Goodbye Joe, Me Gotta Go

It's amazing to me (well, actually, it isn't) that every time the question, “whither Joe Lieberman”, comes up, no one wants to talk about precisely why he supported McCain rather than Obama, even though the reason is perfectly obvious and Lieberman himself is totally unabashed about admitting it. McCain and his Evangelical/Neocon supporters were rightly considered more reliable “friends of Israel”, in the Bush mold, than was Obama, who has more than a whiff of Islam about him. (And forget that inner-city “Christian” church he attended – those places are more Islamic than most mosques.) Relevant to all of this is another unmentionable issue, which is the uneasy relationship blacks and American Jews have had all these years. For all their mutual empathy in the “let my people go” department, there has been some resentment on the part of blacks at what they perceived as exploitation by Jews, both in business and politically. And Jews, for their part, have come to see blacks as being a bit on the ungrateful side vis-a-vis things like civil rights, affirmative action, and quotas – you know, the “after all we done for you” thing. Overall, they continue to march arm in arm toward a collectivist utopia, but they will always be strange bedfellows – if that is the word. Plus, Democrats and liberals in general are so fickle, and their loyalties so unsure, they could just as easily start to see Palestinians, for example, as even bigger “victims” than Israelis, and that would be very bad news in certain foreign policy circles. So Lieberman – and I give him credit for consistency at least – has chosen to cast his lot with the side that has vowed to fight to the death for Israel, not the side that might or might not, depending on the political winds and whims of the day. The mainstream Democrats, being a bit more relativistic about these things, can't quite grasp this, so are having a hard time figuring out what to “do” with Lieberman at this point.