More Lieberman

Via Yglesias, I see more circumstantial evidence for the blogospherical psychoanalysis of Marshall Wittman performed by Paperwight and myself. Nothing like a tiresome, pious scolding of the left for self-righteously putting their political preferences ahead of electoral reality, then turning on a dime to tout the electoral brilliance of joementum.

Yglesias’ response is solid but not quite on target. Yes, standing behind social security, against credit card companies writing their own legislation, and against torture is a fairly minimum standard to expect Democrats to meet, and hardly qualifies as dogmatic leftism. But these failures aren’t the problem with Lieberman; they’re symptoms of the problem. The problem is he thinks it’s good strategy to give in and meet them halfway pretty much all the time. It would be folly to say that the opposition party should never do that, but it’s probably a bigger folly to do it more or less reflexively. Versions of this point are made at dailykos almost hourly.

I’m appalled by any number of Lieberman’s substantive positions, but none of them are why I’ve already set aside a few dollars for his most promising primary challenger. I’m dumping Lieberman because he says and does things that hurt his party, and he doesn’t seem to know or care that he’s doing it.