Now that Joe Lieberman has lost (and has decided that primaries don’t matter anyway), the mainstream media and the Republican Party are going to play up the view that Democratic Party has been taken over by rabid frothing McGovernites. However, that’s not the case at all. There’s still room in the Democratic Party for politicians who voted for the war and even for those who think we need to keep some troops there. Lieberman was of a different ilk, as this note from Salon says.

It cannot be argued in good faith that Democrats are intolerant of any elected official who supported the war in Iraq or that such support is some sort of “litmus test.” There are scores of pro-war Democrats who are not being ejected from the party or even being challenged electorally. Lieberman went far beyond mere support for the war, and repeatedly adopted the most demonizing and extremist rhetoric used by Bush’s supporters to equate opposition to the Bush administration’s foreign policies with anti-Americanism and support for America’s enemies. It should surprise nobody if the people whom Lieberman has been attacking and demonizing in this manner decide that they would like to have a different senator.

“It’s time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge he will be the commander in chief for three more critical years. And that in matters of war, we undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril.”

Or, as former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer once put it, people “need to watch what they say.”

Who’d want to vote for a Democrat like that?