Mad as hell and not going to take it anymore

The armchair pundits are all putting in their two cents on Lieberman's loss, with reactions ranging from giddy glee from those who believen the "far left" have hijacked the party and that it will hurt the Dems in November, to more thoughtful analysis of the wider issues. The NYT pretty much sums up my immediate reaction. The salient points being:

The primary upset was not, however, a rebellion against the bipartisanship and centrism that Mr. Lieberman said he represented in the Senate. Instead, Connecticut Democrats were reacting to the way those concepts have been perverted by the Bush White House. [...]

The rebellion against Mr. Lieberman was actually an uprising by that rare phenomenon, irate moderates. They are the voters who have been unnerved over the last few years as the country has seemed to be galloping in a deeply unmoderate direction. A war that began at the president’s choosing has degenerated into a desperate, bloody mess that has turned much of the world against the United States. The administration’s contempt for international agreements, Congressional prerogatives and the authority of the courts has undermined the rule of law abroad and at home.

Yet while all this has been happening, the political discussion in Washington has become a captive of the Bush agenda. Traditional beliefs like every person’s right to a day in court, or the conviction that America should not start wars it does not know how to win, wind up being portrayed as extreme. The middle becomes a place where senators struggle to get the president to volunteer to obey the law when the mood strikes him. Attempting to regain the real center becomes a radical alternative.

Both parties should take a lesson from yesterday's results. The White House and the GOP can thump their chests and decry the Democrats' failure to embrace their phoney version of bipartisanism, which basically means we'll propose the policy and you agree or we'll frame you as being confrontational and anti-American. But the propaganda has worn so thin that all but the blindest partisans can see through it. The people are simply disgusted with politics as usual.

Incumbents across the country were ousted in yesterday's primary and it's not just about the war. Americans of both parties are sick and tired of professional politicians whose only interest is in placating their corporate donors and maintaining their party's power. What happened yesterday is just the beginning of the empowerment of the electorate and both parties will find that no incumbent with a dismal record of representing working American's interests will have a cake walk to re-election. You can't get more bipartisan than that.