In politics, nothing is certain.
You run for public office, put everything you have into it, and yet, the voters might choose someone else. You’re left on election night standing in a gym full of balloons still hanging in nets from the ceiling. No reason to drop the balloons onto hundreds of screaming volunteers and supporters, because they are none present. You pack it up and go home. Maybe you’ll try again in four years or six years or ten. Maybe you never try again. But in any case, unless you’re playing dirty, you have no way of securing your political future.
Unless…
Take the case of Arlen Specter. He was a Democrat before becoming a Republican and spending many years as a Republican Senator from Pennsylvania. But just last April he switched back to being a Democrat. Sure, he’s always been an Independent thinker, not following all of the traditional Republican stances and that made him a moderate. A moderate Republican I supported and would have gladly voted for again. But he saw the playing field and didn’t like how it looked. He switched back to being a Democrat to avoid the Republican primary because he knew he was going to lose. And that isn’t just me analyzing his move, he admitted it!
And who can forget good old Joe Lieberman? A Democratic Senator from Connecticut and Vice Presidential Running Mate to Al Gore in 2000. And then, in 2006, he was defeated by Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary. Joe was out. The voters wanted a new Senator. Joe should have walked into that gym filled with balloons and told the crew to cut them down. He should have packed up his re-election headquarters and started filling brown boxes with pictures frames and old dusty books from his Senate office.
But Lieberman didn’t know how to back out gracefully. He changed his political identification to Independent, allowing him to run in the General election, which he won. So, old Joe got his way and kept his job.
The lesson here is simple. When the fight gets tough, throw your ideals out the window. It doesn’t matter. Your job is on the line. And in politics, there seems to be an easy fix. Just hop over the political fence and join the other guys.
Lieberman and Specter (and many others) have saved their political careers this way. You can decide for yourself if doing this, changing parties more often than your bed sheets, is wrong or right or just playing the game.
I think it’s just a cheap way to save your own political ass.
