Lieberman and the netroots

So, not to rudely wipe my muddy boots on the welcome rug here at my new digs, but I meant to note this a couple days ago, when Andrew said of Joe Lieberman:

Lieberman, from his scripted talking points on drilling for oil to his endorsement of the Hilton-Spears ads, is now a Republican party hack. In the end, the netroots drove him over the cliff, didn't they?

Probably not. Lieberman as "Republican party hack" is a new role, but Lieberman as acquisitive opportunist isn't. As Rick Hertzberg wrote, (now that I'm a blogger at the Atlantic, do I get to call that dude Rick? Hmm. Probably better that I play my position.) Ahem. As Hendrik Hertzberg wrote in 2006, lots of senators looked just like Joe Lieberman on paper, but only Joe was facing an insurrection:

If what we have here is an inquisition (not the mot juste, perhaps, to describe a primary), then the only heretic who has anything to worry about is named Joe. Lieberman's views are broadly similar to those of such colleagues as Diane Feinstein and Ben Nelson, and nobody's trying to burn them at the stake. As for Lieberman's party credentials, they seem to be in reasonably good order. He is a three-term Democratic senator from a state, Connecticut, that's as blue as a state can be while still being the spawning ground of the Bush dynasty; six years ago, he was the Democratic Party's nominee for Vice-President, an unusual honor for a fake Democrat; he has the support of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., naral, and the League of Conservation Voters.

What really exposed Lieberman to the brunt of liberal outrage was the sense that Joe was, first and foremost, out to get his. Hertzberg recalls Lieberman's "pompous performance" at the height of impeachment mania, his unwillingness to give up his Senate seat while running with Al Gore and, of course, his rhetoric on Iraq:

"Lieberman's problem is not that he supported the Iraq invasion, nor that he thinks we need to stay in and finish the job," Suzanne Nossel, a young ex-State Department official and a fellow at a think tank called the Security and Peace Initiative, wrote the other day. "He has lots of mainstream Democratic company in both those positions. The crux of Lieberman's problem is his unwillingness to acknowledge the severity of what's happened in Iraq, and to demand accountability for it."

Joe Lieberman isn't anyone's victim. He was caught in a political trap when the Iraq War didn't go the way of Desert Storm. He made it worse by pretending that Iraq War actually was Desert Storm. Now he's doing what he can to salvage some semblance of a political future. Therein we have one more reason to support Obama: the start of an Obama administration would likely mean the end of Joe Lieberman.