Why, Lieberman, Why

For all the flack people give Ralph Nader nearly four years later (including a large percentage of my left-leaning peers) for allegedly undermining the Democratic Party, it seems that Joe Lieberman is getting a relative free pass for more probably doing the exact same thing. This baffles me and makes me hope he suffers tragic body-failures between now and the day of the final decision. Hasn't he done enough already?

Al Gore's "Saturday Night Live" appearance gave him more grace and dignity than his former running mate's entire campaign, which has served no other purpose than to undermine the closest thing we have to a radical candidate in Howard Dean. Lieberman's nasty attacks on Dean the week of Saddam's capture must have earned him more golf games from GW than Dennis Miller for his entire year of support for the winning team.

Having a worse image than Gore as a failed second-bannana, Lieberman seems determined to stick it to Dean and anyone else who has a spark of character that he and Gore never pulled off (You'd think Dean's emotional outburst would be something to celebrate, given the 2000 Gore/Lieberman one-two combo being the equivalent of two kids pillow-fighting a tank). Worse, he is attracting the respect of the same right-leaning audience that Bush has drawn to his support for an eternity. All this serves the purpose of creating the image that the Democratic Party is just Republican Light--an image I'm all too much in agreement with these days--and why have diet when you can have the real thing?

I only voted for Nader because I felt it was safe, being that I was in the so-called liberal bastion of Massachusetts (though it seems to be losing ground faster than anyone will admit), but I am growing to understand why people still insist on voting Green and supporting Nader, few that they are. Lieberman's bitter tactics seem to vindicate Nader's efforts.

My favorite Nader saying was that only Al Gore could beat Al Gore which, of course he did, (real election results aside). If Nader had chose this year to come out, I like to think he would have expanded the original quote: Only the Democratic Party can beat the Democratic Party.

And with Lieberman as the prime soldier, it would seem that they are doing quite a stellar job at that.

[Original title of post changed out of it's tastelessness. People can read the html to this post and figure out what it is, and I'm sorry for it. I've never gotten in trouble for it since it was just an attention-getting title to the thoughts above], but in the wake of the the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, it's time to change it.]