Disclosure: I worked for the Lamont campaign doing web design and production and some writing for the official blog (from 9/5/06 to 11/07/06).

Monday, April 17, 2006

 

Paul Bass on Lamont at SCSU

Paul Bass at the New Haven Independent has a quick write-up of today's Lamont event at SCSU in New Haven in front of about 30 people:

...While the crowd was generally supportive of Lamont's left-leaning challenge to the conservative Lieberman, student questioners pushed him to talk about more than his opposition to the Iraq war, the issue that propelled his candidacy two months ago.

Lamont obliged, differentiating himself from Lieberman on issues ranging from universal health care (for it) and Terry Schiavo (he said the federal government had no place butting in) to the environment (he denounced the Lieberman-supported energy bill) and gay marriage.


Also, the national press was there, expect articles on the AP and WaPo soon:

He's still in the honeymoon period, still being discovered. Monday's stop attracted not just [Shailagh] Murray of the Post national desk but an AP reporter preparing a story for the national wire. Like other Next New Thing anti-Bush Democrats -- Howard Dean, Wesley Clark -- Lamont will soon move to the more demanding spotlight phase, when the press and the public throw the same kind of tough questions at him that they now have for Lieberman.


Normally, I'd agree with Paul that Lamont will have some tough questions coming his way soon from the media. But that assumes that the Lieberman campaign stops their startling self-destructive tendencies sometime soon, which is a safe enough assumption, but by no means a certainty. Actually leaving the Democratic party would provide another few weeks of Joe on the defensive.

The basic truth of every campaign that Lieberman has run in the last 6 years is that the more he speaks, the less popular he gets.

For instance, I was recently reading some old interviews of Joe from December 2003, right after Al Gore endorsed Dean. This was pre-"Joementum," but the terminal diagnosis for the campaign was already clear, reflected in the bitterness and petulance of the candidate himself. If Joe's defensive slide towards irrelevance repeats itself, this will continue to be the dominant storyline of this race, not the Lamont-as-Dean narrative.

Unless Al Gore suddenly throws his support to Lamont. Then Joe's head might actually explode, which I'm sure would be the lede in all the papers.
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