The attempts to paint Lamont as a raving lefty are fairly silly; he’s clearly a liberal-leaning centrist. It’s just that next to Lieberman, any liberal-leaning centrist looks like a raving lefty (see below). Not that there’s anything wrong with raving lefties — some of my best friends, etc. — but that’s not even remotely what this race is about, despite media narratives to the contrary.
At any rate, as Lamont said on Franken’s show today, this is a rare instance in which every vote really does matter. I live in CT., and on August 8 I plan to head to my local polling place bright and early to cast my vote for a mainstream centrist who reflects the growing mainstream consensus of the people of Connecticut, and of America — that this president and his war have been complete unmitigated disasters. If you live here, I hope to see you there.
… more, from Digby:
This isn’t about a 60’s style liberal “anti-war movement,” which was a massive youth movement built around the draft coupled with huge social and cultural upheaval. This is just people trying to elect representatives to national office who represent their views. Despite all this blather about “congenial bipartisanship” the Republican Party went so far right they went off the cliff — people are doing the predictable (and responsible) thing and pushing back. Many of them care passionately about their country and are frightened of the direction in which it’s going. They are trying to do something about it. Is that really so scary?
This is just plain old politics, nothing unusual about it except we organize and talk over the internets. America hasn’t heard much from liberals in a while but we’ve been out here the whole time — and our policies have remained popular in spite of all the vilification we’ve endured because of the pathological fear of hippies that permeates the Democratic establishment.
Also this:
I’ve heard this quite a bit. The Lamont challenge is seen as a possible threat to lose the seat. But I don’t see why that is. The state regularly elects Chris Dodd who is a liberal. It’s a state so blue that the moderate Republicans in the House are in trouble this time and the Republican party has had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to even find pedophiles and gambling addicts for the Senate seat. The only scenario by which anyone actually sees a Republican taking the seat is if Lieberman runs as an independent and he and Lamont split the Democratic and Independent vote.
Perhaps that will come to pass, although I sincerely doubt it. But let’s say it does. Why would this be considered Lamont’s fault? He’s not the one who would be launching a third party candidacy when he failed in the primary.
It’s Joe Lieberman who would be playing the Ralph Nader role in this scenario, not Lamont. Everybody needs to keep that straight in their heads after August 8th if Lamont wins. The spoiler is the guy who runs the third party race, not the guy who gets the party nomination.
That’s exactly right. The Republican in this race is a complete joke. The only, and I do mean only, real risk of throwing this seat is if Lieberman loses the primary and runs as an independent.