Senator Joe Lieberman and the Democratic party seem to be edging closer to blows. Whether they will have a parting of the ways remains to be seen. But in a speech today at the U.S. Center for Global Engagement conference Joe Lieberman didn’t mince words. After reminding the audience about the bitter Congressional fights over the surge, Lieberman went on to remark:

On the other side were those like Senator McCain who argued that—in an interdependent world—we had a moral responsibility not to abandon the Iraqi people, that the violence we were seeing was being perpetrated by identifiable enemies of Iraqis and ours against identifiable human victims, that the bloodshed could be stopped, and the war could be won.

Fortunately for all of us, it is now clear: Senator McCain and others who shared his view were right, and Senator Obama and those who agreed with him were wrong.

I wish Senator Obama would just say that the surge is working, rather than changing his positions on how and when we should exit Iraq without acknowledging that these changes in position are understandably based on facts on the ground.

Aside from the power of those words, the speech is telling for another reason. The fact is that there is virtually no one in the Democratic party leadership who acted differently than Obama did. And there is not a single Democrat who has come forward to say without reservation the surge is working and affirm the need to change the party’s stance on Iraq. It is a source of dismay for those who still hold out hope for a reformed Scoop Jackson Democratic party (or even such a faction within the Democratic party).