Joe Lieberman on center-stage

I took the train to Connecticut and volunteered for Joe Lieberman's Senate campaign, just to do what I could to help. Here's a picture of me on Election Day 2006 with a Ned Lamont volunteer at the voting site (Tracey High School in Norwalk, Connecticut) where we were poll-standers for our respective campaigns. The sandwich board idea was a good one, and it was well-designed. Basically, the Lieberman campaign wanted us to emphasize that he was at the bottom of the ballot under "Connecticut for Lieberman", not in the traditional top spots of the ballot reserved for Democrats and Republicans.

Connecticut party Democrats punished Lieberman for his support of the War on Terror by nominating Ned Lamont. With our foreign policy at a tipping point, I believe we need Lieberman in the Senate.

My basic reaction to the Dems taking the House and the Senate is that if this was a pre-9/11 mid-term election year, I'd be cheering for the Dems to replace the GOP, but in this war-time election, the Dems scare me for the reason that Ender's Game author Orson Scott Card explained here. In a war, with the real-world stakes of war, America is either victorious or we are defeated, and the price for defeat may be delayed but it will be paid. The Republican-led government has not been altogether competent in the war, due to generational defects more than a political defect, but the Democrats in government often seem hell-bent on spectacular defeat.

I hope their anti-war positions have been a smoke-screen by the Democrats all along, and with power wrested from the Republicans, they'll get down to the serious business of winning the War on Terror. I know, I know - realistically, they're probably looking to pull a Nixonian retreat. I just hope Joe Lieberman, now as an Independent senator, will wield enough leverage in Congress to counter the alarming defeatist agenda of his Democratic colleagues while also taking a fresh approach to the war from the Republicans.

Eric