Lieberman & TPM, Round II

After sending my analysis of the political ire surrouding the Lieberman-Lamont race, I sent another email (which will never see the light of day) to the TPM about the antagonism toward Lieberman from the hard-left:

Hello Dr. Josh,

I want to clarify one point about anti-Lieberman "anti-Semitism." It is clear nonsense to say that the opposition to Joe is because he's Jewish. I mean, nobody is cursing out Russ Feingold the way they do Lieberman.

What's working against Lieberman is not that he's Jewish but that he is *openly religious.*

And not just religious, but it is in a *traditional* movement (the Jewish equivalent to Baptists, maybe). Open religious values are considered dangerous and suspect by the Liberal wing of the Democrats. Religion is clearly the motivation against abortion and it's assumed to be the source against women's-rights, gay-rights, etc. And especially under the presidency of Deacon Bush, the GOP has become identified as the religious party. All this plays into the suspicion against Lieberman.

Ironically, those who are not members of an organized religion can still be as wild-eyed crazy about their beliefs as the thumpingest of the holy-rollers. Just replace the word "religion" with "ideology" and the hard-Left (especially the Naderite purists) are as intense as the Christianists.

The hard-left Democrats do not want to have openly religious politicians - look what happened to Barack Obama recently. I don’t believe that hard-left hates religion (that's a Coulter screed), but I do think orthodox religion is not understood by the non-religious (and vice-versa), and considering that so much evil to groups and individuals is committed in the name of religion, it's not hard to see why there's a stigma.

But just as there is an uneasy alliance in the GOP between the cultural conservatives/Christian right and the libertarian anti-government types, there's this fragmentation among Democrats between the Ideological Liberal and the wing and the Disempowered Core (what I described in my previous email as the blue-collar, non-white, female majority of America). The Disempowered Core is defined not as much by ideology but by the desire to get conservatives out of power. And the DC does not fear religious politicians like the hard-left does.

One aspect of the Democrat platform is, or should be, a definite separation between Church & State; but the establishment clause cuts both ways - most Americans feel there's a legitimate place for religion in the public sphere.

As I said in my last email, "Democrat" does not mean "Liberal" and to succumb to another ideology of the hard-left is foolish for us as a party. And I want us to win in 2006, impeach the running dogs in the White House, and start repairing the world.

How the Lieberman stuff fits into the venom against Israel is another essay entirely (oh, but it does fit in).

Thanks again
JC

P.S. The anti-religious attack, in my anthropological opinion, is revealed by the code words of "smug," "sanctimonious," or "Holy Joe." A good example of these smears can be seen in Hendrik Hertzberg's New Yorker piece. One crazy example is where HH makes a moral equivalency between Clinton's adultery and Lieberman's divorce, stating that Lieberman: "had the gall to cite differing 'levels of religious observance' as the only specific reason he was willing to give for the divorce." Gall?! Whoa. Only someone who discounts the concept of differing levels of religious observance could make such a claim. But that explains why Hertzberg was full of such bile against Lieberman.