LIEBERMAN'S VICIOUS CYCLE. To add to the post-mortems of the day, my guess is that the relationship between Joe Lieberman and the Democratic Party is about to get a whole lot more fraught. Previously, there was a real unwillingness on the part of the party mandarins to go against Joe who, even if he were to run as an independent, would still be bound in the Senate by long ties of friendship and esteem with the Democratic caucus. But now that so many from the caucus have bowed to base pressure and endorsed Ned Lamont -- I'm thinking here of Dodd, Clinton, Feingold, Kerry, Bayh, Kennedy, Schumer, Emmanuel, Reid, Obama etc -- Lieberman is apt to feel as betrayed by his colleagues as he does by his voters. That radically increases the chance he'll switch parties or leverage his independence against his side which, in turn, radically increases the importance that the party kill off his candidacy and ensure Lamont's election. So Lieberman's in a rough cycle here -- his loss in the primary forced his colleagues to turn on his candidacy which, in turn, forces them to seriously support Lamont lest Lieberman exact revenge.
--Ezra Klein
