Politics and “Date Rape”

I need to start by noting that I have contributed money to Ned Lamont’s Senate campaign and I hope he wins. Though Joe Lieberman has been better than many Democrats (including Harry Reid) on reproductive rights issues, he has been less than perfect, and I am in complete disagreement with his views on the Iraq war, and on many other foreign policy issues as well, so I would be very pleased to see him replaced in the Senate by Ned Lamont. That being said, I am completely sickened by this, which was republished in part here:

A lot of thanks Clinton got for his pragmatic centrism, too. He came within a hairsbreadth of being driven from office (with the help of his friend Joe) and when the Republicans took over they took the pragmatic surplus he created, handed it out to their rich friends and then proceeded to govern from as far right as they could possibly get with no thought to “collegial” moderation.

Grover Norquist said it and he meant it: they Republicans consider bi-partisanship date rape — and it ain’t the Democrats who are slipping the roofies in the kool-aid.

At some point in the last five years it should have occurred to Joe, who had no wingnut constituents to whom he needed to pander, that he was being used like a blow-up doll at a frat party.

Atrios is also referring to Lieberman’s purported bipartisanship as “date rape,” see post title here. Is it too much trouble to come up with a less violent and sexist metaphor? Is there some humor angle here I’m not getting? Or is it just so very satisfying to imagine Lieberman as the feminized victim of sexual assault?

–Ann Bartow