Telegram For Joe Lieberman

'Values Voters,' Says Dotty Lynch, Have A Message For The Senator

(CBS)  Two Yale Law students named Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham campaigned for both Duffy and Lieberman in New Haven. That year the Democratic Party fractured and Republican Lowell Weicker became a Senator.

Eventually Dodd's more liberal son, Chris, became a Senator, Lieberman beat Weicker (by running to his right in 1988) and Connecticut has been represented by Democrats in the Senate for almost 20 years.

But where the historical precedent ends is that the anti-war movement of the late sixties and seventies was viewed by many as legitimate and courageous.

In 2006, these voters and the bloggers who are giving them a voice are routinely labeled as single-issue, selfish and even vile. Their cause, to try to end a war, is cast as counterproductive and hurtful to the election of Democrats running for the House in Connecticut. But isn't it legitimate to ask why Democrats should be elected to the House or Senate if they don't try to put forward policies to put an end to a war which their constituents hate?

Lieberman, his former campaign worker Bill Clinton and most of the Washington Democratic establishment appear to be unable to fathom the passion and frustration of these "netrooters" when it comes to the war in Iraq. Mr. Clinton said last week that "we ought to be whipped if we allow our differences over what to do now over Iraq divide us."

The scarcity of 1960s-style protests against the war, says sociologist Todd Gitlin, is due to an "ambivalence about what to do, a lack of belief that protest would matter, and a lack of a counterculture that supports protest."

I would add that it is because the political leadership on the left has abdicated its responsibility to come up with coherent policy alternatives and find a path out. The passion surrounding the primary in Connecticut is over the frustration with the war and the Bush administration, and voters are resorting to the old-fashioned democratic technique of using the ballot box to make their displeasure known.

I believe that Lieberman's support for the war was and is more genuine than many of his Democratic colleagues who voted to support Bush in 2002 merely to "get the issue off the table" and avoid looking "soft on defense."

Because Lieberman uses moral values as a justification for his politics, he invites a passionate pushback on moral grounds. "Values voters" are desperate to send a message – not only to President Bush but also to the Democrats. They want the bloodshed in Iraq to end and they want their elected officials to figure a way out of this.

Maybe Joe Lieberman needs to reconnect with that Caucus of Connecticut Democrats he founded 35 years ago and try to remember his own passion against the other war. Perhaps then he will catch on to why so many present day Connecticut voters are so eager to send him a message.