| The video is from our April DFA meeting. I haven't been that active a member lately, but I started with the New Haven DFA back in April of 2003, going to Iowa and New Hampshire for Howard! I built a "The Doctor is In" booth, I made 36 contributions before maxing out, I have my orange beanie, and I'm buddies with Jim Dean.
For this special meeting, I had the time wrong and accidentally showed up half an hour late. However, I sat and listened for nearly thirty minutes, as Alpert sought to burnish his anti-war creds with DFA leaders Justin Paglino and Aaron Goode.
About ten minutes before this video, (and Merrick's abrupt departure), I started raising my hand to ask a question or two for the record.
My questions weren't that rough:
A. If Alpert doesn't get 15% at Convention, will he call it quits? Or will he pay for signature gathering?
B. Wasn't he being a little opportunistic with the anti-war stuff? And could he give us more detail as to where he was, and what he did, from the fall of 2002 through the Lamont-Lieberman battles. (no, I did not remember seeing him at any of our pro-Dean, anti-war, activities.)
But the mere act of me raising my hand made Merrick visibly uncomfortable, (maybe it was Chuck Swirsky to my left, in a yellow IAFF Dodd t-shirt, I dunno...) So when I finally insisted on my turn, Merrick said he needed a glass of water, .... and then when he came back, he declared the session over. And literally ran away!
So why did Merrick run away? Honestly, afterwards, Aaron, Justin and I were all left scratching our heads. It just didn't add up!
However, after a couple of minutes of brainstorming, someone said I should Google his campaign contributions, which I did. And indeed, there was the smoking gun, the answer to why the guy who walked across the entire state of Connecticut -- to protest our involvement in Afghanistan, -- suddenly turned tail, and ran away.
Yep, on August 5th 2006, a couple of days before the historic primary... when polls were showing Ned Lamont would win.... Merrick Alpert gave Joe Lieberman $1000, and a wink of support, encouraging him to wage a fall re-match as an independent! |
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