holdingsign.jpg

Matt Stoller has an hilarious post up about his adventures in the Kiss Float -- and their stop at a Joe Lieberman rally in New Haven.

...After all the politicos had spoken, Lieberman finally stepped up to the mike. Lieberman's speech was bad, weird, listless, and angry. He said that there are two big lies in this campaign. The first is apparently that Lieberman is not a Democrat. For the record, we call him George Bush's favorite Democrat, though we tend to acknowledge that he's a Democrat. After repeating the the mean liberal voices he hears in his head, Lieberman said something along the lines of 'I'm a Democrat, I believe in human rights, in government working for the people, etc.' What's hilarious about Lieberman's point is that he not only violated campaign speak 101, which is that you don't repeat your opponent's attacks on you, but he actually invented a new attack line and used it on himself so he could deny it.

The second big apparent slap is even weirder. 'The other big lie in this campaign is that I am George Bush.' With special emphasis, Lieberman said slowly, 'I. am. not. George. Bush.' How do you even respond to that? It's like Lieberman is running against the Chewbacca defense. He's just picking facts about himself, not positions or anything like that, just simple human facts, and saying that we are lying about them. Here's a three line play I wrote to illustrate the dynamic:

Enter Joe Lieberman, stage right

Lieberman: My opponent says I am made of wax. I am not made of wax, that is a total fabrication!

The world: What are you talking about?

awkward pause

The End

In the rest of his speech, Lieberman referred repeatedly to his work in the 1960s marching and registering voters in the South. Even this didn't work, since most people in the semi-crowd weren't actually alive in the the early 1960s. At a certain point during the anecdote, one of his staffers shouted out derisively 'Where was Ned?' Lieberman grinned and said 'That's a good question, where was Ned?' While not a devastating blow, it does seem reasonable to wonder why Ned Lamont wasn't in the South in the early 1960s registering voters like Joe Lieberman was.

Apparently, Ned's lame excuse is that he was in elementary school....

Oh man, I needed that belly laugh this morning. Go over to MyDD and read the whole day long saga story. For those of you who've always wondered what working on a campaign would be like...well, you occasionally get wacky days like this, but there's also a whole lot of calling people on the phone and addressing envelopes.