Requiem for a Heavyweight
So, Lamont defeats Lieberman tonight. Liberman's "concession" speech will go down in history, I think, as one of the tinnest eared speeches ever. Why? Because it was followed by Lamont's speech. Lamont is such a goober. But that is his greatest strength. It's like Lieberman is running against Mr. Smith. Can anyone hope to beat Mr. frickin' Smith? I don't think so.
Liberman talks about "purpose," but it's Lamont's campaign that has (a) purpose. I can't see that Lieberman has a purpose, other than staying in the Senate.
Three months to go. I will be surprised if Lieberman is still in this in three months. Even Rocky Balboa couldn't take that kind of beating.
posted by Number Three @ 11:36 PM
9 Comments:
Lamont even looks like Mr. Smith.
In what I saw of Lieberman's speech, he begged for donations from voters outside of CT. He claimed that what he stood for was "bipartisanship." Nothing substantive. Just the principle that you should be commited to working with (or FOR) the other party, no matter what it is that THEY happen to be working for.
The Lamont win was at least a moral victory, which is a lot more than democrats have had to cheer for in a long while. Any other pro-war, Whitehouse-coddling democrats also ought to be strung up the highest mast, made to walk the plank, keel-hauled, and then left for shark bait. Only by distinguishing themselves from the insanely rightwing Republican party will democrats start to win some races again -- and hopefully reverse the road to perdition that we're on.
DK, you're dead on. Lieberman is anything but dead. A big loss in the primary would have kicked him out of the race, but now he can spin his 4 point loss as a "comeback" from down 13 in the polls. Lamont should have demanded a Joe withdrawal in his victory speech, but said nothing, giving Joe time to hold off any calls for his departure from Dem leaders. It would actually help Lamont if the GOP had a more serious candidate than Schlesinger.
In the current political landscape I see only a un-survivable no man's land between to the two parties. Within a short period Lieberman's hanging on will be seen for what it is -- a solipsistic, ego-driven refusal to bow to the voters of his party and recognize that he's being used by the Republicans (who are the only one's who will fund him).
Joe will be the Republican in this race, I suspect. He's just too beloved of the Republican right. On Fox News it looked like Carl Cameron was going to break out in tears at the Lieberman hq. Lieberman will be supported by Republicans, and he will become the defacto Republican candidate. This doesn't mean he can't win in November, but it will leech away Democratic support. He won't be at 40% among CT Democrats for much longer.
Should Lieberman run as a de facto Republican, isn't it more likely that he will siphon off more Republican votes from Schlesinger than Democratic from Lamont? I suspect that when the Democratic leadership turns their backs on him (and hopefully kick him off any Dem committees now that he is no longer a Dem but an independent), and when polls come out showing he's pulling too many votes from Schlesinger, he will also become a persona non grata amongst Republicans and his position will become untenable, unless the Republicans are so fanatic about jilted Joe they want to throw Schlesinger overboard for him, presumably with Schlesinger withdrawing. I seriously doubt either party will, in the end, warm to him when it maters most and his Joe Lieberman banner will be left flapping in the wind all by itself.
One thing really annoying about the Lamont win is the press's repetition of Republican talking points about how far the Democratic party has moved from center ground to the left by giving Lieberman the boot. In relative terms it is true that the Lamont win means a move to the left, but the problem is that the ground they're talking about is now so radically far to the neocon right as to no longer be in the center. Lamont represents a sane move to the center.
Schlesinger isn't a credible Republican candidate in his own right. The Republican party has actively been trying to force him out of the race.
Republicans aren't going to be able to resist rallying to Lieberman. They were lighting up the C-SPAN call in show last night; every caller on the Republican line was praising Lieberman. The National Review has now endorsed him. Word is that Karl Rove is reaching out to Lieberman, also.
Lieberman is more valuable to the GOP as a Fox News Democrat.
I'd also note, to add onto what Frances has said, that in some ways the GOP has the best of all possible worlds with a weak-ass candidate in Schlesinger.
If he actually dropped out, or if Joe were somehow endorsed by the state GOP leadership, it would undermine Lieberman's credibility with the vast majority of the Dem base in CT. So Schlesinger's staying in the race gives Lieberman some cover by allowing him to play the middle between two "extremes," thus furthering the "independent" and "bipartisan" themes. Meanwhile, any Republican with half a clue will vote for Joe as a way of both supporting Bush and keeping the FOX News Dem on the liberal bashing warpath. Their own candidate could never actuallly win, so Joe's a godsend. If the Dems are smart, they'll play this to the hilt, hammering home at every opportunity that Joe is now, for all practical purposes, a republican. The downside is that, if he still wins, you really will lose his vote on a lot of issues where it now helps the Dems.
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