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.
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; more important, I suspect, than Bill Clinton's endorsement of Lieberman a few days earlier. And it could prove the major development in the race -- not merely the fact of the endorsement, but how it was rendered.
I've read hundreds of Times endorsement editorials -- not of the presidential-race variety, but for countless state and local races back when I was covering politics in the Naked City. A standard and important distinguishing feature of Times endorsement editorials is that, while they always end up saying Candidate A is our choice, a few compliments are ungrudgingly shoveled in the direction of Candidate B as well, so that Mr. B has a sentence or two from the Times that he can reproduce in his campaign literature.
I think their reasoning is that it helps the paper stay above the fray. Why identify too closely with one candidate over the other in races in which, when you get right down to it -- especially when it's a Democratic primary -- either A or B would probably do just fine?
Well, read through the editorial again in this light. Clearly by intention, there isn't a single sentence Lieberman can use. The bulk of the piece is devoted to gutting him. And the two sentences that strain to give him some measure of credit for past stances or accomplishments attribute the arguments in his defense to…Lieberman himself!
The editorial makes it harder for Lieberman's backers to grouse that he is being laid low by intolerant blogofascists. That's the obvious point. The less obvious points are two. First, the Times is, for many of the kind of people who will vote in Connecticut next Tuesday, like a trusted Scout group leader; once the Times says it's OK, it's OK, for thousands of Democratic primary voters.
Second, it provides a strong indication that the idea of wanting to vote Lieberman out, which gives Washington pundits the vapors, isn't limited to alleged blog fanatics. In fact, it appears that it isn't even a particularly controversial matter for your average mainstream Northeast liberal. And this is why it isn't hard to smell potential big trouble for Holy Joe.
If the Times editorial writers feel that way, you can be sure that they feel reasonably confident that the bulk of their readers (including those in Connecticut) feel the same way. Those readers are prime Democratic voters. And prime Democratic voters who may have missed the Times will, if Lamont has the sense God gave a goose, have heard 30 times by next Tuesday that Lamont won the paper's nod.
And so, back to the question raised earlier: What if Lamont wins, not by two points, but by 10 or 12? I'm not saying it's likely. It's probably not. But it does strike me now as possible. And if it were to happen, Lieberman's career might be effectively over August 9.
Why? For starters, Hillary Clinton will, as she's vowed, endorse Lamont, and she'll surely be obliged (or will simply choose) to do so quickly. Because she is a high-profile leader, some other senators will follow suit.
Eyes will then turn to Chuck Schumer, chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. He could well be forced, under such a circumstance, to give some of his committee's money to Lamont, rather than sit the race out. And if that happens, and Lieberman goes all whiny, then I suspect pressure would mount on him to get out -- to forego running an active campaign, even though his name will be on the ballot, and signal to his supporters that they should just vote for Lamont.
As Schumer well knows, there's plenty of precedent for this sort of thing from his own New York, a state with multiple political parties, not just the major two. It wasn't unusual for a Democratic candidate who had been given the nod of the (now defunct) Liberal Party back in the spring of any given election year to lose a September Democratic primary. And when that happened, the candidate almost never ran a serious general-election campaign, and ended up getting the votes of his grandmothers and a few others.
Yes, this is different. Lieberman is a three-term incumbent who would still have a strong shot at winning a three-way general election. And there aren't any rules here: This would be one of those situations in which politicians operate by smell. It seems probable that a Lieberman loss by more than eight or so points would carry a very foul odor to Democratic senators.
Those senators want to take back control of the Senate, period. They think that mischief in Connecticut interferes with that goal. Up until now, Lamont has been the mischief-maker, and they've been mad at him. But a certain result on August 8 could turn Lieberman into the annoyance (again, here's something you'd never know reading the A-list Washington pundits, but more than a few of Lieberman's Democratic Senate colleagues consider him a self-serious, moralizing pain in their butts anyway). And if that happens, he's finito.
Michael Tomasky is the Prospect's editor.
