Legacy

So, the polls say Ned Lamont will defeat Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic Senate primary election on Tuesday. This is not, of course, news. But having consumed a vast amount of commentary on this presumptive fact, here's my take on Lieberman's legacy.

Lieberman was elected to the Connecticut state senate in 1970; he served in that body, and as state attorney general, before defeating incumbent senator Lowell Wiecker (now, there's a name from the past, perhaps not spelled correctly) in 1988. There should be little doubt that Lieberman was a popular and powerful player in the Connecticut Democratic party. And, of course, our man Joe was a Washington force, too, having, as has been repeated as nauseum the past month, been the 2000 Democratic nominee for vice president. And no one with two brain cells to synapse should think, in a million years, that he would have been a bad v.p. Especially compared to the current occupant of that office.

But this is a story as old as stories. Lieberman forgot how he got where he was/is. You see this in all fields, but especially in politics. I always think of that great line in Purple Rain, where the club manager says to "the Kid," a/k/a Prince, "Your music makes sense to no one but you'self. And you're not too far gone to see that." (OK, not really on point, but you have to admit, it's one of the best lines in a movie about Prince. Ever.) In democratic politics, this means Lieberman forgot that his "gig" wasn't doing his own thing, whatever that was. He got where he was because he was able to speak for people. And, in August of 2006, the folks for whom he was speaking--the folks he was representing, up to some point--decided that, well, his politics didn't make sense to them, anymore. He didn't represent them, even if he represented the folks at Fox News. So the Democrats of Connecticut will decide that they want a new representative.

Lieberman's legacy will be that he was the political superstar who forgot what he was supposed to be doing, and who, as a result, was defeated by a political neophyte. The senator who got so far out of touch with his constituents that he lost a Democratic primary based on his issue positions alone, and to a political newcomer. No scandal, no age issue. The senator, the power player, who just strayed too far from the flock.

I mean, who is Ned Lamont? Sure, he's a businessman, an entrepreneur, whatever. He's smart, he's been doing much better on television, he'll be a fine senator, maybe even a great one. Who knows? But that he's going to knock off Lieberman on Tuesday . . . that's Lieberman's doing, not Lamont's. Lamont was the right person in the right place at the right time. Lieberman did the rest.

Sparky Anderson, arguably (and, by which, I mean that there is no argument that he is not) the greatest baseball manager of all time, had a plaque on his wall when he was managing that said, "Every 24 hours, the world rolls over on someone sitting on top of it." But this is more likely to happen if that someone sitting on top forgets that the world keeps turning. Because once you forget to hold on . . . .

This appears to be a message that the punditocracy has not yet grasped, though. Maybe, just maybe, the world will roll over them, too.