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"FacebookPinterest\n\nA story in our October issue on the race between Ned Lamont and Senator Joe Lieberman [\"The Kiss of Death,\" by Kenneth Cain] angered the Lieberman camp, which went on the warpath, issuing one of the more hysterical (in all senses of the word) press releases we've seen in some time. Read it, along with Kenneth Cain's response, below.\n\nAs you may know, the Lamont campaign is actively promoting a GQ Magazine article (October 2006 issue, \"The Kiss of Death\") about the final days of the Democratic Senate primary in Connecticut. You should know that this piece is nothing more than an old-fashioned hatchet job\u2014it is riddled with factual errors and shows a clear bias on the part of the writer\u2014and should be treated as such.\n\nIn fact, author Ken Cain himself acknowledges that he is clearly biased toward the Lamont campaign. Cain's exact words are: \"I'm not going to feign objectivity here.\" Cain also admits at one point on the campaign trail, he \"wanted badly to take a swing at this lunatic.\" [The \"lunatic\" he describes is a Lieberman supporter.]\n\nThe inaccuracies and distortions were too numerous to catalogue and debunk today. But thought it would be helpful for you to have a detailed accounting of some of the most egregious errors and falsehoods in this article.\n\nIf you have any questions regarding this, please feel free to reach out.\n\nThank you. Tammy Sun (860) 690-4036\n\nHARRY POTTER REPORTS FROM\n\n THE LIEBERMAN CAMPAIGN TRAIL\n\n FANTASY vs. REALITY\n\nGQ FANTASY: Cain claims that Lieberman was inaccessible to him and other members of the media.\n\nREALITY: As Cain himself admits, he traveled in close proximity with Lieberman on the Tomorrow Tour bus. Cain also admits: \"For weeks, I've been postponing the questions I'm dying to ask\u2026\" In fact, during the last ten days of the primary (the time period when Cain was traveling with Lieberman in Connecticut) Cain had at least two sit-down interviews with the Lieberman. In addition, Cain had multiple opportunities to ask Lieberman questions during press avails conducted at every campaign stop, sometimes as many as nine in a single day.\n\nNot a day passed (except the Sabbath) when Joe Lieberman was not accessible to reporters at public events. Unless Cain wanted to crawl into Joe Lieberman's lap, which is possible, his staffers made every effort to accommodate his multiple requests for time.\n\nGQ FANTASY: Cain claims that GQ Magazine is not part of the \"mainstream media\" while accusing the \"mainstream media\" of bias in its coverage of Iraq.\n\nREALITY: GQ Magazine is a popular, glossy fashion magazine based out of New York, with a circulation of 854,155 and ad buys from Calvin Klein, Sony, Gap and other mainstream labels. The magazine includes coverage of mainstream pop culture icons such as Tom Cruise, Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, and Ashton Kutcher. We wonder how their advertisers would feel about the magazine taking itself out of the \"mainstream.\"\n\nGQ FANTASY: Based on nothing more than his admitted attempt \"to crawl inside Joe Lieberman's head,\" Cain speculates wildly and baselessly about Lieberman's personal thoughts and personality traits.\n\n\"In my opinion, there's a major psychodrama playing out in Joe's head about Iraq\u2026 It's like his conscience starts to get just a bit ahead of his pride, and then the hubris races to catch up and tackles the concession midsentance\u2026 That he refuses to pay them [voters] that respect infuriates people. He may just lose his career over the simple human inability to concede a possible mistake.\"\n\nREALITY: If Cain possesses the gift of identifying altercations between the id, ego, and superego inside the mind of Joe Lieberman, as well as reading his personal thoughts, we would like to offer him a job on our campaign.\n\nGQ FANTASY: Cain reports that on August 3rd, \"a minor melee erupts when one of the Lieber kids' sign gets too close too close to a Ned supporter's head. A tug-of-war ensues, and the sign rips slightly amid a great deal more shouting.\"\n\nCain then describes an exchange at a cheeseburger shack between Lamont and people dressed in Lieberman t-shirts who peppered Lamont with questions about his positions and his membership at an exclusive Greenwich country club that refuses to disclose what its membership policies are and which Lamont himself describes as \"too white.\"\n\nCain reports that a light-bulb goes off in his mind: \"I realize the goal here is to provoke Ned into overreacting on-camera. And if not him, then someone on his staff. And it's working; I want badly to take a swing at this lunatic.\"\n\nREALITY: In Cain's description of the \"minor melee\" he failed to point out two important facts: a Lamont supported initiated the physical contact, and a Lamont supporter physically choked a Lieberman volunteer, inflicting minor injuries. [The local evening news from August 3rd clearly shows who initiated the scuffle.]\n\nCain actually ask the Lieberman campaign about the strategy behind sending Lieberman supporters to Lamont's public events, received a factual answer, but chose not to include it in his piece. The fact is, the Lieberman campaign decided [albeit, perhaps too late] that it had to respond in kind to the Lamont campaign tactics of sending a group of young supporters to each event with the job of increasing visibility for our candidate.\n\nThe implication, however subtle, that Joe Lieberman would condone campaign tactics that promote violence is ridiculous and further evidence that Cain's reporting is not credible.\n\nGQ FANTASY: Cain reports on the day of August 8th. He starts the day with Reverend Al Sharpton: \"Al's taking the war to the airwaves\" on drive-time radio. The Lamont campaign, via Sharpton, claimed to be responding to an alleged Lieberman campaign attack on Lamont as a \"racist.\"\n\nCain writes: \"He's [Sharpton] responding to a Lieberman ad in heavy rotation on hip-hop stations that implies Ned's a racist because of his diversity-challenged country club.\"\n\nREALITY: Here are the facts:\n\n The Lieberman campaign never suggested in any way that Ned Lamont is a racist. The campaign simply tried to point out Lamont's hypocrisy for resigning from his exclusive Greenwich country club after 16 years.\n\n Lamont himself described the club as \"too white\" and only ended his 16-year membership when it became clear that it would cause him political embarrassment.\n\n On August 8th the Washington Post reported that in response to Lieberman's radio ads about the Greenwich country club membership: \"The Lamont campaign responded by seeking out rap artists to phone black stations and remind listeners that Lieberman had once targeted rap music for promoting violence and drug use.\"\n\nGQ FANTASY: Cain attacks Lieberman Communications Director Dan Gerstein; reports Gerstein \"strikes a new race-baiting note that will be central to the first week of Joe's general-election campaign by labeling Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton 'two of the more divisive and problematic figures in the Democratic Party.' \"\n\nCain also reports Sharpton as saying: \"Lieberman called me personally to come to Connecticut.\"\n\nREALITY: The race-baiting charge is completely unsubstantiated and shows that Cain substituted blog-reading for real reporting.\n\nThe fact is, the Lieberman campaign did nothing more than point out the array of extreme and divisive figures that were embraced by the Lamont campaign and advocated on their behalf. In addition to Jackson, Sharpton, and Maxine Waters, our campaign also frequently highlighted Lamont's affiliation with bloggers Markos Moulitsas and Jane Hamsher, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, and Lamont campaign manager Tom Swan\u2014none of whom is African-American.\n\nCain's only evidence for his claim is Gerstein's comment that Jackson and Sharpton are two of the more divisive figures in American politics. If that is the standard for determining bigotry, then Cain is essentially calling most of America racist.\n\nRegardless, we highly doubt that John Lewis, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Cory Booker and several other prominent African-Americans would have joined Lieberman on the campaign trail\u2014including on the final Sunday before the primary\u2014if they thought for a moment he or his campaign was engaged in any kind of race-baiting.\n\nAs for Sharpton's quote about Lieberman's phone call, the New York Times has confirmed that is not true. Lieberman made clear that he was calling Sharpton not to ask for his support but to urge him to stay out of Connecticut. And Sharpton did not dispute that contention when he was confronted by the Times on Tuesday.\n\nKenneth Cain responds:\n\nThe Lieberman campaign's press release is confusing. It purports to offer \"a detailed accounting of some of the most egregious errors and falsehoods in this article,\" but then lists six objections, most of which don't claim, let alone account in detail, anything resembling egregious errors. The remaining items that do assert factual error are either demonstrably untrue or are obviously open to interpretation.\n\nLet's take them on one-by-one.\n\n1) GQ FANTASY: Cain claims that Lieberman was inaccessible to him and other members of the media.\n\nWhat I wrote was the following: \"I was in Iraq for a while, I've been writing a series of articles about the war coming home, and I've attended too many funerals and interviewed too many traumatized soldiers. In my opinion the war is a clusterfuck of historic proportions. But I'm afraid that as soon as I open my mouth about this, Joe and his handlers will sense my bias and cut off access\" (emphasis mine). I said was afraid they would, in the future, cut off access, not that they did so, as the Lieberman letter asserts.\n\n2) GQ FANTASY: Cain claims that GQ Magazine is not part of the \"mainstream media\" while accusing the \"mainstream media\" of bias in its coverage of Iraq.\n\nClearly, I was distinguishing between daily news reporting by the mainstream media on Iraq\u2014such as The New York Times, whose feigned objectivity, in my opinion, distorts the true story in Iraq (and continues to miss much of the Lamont/Lieberman story)\u2014and the kind of long form, narrative story I wrote.\n\n3) GQ FANTASY: Based on nothing more than his admitted attempt \"to crawl inside Joe Lieberman's head,\" Cain speculates wildly and baselessly about Lieberman's personal thoughts and personality traits.\n\n\"In my opinion, there's a major psychodrama playing out in Joe's head about Iraq\u2026 It's like his conscience starts to get just a bit ahead of his pride, and then the hubris races to catch up and tackles the concession midsentence\u2026 That he refuses to pay them [voters] that respect infuriates people. He may just lose his career over the simple human inability to concede a possible mistake.\"\n\nHere's the passage on which the above quote is based:\n\nI try to make eye contact. He leans back. \"Now, one of your problems from a media point of view, I think, is that most of us either have been to Iraq or have good friends in Iraq, and everyone thinks that the war is going very badly south very quickly. And the truth is, a lot of people in uniform say the same thing, sotto voce.\"He sighs and says, \"It's mid.\"\"So why would you still say, earlier today, for example, there's progress in Iraq It seems to me it's possible it's that that's got everybody angry at you. It isn't just Bush, and it isn't just your support for the war. It's your unwillingness to concede anything.\"He shifts in his seat and sighs again. \"Well, I don't know. I try to do it. I hear you. I talk about it all the time. I was clearest in the debate, interestingly, and you know I'm very realistic. I find the sectarian violence over the past three or four months heartbreaking, discouraging. So what's the progress Progress is they did hold free elections; it's a government with strong representation from all factions. But there is this terrible sectarian violence. I think it has been quite brutally and brilliantly created or stimulated by the terrorists, but it's a fact. So I, I don't hesitate to\u2014it's interesting\u2014I, we've talked about it at different times\u2014I always talk about it publicly\u2014we haven't, sort of, put any paid commercial time\u2014except the acknowledgment in my first commercial: 'I know you're angry.' \"\"Except that's different, right Saying 'I acknowledge you are angry' is different from saying 'I acknowledge you have a point.' \"\"I'm working on something [for TV], which doesn't get to that part, which\u2014it's interesting\u2014now, damn it, there's only so much you can do in thirty seconds. It talks to\u2014just assures them that I feel\u2014I mean, it starts from the premise that 'I know you're concerned about Iraq, and I want to tell you for myself where I stand.' So it's interesting. I mean, look, I don't believe in a deadline to get out, so there's just a certain number of people who are just not gonna be happy with my position. But I think there are people who need to hear I don't believe in an open-ended commitment and that I want to see the Iraqis take over and that I feel a special responsibility, because I have supported the war, to bring that about. I say all the time, to just remind people, that I was very critical of Bush and Rumsfeld, post-Saddam. History will judge them, and I think it will judge them very harshly on that. It's part of the reason why we're in such difficulty today. Not the only reason. Those forces\u2014well, anyway\u2014\"\"I haven't heard you say that. As one nonvoting constituent, it gives me faith to hear that.\"\"You mean about the Bush screwups\"\"Yeah, and that history will judge them harshly. That sounds new.\"\"Yeah, you know, I do say it, but, I don't know, it's interesting. I\u2014we may look back at this\u2014\" He stops again and laughs bitterly. \"Anyway, the odds are that there will be a piece on TV in the closing days. There were people in the campaign who felt that I should change the subject, but I don't have to change the subject to ask them to think about everything else on which they agree with me. If they were just voting on the war, I'd be out of it. Totally. Interesting.\"\n\nReaders should judge for themselves whether it is indeed \"baseless and wild,\" or patently observable, that Joe's pattern of speech here might speak to an internal conflict about Iraq. (I'd add that given the nearly 3,000 young men and women who've come home from Iraq in caskets, including three recently to Connecticut, because of a policy Joe enthusiastically supported and which has undeniably failed\u2014that if Joe isn't experiencing some internal conflict, he has an even bigger problem than I ventured here.)\n\n4) GQ FANTASY: Cain reports that on August 3rd, \"a minor melee erupts when one of the Lieber kids' sign gets too close too close to a Ned supporter's head. A tug-of-war ensues, and the sign rips slightly amid a great deal more shouting.\"\n\nCain then describes an exchange at a cheeseburger shack between Lamont and people dressed in Lieberman t-shirts who peppered Lamont with questions about his positions and his membership at an exclusive Greenwich country club that refuses to disclose what its membership policies are and which Lamont himself describes as \"too white.\"\n\nCain reports that a light-bulb goes off in his mind: \"I realize the goal here is to provoke Ned into overreacting on-camera. And if not him, then someone on his staff. And it's working; I want badly to take a swing at this lunatic.\"\n\nIn Cain's description of the \"minor melee\" he failed to point out two important facts: a Lamont supported initiated the physical contact, and a Lamont supporter physically choked a Lieberman volunteer, inflicting minor injuries. [The local evening news from August 3rd clearly shows who initiated the scuffle.]\n\nCain actually ask the Lieberman campaign about the strategy behind sending Lieberman supporters to Lamont's public events, received a factual answer, but chose not to include it in his piece. The fact is, the Lieberman campaign decided [albeit, perhaps too late] that it had to respond in kind to the Lamont campaign tactics of sending a group of young supporters to each event with the job of increasing visibility for our candidate.\n\nThe implication, however subtle, that Joe Lieberman would condone campaign tactics that promote violence is ridiculous and further evidence that Cain's reporting is not credible.\n\nIt's a little difficult to follow the logic here, but first I would point out that several Lieberman campaign and communications staffers were relieved of their duties immediately after the primary, and new staff took over. I'm quite certain the authors of this press release weren't physically present at either of the scenes I described (the ostensible author wasn't even on staff then). For better or worse, I was right in the middle of both and I did not see a Lamont supporter choke a Lieberman supporter, nor did I see any of the Lieber kids injured. I suspect that I would have observed an injury if it had been serious.\n\nThe missive claims that a Lamont supporter \"initiated physical contact,\" a fair enough rebuttal, if true (I didn't see it), to my more neutral description that \"a minor melee erupts\" and \"a tug of war ensues.\" But it's also completely out of context, because it fails to include that the Lieber kids had stationed themselves across the street from the rally at first, and then decided to wade into the rally itself\u2014a willful and obvious provocation, it seemed to me.\n\nIt is true that many additional facts exist here that I did not report. But my goal in relating this story was not to draw a comprehensive blow-by-blow, but to narrate my sense of the Lieber kids' tactics. (Since the press release seems to argue for a comprehensive approach to reporting these kinds of events, another \"important fact\" I \"failed to report\" is that the next day, at an event in Ned's home town of Greenwich, the Lieber kids actually surrounded Ned and his family\u2014wife, and three kids\u2014in a non-violent but obviously looming and intimidating fashion, screaming \"Joe! Joe! Joe!\" all the way to Ned's car.)\n\n5) GQ FANTASY: Cain reports on the day of August 8th. He starts the day with Reverend Al Sharpton: \"Al's taking the war to the airwaves\" on drive-time radio. The Lamont campaign, via Sharpton, claimed to be responding to an alleged Lieberman campaign attack on Lamont as a \"racist.\"\n\nCain writes: \"He's [Sharpton] responding to a Lieberman ad in heavy rotation on hip-hop stations that implies Ned's a racist because of his diversity-challenged country club.\"\n\nThe Lieberman radio ad, playing on African-American-oriented stations, included this, in contrast to a celebration of Joe's (real, but dated) civil rights record: \"But did you know that for sixteen years Ned belonged to Round Hill, an exclusive country club not known for its diversity\" What is the purpose of asking African-American listeners if they knew about Ned's diversity-challenged country club other than to imply racial insensitivity\n\nI personally think that, while Ned Lamont's too-white former country club is far from the most pressing issue our nation faces, it is at least fair game for the Lieberman campaign to call him out on the racial insensitivity implicit in his membership, and my story doesn't suggest otherwise. It is also true that Lieberman's radio ad, as well as leaflets the campaign distributed outside African-American churches, infuriated some black leaders, who saw it as an unfair play of the race card by Lieberman.\n\n6) GQ FANTASY: Cain attacks Lieberman Communications Director Dan Gerstein; reports Gerstein \"strikes a new race-baiting note that will be central to the first week of Joe's general-election campaign by labeling Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton 'two of the more divisive and problematic figures in the Democratic Party.'\"\n\nCain also reports Sharpton as saying: \"'Lieberman called me personally to come to Connecticut.\"\n\nCain's only evidence for his claim is Gerstein's comment that Jackson and Sharpton are two of the more divisive figures in American politics. If that is the standard for determining bigotry, then Cain is essentially calling most of America racist.\n\nRegardless, we highly doubt that John Lewis, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Cory Booker and several other prominent African-Americans would have joined Lieberman on the campaign trail\u2014including on the final Sunday before the primary\u2014if they thought for a moment he or his campaign was engaged in any kind of race-baiting.\n\nAs for Sharpton's quote about Lieberman's phone call, the New York Times has confirmed that is not true.  Lieberman made clear that he was calling Sharpton not to ask for his support but to urge him to stay out of Connecticut. And Sharpton did not dispute that contention when he was confronted by the Times on Tuesday.\n\nTwo sad fissures divide American society. One is new, Iraq. One is old, race. For the past three years, in my opinion, Joe Lieberman has been on the wrong side of history on Iraq. That's an uncomfortable place to be. In the week after the primary, in my opinion, Lieberman's campaign visited the wrong side of the race issue. That's also an uncomfortable place to be.\n\nThroughout the primary, both campaigns competed fiercely for African-American voters. Both candidates spent their time lavishly in black churches and welcomed black surrogates. Maxine Waters, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton came for Lamont. Lieberman lost the primary. He left the Democratic Party to run as an independent. The next day he pivoted, dramatically, from sounding progressive themes for the primary to sounding a quite different note for the general election.\n\nThe first human being, after Ned Lamont, whom Joe Lieberman attacked the next morning on national TV\u2014of all the folks he might have gone after\u2014was a black woman from Los Angeles, Maxine Waters. The campaign then went very publicly after two black men, neither from Connecticut, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. According to The New York Times, Lieberman aides said Sharpton and Jackson are a \"political albatross\" for Lamont that will help Lieberman win in November. Dan Gerstein was quoted in the article saying, \"Primary night was the first time that many Connecticut voters saw Lamont on TV, and he's surrounding himself with two of the more divisive and problematic figures in the Democratic Party.\"\n\nThis change in rhetoric seemed to me, and to many (but not all) African-Americans I spoke to, as well as many (but not all) race-conscious whites I spoke to, as sounding \"a note of race baiting.\" (A note, by the way, is just what it says\u2014a note. This accusation is not racism, per se; it isn't even Lee Atwater-ism; it's \"a note.\"]\n\nThe Lieberman campaign made what is arguably, and sadly, an effective political calculation: that hanging the \"albatross\" of Jackson, Sharpton, and Waters on Ned might help Joe with white independents and Republicans across the state. I made a journalistic judgment to call them on it as I saw it. I am unsurprised and unmoved that they are unhappy about that.\n\nAs for their disputing my reporting about the phone call made to Al Sharpton, multiple sources from Joe's campaign staff told me that Joe \"reached out\" to Al for \"support\" in that call. Joe, in contrast, has characterized the call as a plea for Al not come to Connecticut in support of Ned rather than a request that Al come to Connecticut on behalf of him. Again, a fair enough dispute in interpretation of what was likely a veiled conversation. (Note that on August 2, the Associated Press reported another version: \"Sharpton said Lieberman called him over the weekend to ask for his endorsement, but Sharpton told him he disagrees with him on too many issues,\" citing in particular a war \"that was unjust from the beginning and is unjust now.\" AP did not report any comment from Joe's camp contradicting this characterization in its story on the 2nd [nor could I find any rebuttal by Joe in AP later that week]). In any case, it's my understanding that there were a series of calls between Joe's camp and Al's office in the days preceding Al's first trip to Connecticut for Ned, in which a number of ambiguously worded messages were left, sent, and interpreted, and only after that did Al and Joe actually speak\u2014all of which leaves room for good-faith but contrasting interpretations. I am comfortable with the characterization I reported (confirmed by Joe's staff) that Joe \"reached out\" to Al for \"support.\"\n\nOne final note here: Lieberman's press release attempts to contradict Al's quote by citing Joe's version of a phone call that the Lieberman campaign publicly denied ever happened in the first place. Last month, Dan Gerstein called in to a popular political radio show in Connecticut and specifically denied that the call ever took place: \"Here's the facts: Joe Lieberman did try to call Reverend Sharpton\u2026 and he in fact never reached him. They never talked.\"\n\nThis assertion was untrue, as Senator Lieberman himself later established. When confronted, Gerstein \"apologized if he was not clear in the radio interview.\" Clear about what, though Gerstein said Al and Joe \"never talked.\" The problem wasn't the absence of clarity, it was the perfect clarity of a false assertion."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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