Lieberman's Woes
Inside Joe Lieberman's Kamikaze Campaign
Day of the Spoiler
by Rick Perlstein
October 22 - 28, 2003
The listbot at meetup.com, the commercial site whose clever software facilitates face-to-face gatherings between Web surfers of like interest, sent me a forlorn little e-mail the other day.
"Congratulations on a successful National Lieberman in 2004 Meetup last week! See photos from every city," it read, giving a link. Click
ain't no photos.
That's not surprising. In Chicago, where I live, there wasn't any meetup. Not enough supporters RSVP'ed to trigger the software's automated threshold. Meetup.com, in fact, has registered only 332 Joseph Lieberman fans in the entire United States of America, four in Chicago. An undercover reporter from The Village Voice…uh, me…represents one quarter of the total.
It could be considered comic, this abyss at the Lieberman grassroots. It could be, that is, if Lieberman showed any signs of going away. Instead, he's been ramping up: launching a splashy new tax plan; publishing a dowloadable campaign book, Leading With Integrity: A Fresh Start for America, and an accompanying website; kicking off a campaign tour…all just this past week. And that's not funny. Because it's not too early to predict that if the Democrats lose the presidential election next November, Lieberman will be the one to blame. That will certainly be so if he ends up becoming the nominee…in which
case the Democratic Party will be left without an activist base. ("I'll vote for Joe Lieberman absentee from whatever country I move to if he wins the nomination," as one friend of mine puts it.[P6: 
]) Perversely, it might even be worse for the Democratic Party if he fails.
