American Politics In Microcosm

You can see America's political future taking shape in two congressional races, one on the Pacific Coast, one on the Atlantic.

On Tuesday, voters in California's 50th congressional district will choose a new congressman to replace Representative Duke Cunningham, who resigned after pleading guilty to bribery charges. Cunningham's district stretches over some of the most affluent neighbourhoods of San Diego, America's seventh largest city: La Jolla, Escondido, and Rancho Santa Fe. Miramar Marine Corps Air Station is also located there. This is George W. Bush country, with 15% more registered Republicans than registered Democrats.

But even there, President Bush is not as popular as he used to be--and Cunningham's disgrace has contaminated the Republican brand. San Diego suffers some of the highest gasoline prices in the nation--as much as US$3.43 per gallon in mid-May. And with the southern boundary of the district only 25 miles from the Mexican border, the 50th has been deeply affected by the surge in illegal immigration of the past six years: It's estimated that some four million illegal aliens have taken residence in the United States since Bush entered the presidency.

Tuesday's special election will be hotly contested, between veteran Republican Brian Bilbray (who served three terms in Congress in the 1990s) and Democrat Francine Busby.

Busby has ran a slashing campaign, backed by the national Democratic party, blaming Bilbray for the deaths of 80 users of ephedra because the supplement's manufacturer donated funds to Bilbray's congressional campaigns.

Bilbray has also come under fire from the national Republican party. Senator John McCain abrupty cancelled a fundraiser with the candidate last week because Bilbray opposes the administration-backed McCain-Kennedy immigration bill, which would legalize many illegals and dramatically increase immigration limits over the coming decade.

A Busby win would be a huge triumph for Democrats--and probably presage a Democratic takeover of the House in November. A Bilbray win would suggest that the Republicans retain much deeper strength in the country than the polls indicate. It would also warn that the immigration issue has power--and that the President and John McCain have positioned themselves on the wrong side.

We'll know the answer soon. But we'll have to wait a little longer to hear from the Democrats of Connecticut, who vote Aug. 8 in a primary to choose their candidate for the U.S. Senate: incumbent Joe Lieberman or challenger Ned Lamont.

The Lieberman-Lamont race is often described as one between a "moderate" or "centrist" against a "leftist" or "liberal." But that's not quite right. On the bread-and-butter issues that have traditionally defined liberalism, Lieberman and Lamont take indistinguishable positions, just very slightly to the left of centre. (Indeed, the health care plan that Gore and Lieberman offered in 2000 was more a traditional liberal big government plan that the 2004 Kerry plan now endorsed by Lamont.)

Where Lamont veers to Lieberman's left is on the cultural, civil liberties and foreign-affairs issues that excite upmarket Democrats. Lamont favors immediate withdrawal from Iraq, curtailment of anti-terrorist surveillance, absolute support for abortion rights, stem-cell research, and same-sex marriage as a fundamental human liberty.

This is the liberalism of Hollywood and Harvard. And why should this surprise? That's Lamont's world. His great-grandfather, Thomas Lamont, was chairman of the Morgan bank, as was his grandfather, the second Thomas Lamont. (The undergraduate library at Harvard is named after his family.) Ned Lamont had a successful career of his own and now estimates his earned and inherited fortune as between $90-million and $300-million. Lieberman's father, by contrast, was raised in an orphanage and drove a bakery truck, until he saved enough money to start his own small liquor store.

Over the past three decades, the two parties, Republican and Democrat, have traded voters. The white working class has ended up in the Republican party; the highly educated and the wealthy, with the Democrats. The Lieberman-Lamont race takes this trend to dazzling new extremes. If Lamont were to win his race, he would become the fourth richest man in the U.S. Senate--after John Kerry (D. Mass.), Jay Rockefeller (D., W.Va.), and Herbert Kohl (D. Wisc.), and just ahead of Diane Feinstein (D., Cal.).

Not that there's anything wrong with that! But it does leave you wondering: How much room is there in American politics for a party that has no room for a Joe Lieberman and those who share his principles, his beliefs, and his life story?