Bloodless Coup

Did you see any of discussion about the comments Harry Reid made to Jane Hamsher at YearlyKos?

Hopefully Reid sticks to that.

um, will, if you believe the email i just got from DFA, one reason to vote for lieberman (although DFA recommends a different course of action) would be to avoid the prospect, which when confronted he has failed to rule out, of him mounting an independent run in the event that he loses the primary. it's hard to see how a two-democrat race wouldn't lead to a GOP victory of the seat, even if the GOP put up a total chump. then it's not a question of who gets to head those committees in the event of democratic control, because the likelihood of dem control will be substantially diminished.

according to DFA, moreover, schumer suggested that the party apparatus might endorse lieberman in an independent run, which would confirm once and for all just what an insider's network the whole enterprise is. i'd say the GOP would do the same, but they wouldn't have to, since they'd probably just rub out anyone who, upon losing a primary, threatened an independent run.

that said, blackmail's a silly reason to vote for someone who's about as much of a democrat as zell miller (but whose devout religion, we can be thankful, he views as inconsistent with carrying on like a drunk at closing time, unlike zell). DFA recommends a letter-writing effort demanding that lieberman and schumer et al. commit, as lamont already has, to support the winner of the connecticut primary bar none.

Well Reid's comments wouldn't seem to fit with Schumer's, and you'd think Reid's would be more important since he's the leader. And honestly I'm not so sure (even if he legally could, which is a bit unclear) Schumer would want to back Lieberman if he saw the tide turning against him. Schumer likes winners (witness his very public backing of a Reagan administration official who'd backed George Allen over Chuck Robb in 2000 as his choice to take on Allen, over a long-time party activist and money guy), and if he saw that Lieberman wasn't as sure a winner (which a Lamont primary win could well suggest) would he really want to endure the political hits he'd rightly take if he abandoned the Democrat who (in this scenario) wins the CT Democratic primary without being very sure of a Lieberman win? I don't see it. And honestly I don't see the DC party backing Lieberman if he stays in the race after losing a primary to Lamont. I just don't see how they could do that.

"rub out"?

I have to agree with Jacflash here. It's not like the Republican administration has trouble with its people being "suicided" or with the equipment on their airplanes malfunctioning after being serviced at a military base, and then they run into a mountain, ending up with a would that looks like a bullet hole in his skull. That was a (recent) Democratic administration.

Morris - save it for Rush, Brit Hume, and your implant-happy alien friends. Republicans are perfectly happy to politically "rub out" those who get in their way. I think it's generally accepted that one reason they tend to win more elections than the Democrats is that in many cases they are more willing to fight dirty - really dirty. Or at least that's a bit of conventional wisdom that gets brought up with some frequency.

morris, jacflash, i apologize. the republicans always fight fair with those who go off the reservation -- e.g., never resorting to salacious rumors about homosexuality in the homophobic south to disable the popular candidacy of a man who rotted in a hanoi prison BY CHOICE while his opponent, the one authorizing propagation of the artful falsehood, couldn't even handle the stateside national guard without going AWOL.

a bunch of stand-up guys, those repugs.

Save it for the Underground, Armand. "Rub out" implies killing and you know it. I thought you were interested in serious discourse. Was I mistaken?

don't beat armand with the goofy stick over my glib comment. for the record, it was intended as one of those jokes with a kernel of truth at its heart -- to wit, while of course the right wing doesn't rub out its departed members (indeed, there are recent examples of republicans changing parties and living to tell the tale), they do impose a degree of party discipline that's positively chilling in its totalitarian overtones. lately, i've been pleased to see the party grow disputatious not because i think their disputes are terribly robust, but simply because it's nice to see members of supposedly deliberative bodies behave as though there is more to deliberate than simply what column they run for office in. and to be clear, the last couple of months has been the first evidence we've seen of deliberation (in the sense of several hundred people not actually agreeing about every topic germane to our polity) since the GOP re-took congress.

anyway, it was i who spoke too glibly for the very literally minded bloodless groupies, and for that i apologize. if you must take shots, take them at me, not at armand, who made the mistake of defending my terminology while recognizing and defending the spirit of what i was saying. he should have agreed with you in questioning my terminology.

if you have anything to say about the sentiment that underlay the comment, though, i'm all ears. but as best i can tell, only dictators (presumably the non-genocidal kind, since i'd hate to have godwin's law thrown at me next) generally solicit the sort of stepford level of support bush has had in congress from his party faithful. and if it's not fair game to question that, then we might as well drop all pretense of democracy and move on to the next thing, whatever it is.

Well thank you for defending me, but I disagree with you that I should have questioned your terminology. I take the view that in our language one phrase can mean a number of things -and in my years of reading English "rub out" has been used a number of ways and does not always imply a vicious murder (in fact it took me a second to figure out what jacflash was talking about, given that I've often seen it used metaphorically).

But yeah why don't we stop arguing over our turns of phrase and argue about the points those are meant to convey.

By the way, your comment, Moon, about the level of loyalty expected of the party faithful makes me think of Bill Frist - when was the last time a US president so heavily entered the race for a Senate leader? Had a president done that since FDR? But maybe that's an instance of forcibly installed loyalty by which Bush did the country a service (or those who don't want the country to end of looking like James Dobson and Antonin Scalia want it to) - I mean Frist has been a disaster. Though I suppose it's not remarkable that the most incompetent president in many years would essentially promote to office the most incompetent Senate leader in many years.