It is this willingness to say or do whatever is necessary to hold on to his U.S. Senate seat, damn the consequences to what he claimed to believe last year or even last week, that makes Lieberman, a smarmy, power-hungry little yapping poodle of a politician, the perfect poster-boy for the amoral might-makes-right culture that currently animates our political system.

Ever since Lieberman defeated elder statesman Weicker in that 1988 race, largely by portraying him as weak on Communism -- along the way garnering the support of William F. Buckley and the McCarthy-loving National Review -- there hasn't been a single issue on which Lieberman has been willing to risk an unpopular position or maintain a modicum of consistency.

He would seemingly invade Cuba tomorrow, but charges forth into slave-labor trade deals with Communist China at the behest of his corporate paymasters (and at the expense of his constituents' jobs). He once marched with Martin Luther King Jr., yet now forebodingly and dishonestly refers to Al Sharpton as "one of Ned Lamont's closest advisors," hoping the mere mention of the controversial African-American preacher will summon white-suburban fears of unruly invading black hordes who crave white women and seek Rotary Club membership.

Sharpton's response? "I've given more advice to Joe Lieberman than I've given to Ned Lamont," he told Election Central's Greg Sargent.