Why do I bother? I mean, does anybody even read Slate?

According to Jacob Weisberg, the editor of Slate, the defeat of Leiberman has condemned the Democratic party to a fate worse than the Nixon and Reagan eras combined.

It appears we have become doomed to repeat the exact circumstances of the politics that played out in the wake of the Vietnam war. See, Lamont is like McGovern, and all reasonable voters will now flee to the Republican side for the next 6 presidental elections.

Wow! If only hemlines were as easy to predict as politics & socioeconomics!

But let's let Weisberg speak for himself. And then let's let me make fun of him:

The election was about one issue and one issue only: the war in Iraq.

Oh, really, because the voters said it wasn't. But what the fuck do they know?

Joe Lieberman was an otherwise highly regarded...

Highly regarded by...someone other than those pesky Connecticut voters, I guess.

...well-ensconced Democratic incumbent who would never have faced a meaningful primary challenge had he not vocally supported President Bush's invasion in 2003, continued to defend the war in principle, and opposed adopting a timetable for withdrawal.

Oh, is that all?

Hey don't forget how he kept telling Democrats to shut the fuck up and support the president! Oh, oh, and the kiss! Can't forget the kiss!

Ned Lamont, a preppy political novice from Greenwich, got the idea to run last year when something he read in the Wall Street Journal made him gag on his breakfast. It was a hopeful analysis of Iraq by Lieberman.

You say "hopeful," I say "deluded" or "deliberately misleading." What's the diff?

As a candidate, Lamont was less a fleshed-out alternative to Lieberman than a stand-in for an anti-war, anti-Bush movement. His campaign was made plausible by Web-based "Net roots" activists who cared principally about the war in Iraq and badgered Lieberman mercilessly about his support for it.

God damn those bloggers and their badgering of candidates that ignore the electorate for their own personal power gains!

Aw, Christ, I can't even go on with this. It's too depressing. I'll let the supremely awesome Joe Conason take it from here. He's not as, um, juvenile in his criticism as I am anyway:

More than two years ago, Weisberg began to express qualms about the war that he and his writers had promoted so insouciantly. Sooner than some who now share his doubts, he admitted that things weren't working out so well. In a January 2004 symposium published on Slate, he explained why he was worried. His reasons included "the huge and growing cost of the invasion and occupation: in American lives (we're about to hit 500 dead and several thousand more have been injured); in money (more than $160 billion in borrowed funds); and in terms of lost opportunity (we might have found Osama Bin Laden by now if we'd committed some of those resources to Afghanistan). Most significant are the least tangible costs: increased hatred for the United States, which both fosters future terrorism and undermines the international support we will need to fight terrorism effectively for many years to come."

Since then we have suffered nearly five times as many dead and wounded, and anticipate six times as much in financial expense. The opportunity costs and the diplomatic damage are obvious in Afghanistan, in Israel and Palestine, and in the international struggle against Islamic extremism. The Democratic voters of Connecticut have delivered a verdict on the debacle made in Washington -- and they have no reason to heed the scolding of those who have been wrong all along.

And as Bill Hicks's friend Jimmy Pineapple says, "Case. Fucking. Closed."