{"id":7870,"date":"2006-07-07T09:10:32","date_gmt":"2006-07-07T13:10:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/7870.html"},"modified":"2006-07-07T09:10:32","modified_gmt":"2006-07-07T13:10:32","slug":"lieberman-discovers-his-feisty-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/lieberman-discovers-his-feisty-side\/","title":{"rendered":"Lieberman discovers his feisty side"},"content":{"rendered":"

I tried to watch the [tag]Lieberman[\/tag]-[tag]Lamont[\/tag] [tag]debate[\/tag]<\/a> last night with an open mind. I make no secret of the fact that I prefer the latter to the prior, but I wanted to consider their debate performances without that bias in mind.<\/p>\n

And the one thing that I came away with was a surprise: I hardly recognized Joe Lieberman<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Joe Lieberman television viewers saw on Thursday night in his debate with maverick challenger Ned Lamont was not the mellow, sleepy-voiced, decent, religiously observant man we used to know. No, this was Joe Lieberman, the savvy, battle-hardened, and very aggressive politician.<\/p>\n

Face to face with his rival, Lieberman came across as a man absolutely determined to save his career in the Senate, a man who wasn’t going to bother being genteel.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I half-expected Lieberman to put on the charm, smile a lot, effectively tell Connecticut Democrats, “Forget all that Iraq stuff; I’m that likable guy you’ve voted for before.” Except Lieberman did the opposite: he frequently interrupted Lamont, he took 30-second rebuttal time whenever he decided he should, and he cracked no jokes. He hit hard, and repeatedly. This wasn’t about finding common ground — the Lieberman we see in the Senate — this was about fighting for his political life.<\/p>\n

This [tag]fiesty[\/tag] Lieberman, in other words, was the opposite<\/i> of the Lieberman who got out-debated by Dick Cheney in 2000.
\n
\nLamont was well prepared, and for a guy who’s never done this before, he acquitted himself quite well. He lacked some polish, but Lamont came across as sincere, focused, and informed.<\/p>\n

But Lieberman, a three-term senator, vice-presidential nominee, and presidential candidate, highlighted the fact that he’s done this before. In one exchange, Lamont talked about the priorities he’d fight for in the Senate, including job creation and reproductive rights. According to the [tag]transcript[\/tag], Lieberman responded<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“You know my record on these things. The AFL-CIO wouldn’t have supported me over you if they didn’t think I would fight for jobs in this state. Planned Parenthood wouldn’t have supported me over you if they weren’t confident that I was for women’s reproductive rights. The League of Conservation Voters wouldn’t have supported me over you if they didn’t appreciate my strong, strong record on environmental protection. The Human Rights Campaign political action committee wouldn’t have supported me over you if they didn’t — be able to say that since the 1970s, I have been fighting to protect people from discrimination based on sexual orientation. So look at my record and deal with the reality of it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After the debate, it was the one moment that I remembered most clearly.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that Lieberman necessarily won on points. He came across as rather [tag]arrogant[\/tag], suggesting the Senate seat was somehow his by birthright. For that matter, using Reagan’s “there you go again” probably isn’t the way to impress Democratic primary voters. Worse, some of Lieberman’s substantive claims were … what’s the word … false<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But ultimately, Dems had to come away from the debate thinking, “If Lieberman were this [tag]aggressive[\/tag] and assertive with Republicans, he wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I tried to watch the [tag]Lieberman[\/tag]-[tag]Lamont[\/tag] [tag]debate[\/tag] last night with an open mind. I make no secret of the fact that I prefer the latter to the prior, but I wanted to consider their debate performances without that bias in mind. And the one thing that I came away with was a surprise: I hardly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7870\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}