ROVEBOTS, YOU HAVE YOUR MARCHING ORDERS!:

Joe, KO'd: What happens if Lamont doesn’t just beat Lieberman, but buries him? (Michael Tomasky, 07.31.06, American Prospect)

Of course Joe Lieberman could still win the Democratic primary next Tuesday. There’s an X factor in every election, and in this one, with a three-term incumbent, it’s this: A certain percentage of voters will be thinking “challenger” most of the week, but when the moment of truth arrives -- when they walk into the booth, actually look at the names, and move hand toward lever -- they suddenly and alchemically remember pressing the incumbent’s flesh once in New Milford and decide he isn’t so terrible after all. What we don’t know is what percentage of voters will undergo that conversion next week.

But if it’s the case that Lieberman is reduced to counting on magical transmutations of electoral spirit, then he’s in worse shape than downtown Bridgeport. Indeed, the question today is not the question the mainstream press has been asking, which is “What if Ned Lamont beats Lieberman?” The question today is: “What if Ned Lamont buries Lieberman?”

The mind became focused on this new question after I read that blistering Times editorial endorsing Lamont on Sunday. It’s an earthquake...

Because, after all, who doesn't try to bring their own thoughts into perfect accord with the Times Op-Ed page?

MORE:
In Connecticut race, insurgent left aims at Democratic hawk (Linda Feldmann, 8/02/06, The Christian Science Monitor)

A primary victory by Ned Lamont, the businessman who took on Lieberman over his fierce support for the Iraq war and his criticism of Democrats who "undermine presidential credibility" would embolden the Republican Party to paint the Democrats as untrustworthy on national security and willing to purge those who differ with the left, analysts say. "The difficulty for the Democrats in this race is the same one that existed during Vietnam: an unpopular war, but a perception of the party as weak on security," says Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, which backs Lieberman.

Looking ahead to the potential impact on the 2008 presidential race, he adds that an emboldened left "would pose a problem for all the centrists who have stood by their original position on the war in Iraq," including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) of New York.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 1, 2006 4:52 PM