Pro-War Politicians Have Written a Check Their Asses Can't Cash, Part 1 - Good-Bye, Joe:
Ask any poor bastard who ever got caught cheating on his lover with the hot teenaged chick with the pierced tongue who works at, say, the neighborhood Starbucks. Shit, take a poll, if you want. You'll hear the same thing: that poor bastard should have just up and confessed to his woman, admitted he was wrong, instead of trying to weasel and con and accuse his way out of it. 'Cause he doesn't have to be caught balls deep in the face of a corporate barista for his longtime lover to know the score. At the end of the day, the poor bastard's gotta ask himself what he wants: is it feeling the delicious electricity of that tongue post glide up his cock shaft? Or is it the sweet love of that grown-up woman he's been seeing for two or three years that he wants embracing him? Either way, that poor bastard's gotta make a decision and stick with it and just be true to himself.

It's an easy lesson, but one that so, so many do not learn. 'Cause if he lies, if he keeps saying that he didn't fuck the pierced coffee pusher, or if he blames his mama issues or the fact that his woman doesn't blow him enough, that woman is righteously, rightfully gone, and his sorry, pleadin' ass is left on the sidewalk, blues-style, motherfucker, with nothin' but a lonely stroll down the pavement left for him. And here's the worst part - he can do all those things and still be left behind like so much curbside garbage.

Just ask Joe Lieberman. The man who preached compromise or capitulation to the Bush administration because Bush is gonna be president for the next couple of years, the man who never backed down from sayin' that the Iraq War was hunky-dory, the man who attacked part of the base of his own party in order to set himself up for an independent run, that man lost not just because he blindly supports a war that the majority of the nation (and Connecticut) no longer supports. Joe Lieberman lost to Ned Lamont because he refused to admit that he was wrong. You could say that Joe was honorable and stuck to his guns and all that shit, but at the end of the day, a politician must listen to the voters, or that politician will hear them on primary or election day. The best Lieberman could do was this in the desperate last days of his long climb to loserdom: "I think people are turning around and saying, 'Hey, we were thinking of sending Joe a message [on Election Day], but I think he got the message, and we don't want to lose him as our senator.'"

Lieberman lost because he was wrong, not because he was too principled or too "moderate" (whatever the fuck that means) or too Jewy or too any-fuckin-thing else anyone wants to come up with before admitting the truth. Lierberman lost because he was wrong, not because the mighty power of Left Blogsylvania smeared him or because Ned Lamont used his fortune to challenge Lieberman. Hell, Lieberman spent most of his time on the campaign trail reeling like a drunk man hit in the head with a Budweiser bottle, swinging and lashing out at phantoms, trying to portray Ned Lamont, a white bread millionaire, as some kind of crazed Bohemian.

Now Lieberman has the stink of loser on him. His concession speech was the last gasp of the man with cement shoes sinking into Long Island Sound, vowing impotent vengeance on those who did him in. Accusing someone of "partisan politics" in a party's primary is not unlike accusing a marathon runner of running a marathon. And sure, sure, Republicans and some Democrats will attempt to prop him up in his doomed "independent" run, but he's got no party machine behind him, only the hope that a three-term Senator can run as a heroic underdog rather than some pathetic figure who wasn't even good enough for his own party. Goddamn, it'll be sad. One hopes, desperately, that Bill Clinton'll show up on Lieberman's doorstep and get him to agree that the most noble thing is for a man to fall on his sword.

Lieberman lost because he was wrong, on the war, on indecency, on torture, on Social Security, and more, more, more. He lost not because he said he was right, but because he tried to say that wrong was right.

Lieberman lost like so many others will, mostly Republican, because they hitched their wagons to George Bush's star and that fucker went supernova.