A Tale of Two Races, a Tale of Two Philosophies

Christopher Suleske

There was a striking lesson in comparison and contrast Tuesday night, amid the election results. Examine the outcomes of the Senate races in Connecticut and its neighbor, Rhode Island. Both featured relatively popular incumbents who were strident voices of dissent in their respective parties. Yet last night, one was heartily rewarded while the other was sent packing. Why?

Joseph Lieberman, several-term U.S. Senator from Connecticut and 2000 Vice-President nominee was defeated in the Democrat primary by the emotionally-driven unreasonable nuts in his party. He thus ran as an independent. And last night, he won with a plurality of votes (50%), besting the Democrat candidate Lamont (40%) and the Republican Schlesinger (10%). Examine that last figure - 10%. Why is it so low? Was Schlesinger that bad a candidate? No. He's been popularly elected before in other races. So why only 10%? Because the Republicans who otherwise would have voted for him and against the Democrat cast their votes in large measure for Lieberman, rewarding him for being a stand-up guy, a mensch, if you will. Conservatives will do this sort of thing. They understand what is at stake in our freakazoidal world and will cast their votes based on *reason* rather than *emotion*. That said, I'm sure there was some schmaltz involved - warm feelings for a dissed Lieberman. He's a nice guy, after all.

Across the border in Rhode Island (which I'm told is neither a road nor an island), two term U.S. senator Lincoln Chafee was defeated by his Democrat challenger, Sheldon "this is the closest I'm ever going to get to the" Whitehouse. In the Republican primary, Chafee faced a challenge from a far more conservative Steve Laffey (though not surprising, as even many Democrats are more conservative than Chafee). But in the end, Republicans endorsed Chafee and took him to the polls as their candidate. You'd think Democrats would reward him for his outspoken opposition to the the policies of the Bush administration. People like a free thinker, a rebel - right? Well, it seems that Democrats are, after all, Democrats first, and everything else - if anything else - very far down the list.

I'm not disheartened to see Chafee leaving the Senate. As someone who voted consistently against my line of reasoning, I'd always considered him a liberal and unreasoning obstructionist more so than a Republican. It was often excrutiating to watch the Republican leadership contort itself to win a table scrap of accord from Chafee on whatever close vote was before the Senate. I wish him well in whatever is next for him. If he's like most politicians, he'll spend the remainder of his life living off the fruits of the connections he's made while a politician.

I wish Lieberman the best as well. If anyone has a mandate today, it is the Senator from Connecticut. If I may, Senator, I implore you to use that political capital to attract fellow Democrats to the philosophy we share concerning terrorism and terrorists. I am far more a Lieberman Democrat than I am a Chafee Republican, for this single, yet all-important reason.