Brooks Community Newspapers, comprising papers in Greenwich, Norwalk, Darien, New Canaan, Fairfield, and Westport, writes the latest in a ballooning number of editorials calling on Sen. Lieberman to abide by the results of the primary and gracefully exit:

"I won't walk off the field." U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman on his decision to run as an independent in the Nov. 7 election.

Senator, you just don't get it. Your constituents voted you off the field. Nearly 52 percent of the registered Democrats who voted in last week's primary 146,578 opted for a comparative unknown, Ned Lamont, over you, a three-term incumbent with a national reputation, in the Aug. 8 Democratic primary.

The people have spoken. That should tell you something.

Connecticut Democrats are unhappy with your work, senator. They are dissatisfied with the failed leadership of Congress on the war in Iraq, and with your support for the Bush administration's ongoing mismanagement of this gosh-awful war.

They wonder where you've been in recent years, too. Many voters claim they've never received even one piece of Lieberman literature, and that you become visible, on Nutmeg State turf, only when an election is at stake....

Your petitioned entry in what becomes a three-man race will siphon both campaign dollars and votes away from your party's nominee Ned Lamont, the Greenwich businessman and, yes, millionaire. Lamont was a virtual unknown outside of his hometown until early spring, and yet he was able to win support in the primary throughout Connecticut. He carried seven of the state's eight counties, New Haven being the lone exception....

We at the Brooks Community Newspapers agree. Senator, you've devoted 35 years to public service, you've served well as U.S. senator and you came within a whisker of becoming vice president, but the time has come for you step aside with grace.

Given that Joe's allies were floating "losing by 10%" as the necessary margin which might convince Joe to listen to the voters of his party on August 8th, and that the Lieberman Party is now getting only 35% of the Democratic vote to Ned Lamont's 63% (according to today's Q-Poll), do you think he might reconsider?