Bush's Favorite Democrat

Early Sunday afternoon, Beulah Heights First Pentecostal Church, New Haven, Connecticut. A hot summer day with an all-black congregation, a big hall in a tough neighborhood packed full to the last pew, with the faithful cooling themselves with old-fashioned hand-held fans. Sen. Joe Lieberman, a pale animal with a balloon head, stands at the podium and smiles, his gnomish Wallace Shawn mini-fingers piously clasped before him.

As an orator, Lieberman is a pro's pro. No matter what the crowd, his rap always has the feel of a barroom Casanova's metronome come-on. He talks and talks, and five minutes later you can't figure out how his hand got that far up your skirt. He is especially brilliant in this particular environment, an absolute master of the "my heart is as black as yours" honkie-in-church act. He swoops in, tells a story about meeting Dr. King back in the day, shakes his head solemnly at the scourge of racism and then coasts to a Scripture-packed dismount. Clear throat; assume sonorous, preacherly intone; dream aloud of a better day ahead, a day when . . .

"When the mountains will be made low, when the valleys will be raised up, when the rough road will be made smooth and the crooked path will be made straight," he says. "Because on that day, with God's help, the Earth truly will be full of the knowledge of the Lord."

Jesus, I think. This guy's good. He pauses, smiling, for applause. Then:

"Thank you! Enjoy lunch!"

And he's outta there. The whole thing takes about eight minutes. You can keep your political speeches pretty short in the year 2006 if you don't once mention the words "war" or "Iraq." Next stop: firemen in Fairfield. I'm still gathering my shit in the church foyer when I see his caravan zooming past the entrance, back toward the highway.

The scene says everything you need to know about the modern Democratic Party. It spends its weekdays sucking off the Pentagon and Wall Street and the pharmaceutical industry, and on the weekends it comes out and spends five minutes getting teary-eyed for the "I have a dream" speech and thinks you owe it your vote because of it. Some party members agree, but quite a few don't, which is why Joe Lieberman—the hawkish one-time vice-presidential candidate who has made himself the most visible symbol of the "new" Democrats—is facing a surprising primary challenge on August 8th. Like Lieberman himself, the "I was there in the Sixties" act is finally getting old.

"I hate the Sixties, and I'm tired of hearing about it—what have you done for me lately?" says Regina Meade, one of the churchgoers. She shakes her head. "I lost a cousin in the war. Twenty-nine years old. What about that? What about that?"