In particular, I disagree with [bloggers] about how we should go about disagreeing with each other -- as Democrats and as Americans. As I have said before, I like a good fight, and I am all for healthy partisanship -- I would not be a Democrat if I didn't think our party was better than the other side, and if I did not want to beat Republicans. But I did not sign up to be a Democrat to practice the same nasty, cynical, and intolerant politics that the worst elements of the conservative movement have promoted over the last two decades.
Oh, you didn't?
Really?
(The above are resized but unaltered screencaps from a saved archive of Gerstein's "Full Lamonty" blog at Joe2006.com, Lieberman's official, never "hacked," and now-defunct campaign website.)
Over at Pandagon, Amanda Marcotte points out Dan Gerstein's role in trying to further the divide between Democrats and their online supporters.
Melber points out that, surprise surprise, a former aide to Joe
Lieberman is heading the pack of Democrats pursing their lips and
declaring that the party needs to distance itself from its supporters
and further embrace a media environment that is hostile to Democrats
and apparently infatuated with right wingers, who may be unhinged at
times but are generally a good ratings-pulling spectacle.
I hadn't previously made the connection between what happened with the Edwards campaign, and last year's CT Senate race. The more I think about it, the more I understand how the two are related. Dan Gerstein and William Donahue have/had the same goal: alienate and neutralize those pesky bloggers.
A discussion on whether or not The Last Honest Man ® will bolt to the Republic Party if things don't go his way on Iraq. Dangerstein guests but I've cut most of his jabber out because it's the same-old same-old. I did keep him dancing around the real question only because he does a such a piss-poor job with his "not the only issue" bullshit. Yeah, that's why he broke his Sabbat today. Right, Dan.
The more interesting part is at the end where RNN takes some really salient quotes from the blogs. I was startled by that part. I had no idea what the "Regional News Network" was before this. An upstate New York cable news channel? Video is from a few days ago.
Today, Dan Gerstein is peddling the line that Joe Lieberman is above party politics and he is helping his boss aggressively court the conservative, right-wing, Republican vote with the help of child-abusing scum like Mel Sembler. (Maybe that's why Joe so desperately wants to protect the Republican leadership who so miserably failed the young pages under their care.)
Now he's busy trying to smear the ordinary people who have the temerity to exercise their First Amednment rights by posting on blogs.
Yet not so long ago, Gerstein was masquerading as a blogger, assiduosuly doing Joe Lieberman's bidding.
Lieberman receives a ranking of 76.4 percent from ProgressivePunch, a nonpartisan searchable database of Congressional voting records from a liberal perspective. The score, however, was deflated because of votes missed while Lieberman was running for president in 2003. He scored 85.5 percent among the 414 votes evaluated in which he actually voted. Dodd scores 87.2 percent from the liberal group.
Of course, some things never change. Lieberman has always been telling anyone who'd listen that Lamont is a wacko. Once again, Gerstein leapt into the anonymous blogosphere to do his master's bidding.
What really jumped out to me there is the use of the word "moderate" to describe Lamont. Lamont seemingly was a moderate before deciding to jump on the anti-Lieberman bandwagon, voting with Republicans on his town council 80 percent of the time. Now during this campaign he is embracing the hard-line, anti-Clinton wing of the party that wants to resurrect protectionist trade policies, government-run health care, and unaccountable public schools.
And there's more where that came from.
Imagine! Pretending to be a simple little blogger, religiously peddling the Lieberman line chapter and verse, and then suddenly, mysteriously getting sucked to the very top of the Lieberman campaign apparatus! Sounds to me like there was some coordination going on. Wonder how much he got paid?
As it happened, the poor sap who was running the pro-Joe blog that Gerstein co-opted to serve the Lieberman campaign while pretending to be just a "regular guy," got so fed up with Lieberman's tactics that he abandoned his blog.
Wonder if anyone in the press is paying attention to this? Nah, probably not. That would be too much like journalism. So much easier to regurgitate Dan Gerstein's smears into yet another he-said-she-said disservice to the reading public.
Dan Gerstein, better known in the blogosphere by his blogger handle DangerStein, has left his blog to assume fulltime smear duties at the Lieberman campaign. The Journal Inquirer's Don Michak has the skinny.
But then Gerstein posed "a question" for Lamont.
How could he expect to convince "moderate Democrats, Republicans, and most importantly, unaffiliated voters" that he "would be anything other than a rigid partisan rubber stamp in the Senate," the Lieberman spokesman asked, "when the only proof of his independence he can show is that he is slightly to the right of socialist Bernie Sanders on fiscal policy?"
"Why should anyone outside the Sharpton/Kos wing of the Democratic Party believe Ned Lamont will represent their views in Washington?" he added.
Gerstein had associated Lamont with three figures on the left: Sanders, the self-described socialist congressman from Vermont who caucuses with the House Democrats; the Rev. Al Sharpton, the New York civil rights advocate and former Democratic presidential candidate; and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, founder of Daily Kos, one of the liberals' most popular political weblogs.
The Lieberman aide's e-mail came the same day the Waterbury Republican-American editorialized about "Ned's true colors," describing the candidate's great-grandfather, Thomas W. Lamont, as not only chairman of J.P. Morgan but "the sugar daddy for the American Communist Party," and his uncle, Corliss Lamont, as "an unapologetic Stalinist and atheist."
The newspaper also suggested that Lamont has "surrounded himself with people who may be characterized fairly as dedicated socialists and borderline communists," and noted that "race hustlers Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton" had stumped for his victory.
Good Lord! Calling Ned Lamont a communist because of his great-grandfather is like calling Joe Lieberman a drug dealer because his father sold liquor.
DangerStein tried the propagandist's time-honored ploy of deniability vis a vis the Rep-Am smear, but it's clear as the smarmy smile on Joe's face that this is all part of a well-coordinated campaign of character assasination.
This race is going to get very, very, very dirty. And the shame will be entirely Joseph "Mr. Honor and Integrity" Lieberman's.
What a sad, sad end to a political career that was once marked with hints of greatness.
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