remember, tuesday is soylent green day
But where does Ned Lamont stand on Soylent Green being made of people?
Grist:
The big point of disagreement, of course, is Lieberman's unwavering support of the Bush administration's war in Iraq and broader "war on terror"; it's the reason Lamont launched his challenge, and the reason so many Democratic voters have backed Lamont.
Some enviros argue that this issue alone renders moot Lieberman's impressive environmental track record. Says Adam Werbach, former president of the Sierra Club and prominent green activist, "Lieberman's party should be irrelevant if you're an environmental-issue voter. The big question is whether you believe the Iraq war is an 'environmental' issue. I do. For me, the Iraq war is a travesty -- ecological and otherwise -- that far outweighs Lieberman's stellar environmental record."
[snip]
The Lieberman/Lamont contest raises questions about how closely aligned environmentalists are -- or should be -- with the Democratic Party.
The same issue has cropped up during the reelection campaign of Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.), a moderate Republican who's widely seen as an environmental leader, and who's in serious danger of losing to Democratic challenger Sheldon Whitehouse (if he even survives a tough challenge in the Republican primary). The Sierra Club has endorsed Chafee, and for that the group recently got spanked by liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman: "If the Democrats gain only five rather than six Senate seats this November, Sen. James Inhofe [R-Okla.], who says that global warming is 'the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,' will remain in his current position as chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. And if that happens, the Sierra Club may well bear some of the responsibility," Krugman wrote.
But a vote for Lieberman is a far cry from a vote for Chafee, who would prop up the anti-environment GOP leadership in Congress. Though Lieberman would be an independent, he would caucus with the Democrats, says Gerstein, his communications director, thereby helping the Democrats retake the Senate.
Lieberman's campaign could, however, inadvertently hobble Dems' chances in the House. Here's why: Connecticut has three Democratic candidates who have a decent chance of unseating the state's incumbent Republican representatives: Nancy Johnson, Christopher Shays, and Rob Simmons. As The New York Times reported this week, "Democratic officials say they expect Mr. Lieberman to campaign aggressively to win over Republican and unaffiliated voters. If he does, Democratic strategists say, he may well attract voters to the polls who are likely to support the state's three Republicans in Congress."
While some enviros argue that Johnson, Shays, and Simmons have been allies in important battles like the fight to protect the Arctic Refuge, their three contested seats represent one-fifth of the 15 seats Dems need to regain a majority in the House -- and to put the House agenda in the hands of Nancy Pelosi (D), who's got a respectable environmental track record, instead of Dennis Hastert (R), who doesn't.
Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, though, argues that it's bad long-term strategy for environmentalists to align themselves with one party. "Our job is to reward conviction, applaud leadership, and promote progress made in cleaning up the air and water and in preserving our wild lands and wildlife -- no matter which side of the aisle we find it on," he wrote in his blog in response to Krugman's broadside.
This is the problem with "mainstream" environmentalism or whatever you want to call it - eventually, promoting candidacies and favoring parties becomes a kind of babysitting, and your group trades on principles for a kind of environmentalism, one that's got more to do with king's court stuff and little to do with being responsive to problems, people-centric or otherwise (for the antithesis, see ACORN, Organizing by).
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