Sanders and Lieberman: Bully for Them

As we hunker down to devote our attention to Virginia and its effectively tied senatorial race, let me take a moment to speak directly to Democrats.

Get ahold of yourselves and stop kvetching.

No matter what the outcome in the Senate proves, it will be attributable to neither 1) the Green Party of Virginia nor 2) Joe Lieberman. Do you know how pissed a left-leaning voter has to be at Democrats to vote Green in a close election? I say the Green party's strength in any region of the country is a measure of the extent to which Democrats have screwed up there. This is Virginia, folks, not Northern California. Did somebody from DNC pee on Thomas Jefferson's grave or what?

I for one am really excited to have two independent senators. Bernie Sanders was first brought to my attention by my beloved 8th-grade history teacher, Mr. H. How could you not love a guy called Bernie Sanders? And if there's anything cuter than Bernie Sanders' name it's Joe Lieberman's punim. My own positions don't overlap much with the Connecticut senator's, but I'm still glad he won. I think it's preposterous to argue that he should have stepped down so a different Democrat could win. This isn't dodgeball; loyalty is supposed to be reciprocal, and the Democrats stopped supporting him. Lieberman appears to be something like a consensus candidate in his home state, and that's a hell of a lot more important than what the party bosses think. If you don't like how he votes, pony up a better candidate.

I think I could still be down with a two-party system, but I don't really care for the two parties we're stuck with. That's why I sometimes break with Democrats in the voting booth. At my very first election, in 1998, I took great pride in voting for Chuck Schumer on the Marijuana Party ticket. We all know I voted for Nader and that's why my mom stopped speaking to me for a few days in 2000. This year I voted for Peter Camejo of the Green party for governor, but it was purely a "screw you" vote, as the outcome of that race was clear months ago. An aside: in September I was engaged in conversation with two principle investigators at LBL about Schwarzenegger, and none of us could remember his opponent's name. After about three minutes I was able to supply "Phil."

I think anything that breaks our dependence on the party machines we're stuck with is a step in the right direction. I'm just proud of the people of Vermont and Connecticut for keeping their minds open long enough to listen to what someone has to say. Teddy Roosevelt would be proud.