I don’t understand this sentiment. The only people who prevented him from winning the primary were the voters of CT (or realistically, himself, but he’d never see that point). Voters can’t exactly betray their own politician. Either they think he’s doing a good job and vote him back in, or they don’t. The party needs to support who the voters support or they end up being elitist authoritarian pricks. That said, Lieberman should still run. If he’s the man that a majority of CT wants to represent it, then he should be the man to represent them. Personally, I don’t like the way parties and primaries are used in this country and anything that bucks that system and makes people think ‘hey, maybe this isn’t the best way to go about it since it really excludes moderates and centrists from participating in politics and espousing centrist views’ is a Good Thing. We’re currently stuck with the Republican view of ‘free markets’, and the Democratic view of ‘government provided’ and no one seems to be pegging the middle ground of ‘government regulated markets’ for any of our solutions at all. Ok I’m done rambling.
That would be ironic, considering how Lieberman won his Senate seat originally. (He ran against Lowell Weicker, who was a liberal Republican. When Weicker lost, he later ran for governor and won as an independent candidate.)
If it seems that Joe is even thinking of switching parties, that will be the death knell for the campaign. If I was Lamont, I’d put “I will not switch parties after the election” on each and every campaign ad.
I forgot to mention that at the time, Weicker was the incumbent senator, seeking his fourth term.
No, that’s the real Lieberman campaign site. It’s been down since late Monday for the most part, and they still haven’t fixed it. (What’s to fix? Put up your site on a new server, put a redirect page at the old location, and you’re good to go. I’m not sure whether it’s gone unfixed this long because (a) Joe’s enjoying playing the victim card, or (b) since he fired his staff yesterday morning, nobody’s around to fix it.)
Here’s what the page says, in its entirety, so y’all don’t have to click through:
Sean Smith was fired yesterday along with the rest of Lieberman’s staff. But on Tuesday, another top Lieberman staffer, Dan Gerstein, was asked if he had any evidence linking Lamont or his supporters to the hack, and he refused to say he did, and specifically said he wasn’t blaming the Lamont campaign for the hack.
Didja notice that three Congressional incumbents lost primaries on Tuesday? Besides Lieberman, the infamous Cynthia McKinney got beat, and a fairly conservative GOP congressman in Michigan, Joe Schwarz, got beat by a much more conservative primary opponent.
It’s rare for three incumbents to lose primaries on the same day, anytime. And it’s not like there were all that many primaries this Tuesday.
I think people should run as whatever they want - Republican, Democrat, Green, Libertarian, Independent, whatever. If Lieberman had declared as an independent candidate from the beginning, I would have no problem with his running in the general election.
But if he wants to run as a Democrat, then he shouldn’t change his mind and run against the Democratic nominee after he gets beaten in the Dem primary.
This is a guy that, six years ago, the Democratic Party put in front of the nation and said, in effect, “Here’s our proposal for the #2 guy in the White House, the guy who is a heartbeat away from the Presidency.”
Now the Democratic Party is saying… what?
“Oops?”
Now it’s not as bad as putting someone like, say, Spiro Agnew in, I grant.
But still, it’s hardly a ringing endorsement of the selection process, is it?
What’s your position on switching parties once in office?
Betrayed by whom??
The Dem party organization was behind him nearly 100%. Bill Clinton, Max Cleland, Joe Biden and other big names came to campaign for Lieberman. Lamont had to make do with Al Sharpton and Maxine Waters.
Betrayed by the voters, perhaps? Umm, the voters are who you’re there to represent, if you’re in Congress. It’s not like an incumbent has a right to his/her seat, and it’s not a betrayal if the voters decide it’s time for a change.
And if an elected official starts thinking it is a betrayal, then he’s been in office too damned long.
So enough of the ‘betrayal’ stuff. If Lieberman’s feeling betrayed, that’s between him and his shrink, not a matter for the rest of us to be involved in.
Now, about the practical effects of a Lieberman for Lieberman campaign:
- It will take Dem money away from other races.
People will contribute money to Lamont for his run against Lieberman, and a good chunk of that money, especially that which comes from the small donor base, will probably be money that would have gone to other Dem candidates in other races. For instance, I’ve set myself a budget for political contributions this year, and I’m going to stick by it. If I contribute more money to Lamont, it’s money that really would have gone to someone else otherwise.
I’m not worried so much about Lieberman soaking up Dem money; he’s going to get GOP money and lobbyist/corporate money; mostly the latter, I expect.
- It’ll take volunteers’ time and energy away from other races.
Lamont’s built up a network of volunteers, I’m glad to say. But now to the extent they keep on working for him, that’s time they can’t volunteer for one of the three Dems that may well knock off GOP incumbent congresspersons in CT.
- It takes quality staff away from other races.
Lamont’s campaign team is a very good one, but now they have to plan on being busy for the next three months. Their help might have been quite useful to the CT Dem congressional challengers.
- It takes media attention away from other races.
And media attention is a great equalizer for a challenger. You have to do a lot less work to get name recognition, to get your ideas across, if the press gives more attention to your campaign. Which means you need less money. The Dems are trying to win a lot of races this year, including those three in CT, as challengers.
Lieberman claims he’s really a true-blue loyal Democrat, yet he’s running for Senator, surely knowing full well that he’s going to hurt the chances of the party he claims as his to regain the House this fall.
That’s why he shouldn’t run as an Independent, if he really believes in his party.
You are forgetting that 9/11 changed everything.
Al Gore did that, actually. Even Al’s not perfect.
Yeah, the party ratified his choice, but when’s the last time either major party has come close to not rubber-stamping its Presidential candidate’s veep pick?
Even when Barry Goldwater picked Rep. William Miller (who? even back then) as his running mate, it wasn’t contested.
The Democratic voters of Connecticut said they wanted somebody else. That’s democracy for you.
It’s not like the same entity chose, then rejected, Lieberman. Gore picked him as his 2000 running mate, and the Connecticut Dems ditched him in 2006.
As you probably noticed, Lieberman’s Presidential run in 2004 went essentially nowhere, despite starting a mile ahead in terms of name recognition. You know where Hillary is in the Dem nomination polls now; Lieberman was in about the same position four years ago. Dem voters in a lot of places decided they were less than enthralled with Joe.
My conclusion would be that Gore’s choice of Lieberman was the outlier here.
I think the honorable thing to do, if one isn’t standing for re-election shortly anyway, is to resign one’s seat, and run as a candidate in the subsequent special election.
Of course, like with other gimmicks (like mid-decade redistricting) that I’m against, I’m not so principled that I want my party to disarm unilaterally.
If he won as an independent,would he be able to retain seniority and his seats on committees.?
I don’t know. If he did win, it’d be interesting to see which party he caucused with. Jeffords left the Republicans to become an independent and caucuses with the Dems, but with the way the Democrats are telling Lieberman to pack it in, I don’t know what would happen. But my money is still on him not making it that far.
We were wondering about that a month ago or so. My mother called his campaign office and was told that he’d serve as a Democrat, vote with the party and retain his committee assignments. But it seems to me that the party may not want him if he defeats their chosen candidate.
Not in a million years.
Like we said in the other thread, wait until we see some poll numbers next week. Lieberman handily beats Lamont in the general if it were held today, but that could change quickly. It might take someone like Clinton to tell him to get out, for the sake f the party-- JL seems set on running. And as far as all the Democratic Senators lining up behing Lamont, it’s one thing to say you support him and another to actually do somethig about it. I suspect most of those guys will sit on the sidelines.
From a Tuesday CBS exit poll (PDF):
q20 If Joe Lieberman runs as an Independent in November, and these are the candidates, will you vote for:
Ned Lamont (DEM) 49
Joe Lieberman (IND) 36
Alan Schlesinger (REP) 0
Someone else 1
Not Sure 12
Won’t vote 1
A month or two ago, the Quinnipiac Poll said that Lieberman would beat Lamont in a three-way race, so I think people changed their minds after the question changed from theoretical to actual. BTW, it’s pretty funny that Schlesinger was outpolled by “not sure.”
Wasn’t that only a Democratic primary?
The poll you’re talking about was only a few weeks ago. July 20th to be exact.
Some districts also had Republican primaries for state legislative seats. One district had a run-off between two Republicans to run against the incumbent Democratic Congressional representative.
The vast majority of Republicans, and all unaffiliated voters, were at work or at home on Tuesday.