Josh Marshall picks apart the faux Republican cheers over Ned Lamont's victory on Tuesday, as well the media's shameful stenography in reporting them as truth:

What's really sad is that the nexus of national press and political operative bigwigs really needs to get over itself a bit here. Because once they do, they may actually be able to get over Joe Lieberman.

Joe Lieberman is not a world-historical figure.

He's not fighting some long twilight struggle.

He thinks he's both. But he's not....

The heart of the matter here is that everyone knows Joe in DC. They like him. They think he's a nice guy, which he is. His staff likes him, which also makes him seem like a nice guy. He's schmoozed the city for two decades.

But really he's just a pol who ignored his constituents, went into serious denial about a major foreign policy disaster, was more lockstep with the president's non-policy than many Republicans, and got bounced by his constituents.

That's politics. And that's accountability. And, really? It's not that big a deal.

And Joe wasn't the only incumbent in Congress to be held accountable on Tuesday, as Chuck Todd notes:

Hotline researchers are already on the case, but we can't find evidence of any primary night (in a non-redistricting year) producing three incumbent losses. And these losses were across the ideological and geographic spectrum. Each one individually can be explained away (moderate Joe Schwarz only won his first race because the conservative vote was split, not so this year; Cynthia McKinney is, well, Cynthia McKinney; and Joe Lieberman found himself on the wrong end of a divisive issue in the wrong year).

And yet, they all lost to candidates promising to do the same thing: change Washington. Change the spending habits, or change the foreign policy, or simply change personal behavior.