Once you wade through the suspicious hand-wringing about those subversive "netroots" destroying "civility in politics," a clearer picture emerges. Of frightened people hiding from their own bad choices and appeasement. Joe Conason:

Lieberman's Allies Blame the Bloggers

According to the standard version, Mr. Lieberman is the victim of ferocious "liberal bloggers" from around the country. Dispersed across the United States, these meddling left-wing activists somehow conspired to launch Ned Lamont's primary challenge, and then somehow mesmerized voters, perhaps via the Internets, to reject the Senator they had chosen three times before. Combining Internet technology with progressive ideology, the miasmic and unwholesome blogosphere now threatens to swallow poor Joe in a cloud of angry, buzzing bytes...

Contrary to the silly myth repeated by lazy journalists and anxious consultants, the Internet did not conjure up voter opposition to Mr. Lieberman. Yet that canard has generated its own virtual reality. Blathering on so relentlessly about the supposed centrality of bloggers in the Lamont campaign, the mainstream media provided priceless free publicity to the challenger, while simultaneously "branding" his campaign as cool and new...

What is most astonishing about typical commentary on the Connecticut primary, aside from the nonsense about bloggers, is the prevailing attitude toward the war in Iraq. While the catastrophic consequences of the invasion and occupation are now so obvious that conservative columnists and Republican politicians can no longer evade them, liberal Democrats are expected to keep their mouths shut. And many of them do, evidently fearful of accusations that they want to "cut and run."

But anyone who knows how to read a poll--indeed, anyone who has read a poll during the past several months--knows that popular opinion on the war is strongly negative. The American public now understands that the Bush administration deceived them about its reasons for invading Iraq, that the President never had any serious plan for establishing order there, and that he badly understated the costs and grossly overstated the benefits of "regime change." They are beginning to understand that his belligerent foreign policy has been a sham, and that his management of the war on terror has been a shame.

Unfortunately for Mr. Lieberman, he understands none of those things...

You see, it's not about Joe Lieberman. It's about speaking the truth, and shattering this fake veneer of "bipartisanship" which is used to deflect criticism of one of the great tragedies of our lifetimes away from the people who deserve it. Joe Lieberman is just a symptom of that misdirection, like Zell Miller or the "Democrats for Nixon."

And progressives who want more than a (D) after a person's name -- who demand more than vague platitudes and capitulation to the GOP at every step -- are the cure.