lamontwhynot.jpg

Is that so hard?  Reaching across the campaigns for a little mutual respect and snow cones among Democrats?  Guess not.  So much for that whole "angry Lamont supporters" malarky -- in the heat of the campaign, a snow cone across the candidate lines is an awfully nice gesture.  I just loved this picture, and wanted to share it with everyone this morning. 

And at the end of the day, wouldn't it be nice to feel like everyone would pull together behind whomever wins the Democratic party primary...instead of continuing this nastiness and escalating bickering and such at the expense of the entire Democratic party ticket in the state of Connecticut -- and the risk that it poses to down-ticket races and the potential that Dems have to re-take the House? 

Ned Lamont has already pledged to support the winner of the Democratic primary.  Where's Joe Lieberman on that pledge?

Dan Balz has an intriguing article up in today's WaPo, that contains some very interesting nuggets for our consideration.  Very, very interesting nuggets:

Although there are reasons beyond Lieberman's strong support for the war and what critics say is his accommodating stance toward Bush that have put him in trouble, the results will be read largely through the prism of what they say about Iraq and Bush's popularity.

Should Lieberman lose, the full ramifications are far from certain. One may be to signal immediate problems for Bush and the Republicans in November, but another could be to push Democrats into a more partisan, antiwar posture, a prospect that is already adding powerful new fuel to a four-year-long intraparty debate over Iraq.

Strategists say the Connecticut race has rattled the Democratic establishment, which is virtually united behind the three-term incumbent's candidacy, and will force an uneasy accommodation with the newest, volatile power center within the party. (emphasis mine)

Yes, we like to call ourselves "Democratic voters."  Remember us?  We live outside the Beltway, don't spend all our time going to cocktail parties thrown by lobbyists and big campaign donors, and worry about such mundane things as making our rent, paying our rising energy bills, keeping our kids alive until they fulfill their military service obligation, and praying that our children don't grow up in a world worse than the one in which we were raised.  At the moment, we aren't all that happy with how things are going.

You can call us "the American people" if that makes it easier for you.

Balz spends quite a bit of ink trying to raise the spectre of an Al Gore run for the White House (which is, apparently, a scary thought to the DC Establishment, according to Balz' implications on the matter).  But it is this statement from Rahm Emmanuel that leapt out at me:

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Friday he is not worried about the fallout from the Senate primary on House races, arguing that the message from Connecticut is that anyone supporting Bush's war policies is in deep trouble. "What's playing out here is that being a rubber stamp for George Bush is politically dangerous to life-threatening," he said.  (emphasis mine)

So, is Rahm saying that Joe Lieberman has been a rubber stamp for George Bush, and that he is now justifiably paying the price for that with Democrats in Connecticut?  Or is this a preview of how the Democratic hierarchy is going to characterize Lieberman if and when he loses the Democratic primary -- a sort of warning shot across the bow of Connecticut for Lieberman's leaky life raft?

And let me just say for the record that it is awfully nice to see Rahm coming around to Jane's point from July 5th, if that is, indeed, what he intended.  (I'd say it's about damn time, but I'm making an effort to be gracious.  Ooops....)

Atrios hit this as well this morning, and is asking the same thing.  Intentional slam or accidental?  What do you think?

Whether he intended it or not, though, Rahm is correct:  being a rubber stamp for George Bush when you are a Senator from Connecticut is asking for trouble.  Digby, as always, has some exceptional analysis on this very issue:

All Lieberman had to do in the early going was ignore the sniping, distance himself that schmuck in the white house and it would have been very difficult for Lamont to get enough traction to get this far. Perhaps it would have happened anyway, but I have my doubts. In fact I sincerely believed when this whole thing began to bubble to the surface that the point of this challenge was to get Joe to distance himselof from that schmuck in the white house and keep him on the reservation. I never dreamed he'd be so stubborn about something so obvious.

And now to find out that he had originally been critical and then changed his mind (because of what is speculated to be petulance about his treatment in the 2004 presidential campaign) is stunning to me. I'm actually beginning to wonder if deep down Joe wanted out anyway. (Or perhaps he really does want Rumsfeld's job.)

Ouch...and yet, with that ring of truth to it.   

UPDATE:  C&L has pulled the portion of the Lieberman interview on This Week, wherein Joe Lieberman says that Iraq is getting better...and worse.  (Talk about your have some cake and eat it too moments.  Sheesh.)