Bush's Favorite Democrat

In the midst of all this whoring for business interests, Lieberman has preposterously marketed himself to the public as a stern guardian of "morality" and "traditional values," along the way taking some admirably mean-spirited positions. He once supported a bill denying funding to public schools that counseled suicidal teens that it is OK to be gay, a remarkable position for a man whose response to the Enron scandal was to say that "government will never be able to legislate or regulate morals."

Lieberman also signed the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, the notorious organization founded by Lynne Cheney that published a baldly McCarthyite list of "anti-American academics." In 1997, Lieberman pushed for warning labels on CDs, getting the Senate to take up the issue under the title "Music Violence: How Does It Affect Our Youth?" in the hopes of snagging the votes of a few grandmas by wagging a finger at Marilyn Manson—yes, Lieberman was one of those asshole politicians who tried to pin Columbine on rock music. And rather than denounce Ken Starr for the most egregious misuse of prosecutorial authority since the House Un-American Activities Committee, Lieberman's response to the Lewinsky scandal was to attack Bill Clinton in one of the lamest "O the children!" acts of all time, saying, "It is hard to ignore the impact of the misconduct the president has admitted to on our children, our culture and our national character."

A few years later, faced with a similar political choice, he chose to stand fast by Bush on the issue of Iraq, saying, "We undermine the president's credibility at our nation's peril." Apparently the president deserves absolute loyalty only when his mistakes result in teenagers getting their heads shot off.

It was this last position of Lieberman's that forced the candidacy of Lamont into being. "We're trying to determine what the right boundary is on a Democrat," says Lamont spokesman Robert Johnson. "We know what the left boundary is. But what is it on the right? At some point, when a Democrat is sucking up to a president like George Bush, you have to put your foot down. Lieberman does not stop at a ?center.' The further right they go, he just follows."

But, of course, Lieberman's crowning insult—and perhaps his last fatal mistake as an (ostensible) member of the Democratic Party—was his recent decision to register and run as an independent in case he loses the primary to Lamont. Finally taking his mask off and revealing himself as a baldly self-interested political creature, this final-act version of Lieberman plans on dying hard, forcing liberal voters to kill him twice in the same movie, like Jason in Friday the 13th.

With his hideous fake folksiness, much-celebrated "great sense of humor" and relentless Beltway hype as just the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet (David Brooks calls him "transparently the most kindhearted and well-intentioned of men"), Joe Lieberman is easy to hate—which makes him easy to hate for the wrong reasons. Sure, he's an arrogant, condescending prude; sure, he's a willing, energetic censor who outrageously poses as an aggrieved champion of "decent people everywhere"; and sure, he reminds you very much of the lecturing, overbearing high school vice principal you once had who ended up getting busted on a kiddie-porn rap ten years after you graduated.

But all of that means nothing. What is important to remember about Joe Lieberman is that his individual personality is incidental. Lieberman is just another "winner" to be rolled off the line and served up to Democratic voters by the behind-the-scenes corporate masters bent on controlling both sides of Washington politics, using whatever scare tactics necessary to ensure success. He's a pawn and a stooge whom they've gotten good mileage out of so far because he happens to have a special talent for being just the kind of officious, self-righteous prick you have to be to sell their muddled policies in public—but his time is up now, and not because of him but because of them. People are tired of being told who can and cannot win. As it turns out, they get to decide that for themselves.

Check out the first installment of "The Low Post," Matt Taibbi's weekly Web-only column for RollingStone.com.

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