory and on a race well run.

"Joe Lieberman has been an effective Democratic senator for Connecticut and for America. But the perception was that he was too close to George Bush, and this election was, in many respects, a referendum on the president more than anything else. The results bode well for Democratic victories in November and our efforts to take the country in a new direction."

As recent polls reflect, the one inescapable political truth in America is that Bush and his Republican congressional allies are deeply unpopular, and Americans want a balance -- a serious counterweight -- to the unrestrained and deeply corrupt one-party rule to which we have been subjected for the past five years. Up to this point, Democrats have failed, and failed profoundly, to provide any meaningful opposition to that unrestrained rule.

National Democrats clearly intend to use the president's unpopularity and the resulting desire for a balance of power as the centerpiece of their strategy for the 2006 campaign. That is all well and good as far as it goes. But this newfound resolve to oppose the president must be reflected by Democrats' actions between now and November, not merely their campaign advertisements and rhetoric. Republicans still control both houses of Congress and the White House and intend to exploit that control aggressively over the next several months in numerous ways.

There is pending legislation that could impose fundamental and arguably irreversible damage on our system of government. Most threatening in that regard is the truly pernicious bill introduced by Sen. Arlen Specter -- with the collaboration of the White House -- that would amend FISA in order to vest the president with virtually unlimited power to spy on Americans, legitimize the Bush administration's radical theories of unlimited executive power, and all but immunize administration officials from the consequences of their systematic and ongoing lawbreaking over the last five years. Democrats have the ability to block enactment of this bill and similar ones -- by a filibuster if necessary -- and it is well past time for Democrats to show that they are willing to take a real stand against this president.

If the Lieberman defeat truly was, as Reid and Schumer described it this morning, "a referendum on the president more than anything else," then it is also a message to Democrats that they must immediately shed their palpable fear of tenaciously fighting and blocking the president's agenda in Washington. Vigorous opposition to Bush and his policies is what galvanized such an intense and energized campaign to defeat Lieberman. That is the energy Democrats must tap into and inspire in order to win in November.

Democrats will be able to do that only by demonstrating -- for the first time during the Bush presidency -- that they are willing to stand up to Bush and his congressional loyalists, even if it means defying the deadly risk-averse advice of their Beltway consultants and incurring the wrath of the pompous, out-of-touch national media pundits. The Democrats' ability to defeat the Bush-led Republican machine in November requires the passion and energies of those who just brought down a three-term senator in Connecticut. Those are the voices to which national Democrats must listen if they are to put an end to the Bush stranglehold on our government.

The sad, sorry state of Joe Lieberman

Most of the ramifications of Joe Lieberman's extraordinary defeat will require some time to discern, but one thing is already painfully clear. With his behavior Tuesday night, Lieberman has turned himself into the most vivid symbol of the insular, arrogant, corrupt and power-desperate Washington establishment, the sheer cravenness and corruption of which are what catalyzed the campaign against him in the first place.

Those who compose that entrenched Beltway power establishment -- the endlessly reelected political officials, the hordes of consultants and lobbyists who feed off and control them, and the pampered, self-loving "journalists" who enable it all -- are characterized by a single-minded quest to perpetuate their own power, flavored by a thinly masked contempt for the masses on whose behalf this system ostensibly plods along. Lieberman's conduct last night was a perfect textbook for all of those afflictions.

Like the establishment mavens who rushed to defend him, Lieberman exposed himself as a man driven by a single, overarching motivation -- a desperate desire to cling to his source of power, his Senate seat, not because of any political ideals he wants to pursue but solely because of the personal satisfaction, attention and benefits it provides him. Embodying one of the defining attributes of the permanent Beltway class, Lieberman plainly craves -- has become addicted to -- the petty trappings of his role in the grand Beltway court. The only cause that seems to stir Joe Lieberman to anger, aggression and confrontation is the glorious struggle for Joe Lieberman to cling to his Senate seat.

The man whose (largely Republican) media supporters glorified him as one of the few "men of principle" left in Washington has revealed himself to be bereft of all principles save one -- the "principle" that Joe Lieberman's Senate seat belongs to him personally and that no mere voters, those silly, unenlightened masses, have the right to take that away from him. In the face of this rare testament to true democracy -- the decisive rejection of Lieberman by Connecticut voters in defiance of virtually the entire national political establishment -- Lieberman had nothing but scorn, contempt and defiance for their decision.

He thus intoned: "I am disappointed not just because I lost, but because the old politics of partisan polarization won today. For the sake of our state, our country and my party, I cannot and will not let that result stand." This man of principle "will not let that result stand" -- "that result" being the considered decision of the voters whom he has claimed to represent for the last 18 years.

A more selfish and craven act is difficult to imagine. Lieberman single-handedly will impose endless grief and conflict on his Democratic colleagues who loyally rallied to support him. He will drain attention and resources away from his party's already difficult struggle to restore balance and oversight to our federal government, and to end one-party rule in November. He will sow still more intense divisions and raging hostilities among those who oppose the Bush administration. And he will subject his state to three more months of electoral warfare while he forces it to have what is sure to be an increasingly bitter and nasty election -- an election that it just had.

And this "man of principle," this elevated gentleman who is too pure and righteous for Washington, will do all of that for one reason and one reason only -- because he is too weak and selfish to give up his Senate seat and accept the decision of Connecticut voters that they want a different senator representing their interests in Washington. The fallout from the well-deserved and desperately needed blow dealt to the national political establishment will be unclear for some time to come, but one thing that is not unclear is Joe Lieberman's character. He has revealed it for all it to see.