Bill Clinton to campaign for Lieberman in Waterbury

U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman is rolling out the big gun in his increasingly close primary battle with Greenwich Democrat Ned Lamont.

Former President Bill Clinton is slated to campaign on behalf of the three-term incumbent Monday in Waterbury, Lieberman's campaign spokeswoman said today.

We are thrilled to have President Clinton come to the state to campaign for Senator Lieberman," the spokeswoman, Marion Steinfels, said. "It is not only a big day for our campaign, but it is a big day for Waterbury and Connecticut."

Steinfels said Clinton was expected to speak in the late afternoon, but added that plans for the event are still being made.

Clinton and Lieberman have known each other since Clinton worked on Lieberman's first campaign for state Senate in 1970, when Clinton attended Yale University in New Haven, she said.

She also noted that Lieberman was the first senator from outside of the South to endorse Clinton in his 1992 presidential campaign.

Lieberman famously broke with Clinton in 1998 when he took the Senate floor to condemn the president's marital infidelity as "immoral" and denounce his "premeditated" deception. The speech was widely interpreted as Lieberman's stepping-stone to the Democrats' vice presidential nomination two years later.

Clinton, in a recent speech at the Aspen Institute conference, defended Lieberman and his staunch support for the war in Iraq. He questioned why antiwar Democrats are seeking to oust a fellow Democrat, saying that instead of seeking to retire Republicans they were pursuing "the nuttiest strategy I ever heard in my life."

Lamont is opposed to the U.S. war in Iraq and accuses Lieberman of being too close to President Bush and the Republicans who control Congress.

Clinton's wife, U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., has said she supports Lieberman but wouldn't back him if he loses the primary and runs as an independent.

That speech helped Clinton in the long run, when Lieberman later denounced impeachment. If Clinton didn't strategize it, he should have. Get called immoral by someone who pretends to be moral, then when that person says impeachment is going too far, he has credibility--Defiant

Exactly!

(BTW, clinton's campaigning for Lieberman is, obviously, all about hillary. A Lieberman loss is not good for hillary. The question, tho, is this: Given the fact that his campaigning directly correlates with DEFEAT, not victory, does clinton really want hillary to win? )

THE LIEBERMAN PARADIGM

Senator Joseph Lieberman's bifurcated Monicagate speech in 1998 on the floor of the Senate was almost universally misperceived as an act of honesty and courage.

In reality, it was neither.

Reduced to its essence, Lieberman's argument was this:

clinton is an unfit president;
therefore, clinton must remain president.

I have called this argument "The Lieberman Paradigm."

Lieberman's argument that sorry day was rightly headed toward clinton's certain ouster when it suddenly made a swift, hairpin 180, as if clinton hacks took over the wheel....

Which they probably did.

What was Joe promised? A place on the 2000 ticket, perhaps?

To be fair, it was not the Lieberman speech but rather a New York Times apologia that institutionalized this shameless scheme to protect a thoroughly corrupt and repugnant--and--as everyone except The New York Times now knows-- dangerous -- Democrat regime.

The Lieberman Paradigm made its debut in the Times' utterly loony 1996 endorsement of clinton. The Times actually argued--I kid you not--that although bill clinton was a "corrupt," "dysfunctional personality [with] delusions" -- the Times' own words -- we need not--we must not--remove bill clinton; we need only remove.the character lobe of bill clinton's brain.

THE SHAYS SYNDROME

Not an aberration, the Shays Syndrome was quickly adopted by the entire Senate as its impeachment show trial deus ex machina of choice.

Shays, you may recall, examined the evidence in the Ford Building, concluded that clinton did, indeed, rape Broaddrick -- "VICIOUSLY!" AND "TWICE!" he declared at the time-- and was planning to vote to impeach; he changed his mind, however, after a tete a tete with the rapist.

Any cognitive dissonance Shays may have experienced rendering that verdict was no doubt assuaged by the political plum clinton had given Mrs. (Betsi) Shays...

Each of the 50 senators, on the other hand, cured the cognitive dissonance problem pre-emptively by making certain not to examine the damning Ford Building evidence in the first place.

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