August 9, 2006, morning.  A couple of wins for the Democratic Party. They need to be careful what they wish for. In Georgia, racist anti-Semite Cynthia McKinney lost in her primary bid to Hank Johnson, another liberal Democrat running with the campaign theme of "at least I'm not crazy Cynthia". This is an actual win for Democrats. Johnson may end up being an effective representative. The GOP hoped McKinney would win, because that would leave the Democratic Party with a weak and ineffective member who has been a constant source of embarrassment.

In Connecticut, Joe Lieberman lost to far left, anti-war bloggers. Their candidate, Ned Lamont, ran a campaign that had one theme: Joe Lieberman supports Bush's war in Iraq; therefore, he must be punished. The party of African-Americans, Asian/Pacific Islanders, Disabled, Hispanics, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Native Americans, Rural Americans, Seniors, Retirees, Small Business, Unions, veterans & military, women, young people and students (see www.democrats.org) elected yet another millionaire to represent them in the general election. 

Lieberman will now run as an independent in the general election. Get the popcorn ready.

Someone, according to Friends for Joe Lieberman , took down the Lieberman campaign website with denial of service attacks beginning the day before the election. Surely this was not Lamont supporters, was it? Read their blogs, then you decide.

Noam Scheiber, senior editor at The New Republic, writes in the New York Times that Lieberman's defeat is due to the fact that he did not understand until too late that the Democratic Party has changed. Yesterday's Democratic strategy was to gain the support of powerful interest groups in one's home district. Today's strategy is different. The power to influence and elect has swung to far left bloggers and their readers. They have demonstrated an amazing ability to communicate and raise money. They are also much more partisan and much less likely to tolerate a candidate who deviates from their "progressive" views. They are united in their hatred of George W. Bush. Scheiber writes that they support the most liberal candidate who can be elected, not necessarily the most liberal candidate. If his theory of this new Democratic Party model is correct, then the Anti-Bush Party is going to have to be very careful about whom they select as candidates. If they do not choose wisely (remember Dean's meltdown?), they could end up losing even more elections when their candidate has to compete in districts that tend to be more moderate than Connecticut. 

August 2, 2006, morning.  I ran across a very good article in Investors Business Daily about the Democratic Party's abandonment of Joe Lieberman. The author notes that the New York Times has endorsed Lieberman's opponent in its further campaign to undermine the war effort and destroy President Bush. Democrats have placed partisan politics above all else. They don't give a damn about the country, its soldiers or its future. They think they can be a part of the problem, paint a negative picture, and help make things worse until it's so bad that voters will throw Bush and the Republicans out. They think they can then ride to the rescue and make everything better, but with a liberal cast. They don't see the danger in what they do. 

July 31, 2006, evening.  Democratic leaders now have a timetable for surrendering in Iraq. They are united in calling for a "phased surrender" to begin by the end of the year. Jihadists everywhere are cheering the news. All they have to do is hold out a little longer and keep killing their fellow Iraqis until the last American soldier leaves. Then they'll turn out the lights. 

"U.S. forces in Iraq should transition to a more limited mission," Democrats wrote, "They need to be out of harm's way, and we need to get credit for it before the next election. Thanks to our defeatism and the media's negativism, Americans are becoming more and more convinced that we can't win. You have to give a lot of credit to Howard Dean. He announced our defeat months ago. It is now up to Democratic leaders in the House and Senate to bring this sad chapter in our history to a close. America sacrificed its soldiers in vain, and this is the proper way to honor their sacrifice, by getting more Democrats elected this coming November. We will return America to the glory years we enjoyed under Bill Clinton. Yes, we lost a lot of soldiers and sailors on the Cole, in Somalia and elsewhere, and it pretty well convinced al-Qaeda we were weak and soft and ripe for conquest, but appeasement kept the terrorists off our backs for several years, or at least, thank God, until we got a Republican in office. Appeasement worked before. It can work again!"

With this new effort, Democrats have signaled that our military leaders are detached from reality and should have no say over troop levels. Political reality should dictate whether we stay or go, whether we have too many or too few troops. It is also obvious that conditions on the ground in Iraq are completely irrelevant. The hated Donald Rumsfeld has actually announced that some troops may be extended in Iraq for as much as four months due to increased sectarian violence. Democrats understand much better that public opinion polls are a much more accurate barometer for deciding whether to remain in the fight. Increased violence means greater chances for U.S. troops to be killed, so we should instead pull our troops out and leave the Iraqi military on its own, ready or not.