US Turns a Political Corner

Last night we entered a new era in US politics. When political novice Ned Lamont defeated incumbent Joe Lieberman for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate with the help of George Soros and the lefty “netroots” we turned a corner onto an unfamiliar street.

The “netroots” consider themselves as a political movement like the conservative movement that came to national power in 1980. They were saying in 2004 that this was their Goldwater election. Ten or twenty years in the future they would achieve their Reagan moment and become the new political majority in the United States.

That is their story, and maybe they will turn out to be right. Of course, to have a true Goldwater election they should have nominated Howard Dean, not the establishment choice John Kerry. Perhaps they will rectify the mistake in 2008.

On the other hand they may also calve off another iceberg from the great political glacier that once was the Democratic coalition. That berg would be the 9/11 Democrats who are nation-state Americans before they are partisan Democrats.

But what is pretty certain is that the Democratic Party has crossed a bridge with the defeat of Joe Lieberman. It has made a bold statement about what kind of political party it wants to be and what the party should stand for.

Whenever you take a bold step like that you take a risk. You are stepping out into the unknown and you really don’t know the consequences of that act.

Republicans hope that the netroot Democrats are marginalizing the party, and getting it off its game which must be the defense of the vast hoard of benefits and privileges that it has secured for its supporters over the last 70 years.

But what do we know? What is certain is that the party of the people is being led in a new direction by Ned Lamont, an heir of the Morgan banking fortune, George Soros, a billionaire speculator, and the single, secular, childless, college-educated, angry netroots. They will have to work hard to keep their connection with the throbbing heart of the American people.