A Nation of McGovernites?

The other day Matt Stoller said the real meaning of the Lieberman opposition is a revolt about the way business is conducted in DC both by the Republicans and the Democrats. Of course he is right but he may have missed something. The DLC's Marshall Wittmann described opponents of Lieberman as "McGovernites with keyboards". Digby suggested that Lieberman supporters have a "fear of hippies". After five years of war all of the time and (losing all the wars) - Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone thinks it might be the fear that America may become a nation of McGovernites.

The reason the Lamont election has all of Washington so badly freaked out and dug in is that it's revealed a crack in the long-dependable mechanism of mainstream American politics. For almost four decades now conservatives in both parties have been governing according to a very simple formula. You run against Jane Fonda and George McGovern in election season, then you spend the next four years playing golf, shooting flightless birds, and taking $25,000 speaking gigs in Aspen while you let your fundraisers run things around the office.

But their problem now is that they've fucked up Iraq and everything else so badly that they've practically made “McGovernism” mainstream. A whole generation of hacks has reached office running against George McGovern, and now Joe Lieberman is threatening to ruin things for everybody, just like Jimmy Carter wrecked the Barry Goldwater gravy train for the last generation by falling on his face against Ronald Reagan. If there is such a thing as a principle in Washington, avoiding such a catastrophe as that is it. That's why they won't let Joe die easy — no matter how much he seems to deserve it.

Update
It looks like the Lamont/Lieberman race is closer than we had been led to believe, Chris Bowers has the details.