Posted at Daily Kos: State of the Nation:

Mark Schmitt has a must-read piece for anyone following this race, as well as every journalist and blowhard pontificating on this race:

Lamont supporters actually aren't ideologues. They aren't looking for the party to be more liberal on traditional dimensions. They're looking for it to be more of a party. They want to put issues on the table that don't have an interest group behind them - like Lieberman's support for the bankruptcy bill -- because they are part of a broader vision. And I think that's what blows the mind of the traditional Dems. They can handle a challenge from the left, on predictable, narrow-constituency terms. But where do these other issues come from? These are "elitist insurgents," as Broder puts it - since when do they care about bankruptcy? What if all of a sudden you couldn't count on Democratic women just because you said that right things about choice - what if they started to vote on the whole range of issues that affect women's economic and personal opportunities?

But caring about bankruptcy, even if you're not teetering on the brink of it or a bankruptcy lawyer yourself, is part of a vision of a just society. And a vision of a just society - not just the single-issue push-buttons of a bunch of constituency groups - is what a center-left political party ought to be about. And at the end of this fight, I don't expect that we'll have a more leftist Democratic Party, but one that can at least begin to get beyond checklist liberalism.

That's one of the big ironies of this race. As much as the traditional media and the status quo establishment want to make this about a "single issue" (that pesky little flare up in Iraq), fact is that we are looking to build a party that goes beyond the myopic single-issue groups and works to build -- as Schmitt says -- a "just society".

Who was looking out for the middle and lower class during the bankruptcy debate? No one, except the bloggers. The women groups were AWOL, as were the environmentalists, the gay groups, labor, and just about every other progressive issue or constituency group.

Our lack of single-issue focus divorces us from the politics of the progressive movement, the check-list mentality to running campaigns. We can see beyond ANWAR, choice, and affirmative action (important, but not exclusively so) to other important progressive causes that don't neatly slot into the traditional and formerly all-powerful groups. Things like bankruptcy, net neutrality, health care, and earmarks (pork) reform. What if, like Schmitt asks, women are no longer satisfied with hearing the right thing on choice, and demand progress on pay equality, mothering rights, and a rational health care system for them and their families?

It sort of complicates things, doesn't it?

Lieberman may check off the right boxes from the right groups, but on the war, on health care, on denying rape victims Plan B contraception, on bankruptcy, and so on -- Lieberman is the antithesis of the Democratic promise of a just society.

Update: Atrios has more.