Echopraxia

Op-ed from the New Republic's Jonathan Chait on this year's fractious Connecticut senatorial race, here. Given that the left-netroots have for the most part thrown TNR under the bus during this whole business - Markos Zuniga even referred to them as part of the "vast RIGHT wing conspiracy", which made me slowly blink twice - he's unsurprisingly harsh:

The whole anti-Lieberman blog campaign has a self-fulfilling quality: They charge that Lieberman isn't a Democrat, they drive him from the party, and they declare themselves to be correct. The more ex-Democrats they create, the more sure of their own virtue they become.

Now, while I don't disagree with his conclusion, it is worth remembering that Chait is the same man who wrote a vicious and extremely entertaining blog called "Diary of a Dean-o-phobe" during the 2004 primary season.

(Ah, good times:

Dean tries to spin his outburst as evidence of his being "willing to say things that are not popular." But the problem wasn't that Dean said something unpopular. The content of what he said was fine--"EEEEEEYYYYAAAHHHH!!!!" is not, per se, an unpopular sentiment--but the form was problematic.

I'm willing to stipulate that that's perfectly acceptable intra-party wrangling, because it's funny, and the anti-Lieberman campaign is just spittle-flecked and depressing. But I have a feeling that as criteria go that's a touch on the shallow side.)