The Dems of CT? Really? What was the final margin of victory... 3 or 4 points? Such a resounding defeat...
Sadly looks like loser Joe is playing the race card in his attempt to soldier on. ******* In the end, it was a decisive and historic victory. Ned Lamont won and Joe Lieberman lost. I am already concerned that Senator Lieberman’s independent bid seems destined to divide Democrats in the most insidious ways. His supporters have called Ned Lamont an “Al Sharpton Democrat” and this morning Lieberman stated on the Today Show that he was committed “to bringing the Democratic Party back from the extreme, back from Ned Lamont and Maxine Waters.” It is not lost on me that both of these appeals seem designed to peel off support for Mr. Lamont by highlighting his support from prominent African Americans. This type of rhetoric degrades the political process and should not be tolerated. Losing a campaign is tough. But for one who has carried the banner of the Democratic Party for thirty years, has been awarded the party's nomination to the Senate three times, and has been chosen to fill a Presidential ticket, now it is time to abide the wishes of his electorate and show the same support that the party has shown him over the full course of his career. Senator Lieberman should reject the bitterness of losing and the politics of division and bring the party together for November. When primaries are over and Democrats in a state have made their choice, all Democratic elected officials, everywhere, have an obligation to coalesce around that choice. Now, the choice is Senator Lieberman’s: will he do the right thing and respect the choice of his party or tarnish a respected career in public service? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-conyers/the-people-have-spoken_b_26862.html
He was beaten, giddy, and really beaten in the primary. How many times have we been told by you and other GOP folks that it doesn't matter whether Bush got fewer votes in 2000, or if the Supreme Court took the decison away from the people, because "Gore lost!" 50? A 100 times? Lieberman was beaten by a novice in his own primary. It is a humiliationg defeat. Spin how you like, but there it is. Keep D&D Civil.
Besides defeating Sen. Joe Lieberman, challenger Ned Lamont has also registered a triumph over much of the Washington press corps that had rallied so ridiculously to Lieberman's defense. A victory over the old-guard incumbents of the D.C. media elite is one that all progressives should savor. Lieberman is not just the favorite Democrat of the White House and corporate interests; he's also a favorite of conservative pundits and Fox News and Sean Hannity, who proposed "Conservatives for Lieberman" and has volunteered to campaign and fundraise for Joe in Connecticut. Election coverage saw conservative columnists feverishly denouncing a "liberal inquisition" against Lieberman; they attacked "Ned's nutcases" and "crazies." Given the invective aimed at Lamont's grassroots and Netroots supporters, it was fun to see Fox News pundit Mort Kondracke whining that Lieberman's defeat could mean the end of "civility in American politics" and a victory for "hatred politics" and "savage Internet-based attacks." Persecuted Lieberman was "The Last Honest Man," according to the headline of a Washington Post column. Mainstream media reports during the campaign talked routinely about a party "purge" of Lieberman -- confusing a free and open democratic contest with a backroom expulsion Many reports evoked fears of progressive bloggers raising out-of-state money for Lamont -- a wealthy cable TV entrepreneur who matched the donations out of his own pocket. Only a few articles mentioned that Lieberman is a top recipient of out-of-state cash in the form of corporate PAC donations; Matt Taibbi's brilliant Rolling Stone piece was one of the few that chronicled the favors Lieberman has bestowed on corporate America. The prospect of a Lamont victory had some Beltway pundits in a frenzy. On ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, Cokie Roberts waxed on about how a Lamont victory would be a "disaster" for Democrats, especially with "liberal blogs and all that taking over the party." And all that? In the Washington Post, David Broder - the "dean" of political journalists -- denigrated Lamont's "elitist insurgents" and argued that a Lieberman primary defeat could push Democrats "toward a stronger antiwar stand" and troubles in general elections. Broder didn't mention the latest polling that shows 63% of Americans saying the war isn't worth the cost, with only 30% saying it is. Similarly, Jonathan Alter wrote in Newsweek that bloggers had "noisily intervened" in Connecticut's primary because they "brook no dissent" on Iraq; he warned of "a cannabilistic distraction" among Democrats. Given that the mainstream media spectrum often extends from the far-right to the corporate center, Lieberman also has many friends in what passes for the "left" end of elite media. \http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-cohen/lamont-victory-a-media_b_26857.html
Chris Matthews to Ned Lamont on MSNBC today: What do you think of the pajamahadeen? Lamont: Huh? Matthews: The bloggers. They roll out of bed in the morning, they read something in the paper, they blog about it, they talk to each other about it, people blog back, and pretty soon it becomes the buzz. (Caveat lector: It's my paraphrase, not a transcript.) It's funny: the entire District of Columbia is built on the exact same process that Chris Matthews describes, except that instead of people using keyboards, they use phones, and instead of blogging, they use their access to print and broadcast media, and to one another. I lived and worked in politics and journalism in Washington for eight years, and every day, the inviolable morning ritual was that people read the papers, they watched television, and then all day long they called one another to ask, "What do you hear?" The biggest difference between the daily routine of the Beltway chattering class and the blogosphere is that the Gang of 500 (as The Note calls them) has been replaced by the dispersed and inherently more small-d democratic netroots. The reason that there are just 500 or so in the elite is that the mandarins who belong to it, plus the MSM employers it's parasitic on, keep a de facto ceiling on its membership. But there's no max to the number of cyberchatterers; their impact depends not on a merit badge system, but on their ability to attract readers. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marty-kaplan/pajamahadeen-chattering_b_26812.html
48 out of 100 CT Dems still wanted Lieberman. The spin is coming from your side who want to make this sound like a decimation when it is not. Oh, and 52 out of 100 CT Dems preferred Lamont. I get how the math works...
Last night I watched a little bit of C-SPAN's coverage on U.S. senator primary in CT. A Lieberman supporter called in and he basically said "I am tired of Washington politics, I am sticking with Joe." Can anyone be dumber than this idiot?
The other Republican idiot who called, complained about high gas prices and said "We need to throw all the bums out. I guess I'll be voting for Lieberman."
Lieberman will split the Democrat vote, so a Republican will still occupy the seat. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Lamont won by a wider margin than Bush did in 2004. Here's an interesting quote on that race: "In the end, my own feeling is, looking at the polls, but intuiting, based on people I talk to, is that, although Senator Kerry got a lot of votes, 56 million votes, more than any Democratic candidate for president in history, but there's no prizes for second place in American politics." - Joe Lieberman
According to George Stephanopoulos, Karl Rove has called Joe to signal Bush's continued support and ask what he can do to help. http://abcnews.blogs.com/theworldnewser/ So now, in addition to continuing to support a war and a president that are both gigantically unpopular with his constituents, he's got endorsements from Hannity, Coulter, Rove and Bush. Why don't Democrats like this guy???
I am not disputing who won; I am just amused that this narrow victory is described as a titanic victory. The biggest aspect of the defeat was Joe's incumbency but the race was whittled down to one issue-- which makes the race hardly a referendum on Lieberman's long career of service to the citizens of CT. I don't know a thing about the Republican candidate; is he viable? Might the Republicans of CT vote for Joe to trump the CT Dems when it counts?
giddyup, When a completely unknown candidate, who has never run for statewide office and has zero name ID comes back from 55% down to win by 4% against a three-term incumbent who just six years ago was the party's VP nominee, who outspent him by a mile and carried endorsements from the local, state and national parties along with virtually every Dem endorsement, every CT newpaper endorsement, yes. It is a gargantuan victory. In fact it is unprecedented. As someone said on kos, this wasn't David versus goliath, it was an ant versus my shoe.
They said you have to go back to 1974 when Fullbright lost in the primary for a multi term incumbent to be beaten in a primary. One of the things wrong with this country.
