Maxine Defies; Barbara Disappoints

By Jane Hamsher, Huffington Post. Posted July 11, 2006.

If it wasn't for the Congressional Black Caucus during the Clinton impeachment hearings my faith in democracy would have crumbled right then and there.  You want a fight? They know how to fight, which is why the right hates them and spends so much time trying to marginalize them (well, that and the fact that they're, you know, black).

Here's David "Bobo" Brooks in the New York Times, spreading Joe Lieberman's latest canard:

Next has come the effort to expel Lieberman from modern liberalism. In a dark parody of the old struggle between Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey, the highly educated, highly affluent, highly Caucasian wing of the Democratic Party has turned liberalism from a philosophy into a secular religion, and then sought to purge a battle-scarred warhorse on the grounds of insufficient moral purity.

Somebody tell Maxine Waters. This is from her appearance on the Tom Joyner radio show, when she was asked about efforts to end the war: 

As a matter of fact, I'm talking with Mr. Lamont up in Connecticut.  He's running against Mr. Lieberman.  As you know, Mr. Lieberman, who is a Democrat, acts just like a Republican, has been supporting the war. Now Mr. Lamont's got his back up against the wall in the Democratic primary -- Mr. Lieberman might get beaten!  I'm calling Mr. Lamont to tell him I'm gonna come up and help him.

Waters is the chair of the 72 member, all Democratic "Out of Iraq" caucus. Now she's standing up to the Incumbency Protection Racket, honoring her principles and fighting for what she believes in. Bobo only proves that he knows nothing about Lamont supporters and a whole lot about pissy white male privilege, and his indignant martyr routine is simply an exercise in projection. 

Meanwhile, as Arianna Huffington noted Barbara Boxer is using her pro-choice, anti-war street cred to come to Connecticut and campaign for a neocon hawk who thinks it's all right for publicly funded hospitals to refuse to treat rape victims with emergency contraception (Lieberman said it should be no problem for them to take a "short ride" to another hospital after having been brutally raped). Right-wing pundits are claiming that Boxer is so put-off by the "extremism" of Lamont's pro-choice supporters (who hold the view that this is, in fact, a problem) that she is now campaigning for Lieberman.

I am going to thoroughly enjoy watching Maxine Waters come to Connecticut on behalf of Ned and show a patronizing old gasbag like Brooks how it's done. And color me seriously disappointed in Barbara Boxer, whose appearance will send a clear message -- "Oh, what's a little war between friends."

              

Jane Hamsher blogs at firedoglake and the Huffington Post.

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