Feingold on Lieberman: He "Doesn't Get It"

Joe Lieberman must have taken some solace after his defeat by Connecticut Democratic Senatorial nominee Ned Lamont to hear his friend Dick Cheney come to his defense with the ludicrous and offensive assertion that the voters' endorsement of Lamont somehow emboldens terrorists.

I guess desperate people will cling to whatever life raft comes their way -- even if it's in the form of someone like Cheney.

And there was Lieberman last week in an equally pathetic attempt to exploit the terror plot discovered in Great Britain and somehow use it against Lamont, saying "If we just pick up as Ned Lamont wants us to do and get out by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England and it will strengthen them and they will strike us again."

Even forgetting that the majority of the American people now favor leaving Iraq and that the money we are wasting there could actually be used for real investigative work like the Brits just did, Lieberman is finding that Senate Democrats, less than a week after he lost his party's nomination, are already behind Lamont and repudiating Joe's right-wing views.

Appearing on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos this morning, Russ Feingold (D-WI) showed standard Senate collegiality toward Lieberman but said that Joe "doesn’t get it" when it comes to protecting Americans and that he should get out of the race and accept the will of Connecticut voters.

Here's Feingold:

"Well, I like Joe Lieberman, but I support Ned Lamont, because Joe is showing with that regrettable statement that he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get it. The fact is that we were attacked on 9/11 by Al Qaeda and its affiliates and its sympathizers, not by Saddam Hussein. And unfortunately Senator Lieberman has supported the Bush Administration’s disastrous strategic approach of getting us stuck in Iraq instead of focusing on those who attacked us.

"I mean, look at the places that have been attacked: India, Morocco, Turkey, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Somalia, Spain, Great Britain. What does this have to do with Iraq? And Senator Lieberman is stuck on that point. Ned Lamont and I believe that we should refocus on those who attacked us on 9/11 and not simply try to cover our tracks because this was such a very poor decision in terms of the overall battle against the terrorists who attacked us."

Asked by Stephanopoulos if Lieberman should drop out of the race, Feingold said "It would be better for the Democratic Party, I think it would be better for the people of Connecticut, it would be better for the country if he did it."

"We have to change course," said Feingold. "We have to focus on those that attacked us on 9/11 and get away from this very mistaken policy in Iraq."

You can see the video clip at Think Progress.

As for Lieberman, he needs to get ready for a long, hot summer.