CTBob and CTBlogger (no relation) got together in Danbury today and caught Ned Lamont challenging Sen. Lieberman to a debate. Their full interview will be posted in the coming days.

If Joe's constant dismissive and uncivil personal behavior towards his opponent is any guide, Ned needn't worry about a prompt response (that is, if he gets one at all before Joe leaves the party).

Show Spazeboy some (more) love.

That's right, he is refusing to rule out any option... even running as a Democrat!

Intimidation. Petulance. Evasiveness. Cowardice.

Read Spazeboy's very well-written account of his up-close and personal experience with the senator at one of his "diner stops" today. And you'll understand why this man and his campaign are currently driving away voters at such an amazing rate:

...My move was to say something along the lines of, “Actually, I’m a committed Democrat and I plan to support the winner of the primary election. I’m concerned that you’ll leave the Democratic party and I was hoping that you would rule out an independent run.” To which [Lieberman] replied by saying that he won’t have to worry about that if I vote for him in the primary and that he’s a Democrat. At this point, the Senator quickly stood up and moved on....

Marion Steinfels, Lieberman’s communication director who was listening in on my conversation with the Bristol Press reporter basically told me it was time to run along, saying “You’ve gotten some attention for yourself.” She was right, and I had certainly asked for it too. What was I thinking when I invited NECN, WTNH, and local newspaper reporters to the Beau Anderson photo-op at Carmine’s Italian Grill in Bristol? Maybe I should have invited more supporters? Fuck it, I’m running on pure Beaumentum now.

The moral of the story is that Joe Lieberman will only say that he is a Democrat, not that he will always and exclusively run for office as a Democrat.

• It's so great to be able support a candidate who people just genuinely seem to like and respect as soon as they meet him. I've said it before, but it's the polar opposite of reactions to Joe.


• Tom Gogola of the New Haven Advocate asks "what, exactly, does Joe Lieberman think about gay people?" and comes up with a few possible answers.


• Paul Bass of the New Haven Independent takes a detailed look at the connections, similarities, and - hopefully differences - between the Lamont 2006 campaign and the Dean 2004 effort in Connecticut. I'd add: one similarity is that the more people see Joe campaign, the more his support drops. One difference is that Lamont, unlike Dean, seems to grow on people and is hard to demonize. And it's worth remembering (as Bass does) that Dean actually ended up beating Lieberman in the CT primary anyway.


• Eleanor Clift takes a look at Lieberman's no-win position on Iraq in a web commentary for Newsweek.


• Just saw some coverage on C-SPAN of Yearly Kos. Lotta Ned Lamont t-shirts and buttons visible there. Tim must be a popular guy.

There are a lot of Lamont-supporting lurkers out there. It's time your voice was heard. Today we're kicking off a "membership drive" to encourage people to participate online:

• Register at My Left Nutmeg. MLN has emerged as the main CT progressive community blog, and to succeed the community needs to grow. Registering is free and easy, all you need is an email address. Joining the conversation by commenting or posting diaries is even easier. Do it today if you haven't already!


• Participate at all pro-Lamont blogs (see the links in the blogroll to the left). Read something you agree or disagree with? Have a tip? Want to share your personal take? Never be hesitant to comment. (Unless you're a Liebertroll).

• Josh Marshall has a lengthy post up explaining his feelings on the Lamont-Lieberman race in the wake of yesterday's poll numbers. Josh was, of course, the prime mover in solidifying opposition to Bush's 2005 push for Social Security privatization, and did a great job exposing Lieberman's duplicity on the issue:
  

  We went back and forth with him. I'd talk to his staffers and folks around him and work and work and work to get a straight answer, but just had the hardest time. It was always this statement or that that seemed to support Social Security but really left the door open to some compromise on phase out when you looked at it closely. On and on and on....
  
  And what was the point of that?...
  
  I think the most generous read on Lieberman is that he's just out of step with the parliamentary turn of recent American politics which I myself, Mark Schmitt and many others have discussed. But I think that's too generous. The whining in Washington that it's somehow an affront that Lieberman's hold on his senate is being threatened is entirely misplaced, a good example of what's wrong with DC's permanent class.

  
  He claims to be "ambivalent" about the race, but from his last paragraph, it's obvious he's not:
  

  I have to confess that I haven't spent enough time yet finding out Lamont's positions on various issues; and I'll try to rectify that. And just between us, I'm happy every time I see him go higher in the polls.
  



• Quinnipiac poll director Douglas Schwartz on the Lamont phenomenon, from the Courant:
  

  Douglas Schwartz, the director of the Quinnipiac poll, said the new survey was "remarkable" in that Lamont surged in popularity even as 76 percent of those surveyed still knew too little to say if they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion.
  
  "I've never seen anything like that," Schwartz said.



• Lieberman shows up at a diner in Bristol today at 1:15pm. Wonder if he'll get any tough questions.


• Ned will appear at two events in the 5th CD on Saturday: the Litchfield "gallery on the green," and the Danbury Greek festival.

Dear Sean,

If, as you claimed yesterday, Ned Lamont's candidacy "is supported mostly by out-of-state political activists," then why did 300-400 motivated Connecticut voters show up at today's rally in New Haven at noon on a weekday? Could you get even a quarter as many people to show up for Joe? (Without paying a bunch of college kids, I mean.) MoveOn and DFA have 60,000 members in Connecticut, almost all of them - unlike your candidate - committed Democrats. Only Connecticut members voted on these endorsements - and hell, Jim Dean even lives in Connecticut. Are they suddenly all "out-of-state political activists" because they are on an organization's national email list? Or are you just talking out of your ass again?

And if, as you claim, Joe Lieberman is so "focused on communicating to" Connecticut Democrats, why has your website been mothballed since May 19th? No news happening since then? Where are all of your campaign's "communications" with Connecticut Democrats? Where are the events? Where are the interviews? Where are the rallies and meet-and-greets? Not even one little diner stop? Oh, wait, I forgot. You did communicate with voters - by running a negative ad that backfired so badly that you've decided to stop running it.

You know what would be a good way to start "communicating" with Connecticut Democrats?

Promise them you won't betray them by leaving their party.

It would be a start, anyway.

Update: Wow, Blogger's actually working again. Better get this in quick. More updates from the event today (and the crowd was more like 300 or 400). Blog For America and the New Haven Independent have reports with photos, Neal has the full audio, Aldon at the official blog has video clips, and Spazeboy put up this great compilation of news coverage of Lamont's "very good day":



From all reports, there was a huge turnout this afternoon - both supporters and media - in New Haven for the DFA-MoveOn rally for Ned Lamont.

Aldon was there from the official blog and files a detailed report. BranfordBoy was also there, and estimates the enthusiastic crowd at over 200.

On the Don Imus show this morning, Joe Lieberman used today's killing of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi in Iraq as a springboard for a political attack against Ned Lamont, as reported by ABC's insufferable "The Note":

While calling into Don Imus' program, Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) was asked about the political effect of Zarqawi's killing....

Sen. Lieberman went on to swipe Ned Lamont, the anti-Iraq war millionaire who is opposing him in Connecticut's Democratic Senate primary, by saying that Lamont's anti-Bush campaign "doesn't take a lot of courage."

Sen. Lieberman said he is countering Lamont's plea that Democrats "send a message" to Washington by telling them to "send a Senator to Washington who can protect them and get something done for them over the next six years."

Imus told Lieberman that he was supporting his re-election bid despite his "absurd support for this idiotic war."

Using the death or capture of a high-profile enemy in Iraq to attack a political opponent... where have we heard that one before?

And Lieberman said that if Dean doesn't think Americans are safer with Hussein in custody, "he has climbed into his own spider hole of denial."

Lieberman said the former Vermont governor "has made a series of dubious judgments and irresponsible statements in this campaign." Those statements, he said, "signal he would in fact take us back to the days when we Democrats were not trusted to defend America's security."

Just more of the same tired old Joe, supporting the same tired old Bush Iraq policy which has made our country less safe over the past three years.

New numbers:

Anti-war Connecticut U.S. Senate candidate Ned Lamont has gained ground on Sen. Joseph Lieberman, and now trails the incumbent 55 - 40 percent among likely Democratic primary voters, including undecided voters who are leaning towards a candidate, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

Lieberman's approval among Democrats is 49-38 (down from 60-31 a month ago).

These are huge gains for Ned. Tim has more.

Update: Another significant number in this poll is that 76% of registered Democrats still "haven't heard enough" about Ned Lamont to have a favorable/unfavorable opnion of him, down from 90% in May. He still isn't very well-known in the state at all.

And a reminder, if you are anywhere near New Haven, show up for the MoveOn/DFA rally today at noon!

Busy night. But don't miss yet another editorial savaging Lieberman, this time from the Journal-Inquirer. They keep on hitting him with their best shots:

Why doesn't Joe, instead of continuing to insist that we are winning in Iraq, come up with a plan either to win (yes, that would take more troops but his friend John McCain is for that option) or to get out?

Wouldn't that be more to the point?

And hasn't Lieberman sacrificed something precious?

The whole point of being Joe Lieberman used to be decency, dignity, and thoughtfulness. Lieberman's attack ads look like the appeals of just another sleazy, desperate pol, grasping madly to hold on to office.

As one citizen, a Republican, said: We have always held him to the high standard he set for himself. We expected more of Joe.

The noises keep getting louder and louder.

In an interview with Colin McEnroe on WTIC this afternoon (mp3), former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Curry predicted that Joe Lieberman will leave the party rather than face a primary he might lose (hat tip to mikect in the comments):

BILL CURRY: Lieberman has to decide in the next couple of weeks, I would think, whether to file as an independent candidate in order to ensure his best shot at winning, even though I'm sure he sees himself as being ahead. But he's got to picture his own, you know, supporters, scurrying back from the Hamptons or wherever... I mean, who are his people and how likely are they to come?

COLIN McENROE: What do you think? Do you think he is going to stay in the primary and just tough it out?

BILL CURRY: [Pause] No.

COLIN McENROE: I don't either.

BILL CURRY: But it's just a guess. I would guess, in the end, he would weather the considerable flareup that it would cause. And if he is going to do it, I think he'd be better off doing it now than later, and give the thing a chance to settle down...

I was just about to note how nice it's been that one effect of Ned Lamont's candidacy has been Joe Lieberman's virtual absence from the airwaves. Over the last few months he's crawled into his own spider-hole of media invisibility, avoiding the Tim Russerts and Sean Hannitys alike, afraid that he might be asked about his (gasp!) primary opponent, or even worse, slip up and say something (else) politically damaging. Whatever his motivations, it was nice for Democrats not to have a nominal party member reciting GOP talking points on air for the past few weeks.

But alas, all good things must come to an end, and Joe's self-imposed interview exile seems to be at least partially over, as he is scheduled to be on the Imus show at 7:30am tomorrow.

The suspense is high. Will he announce he's leaving the party? Will he announce full support for an invasion of Iran? Will he have another on-air meltdown like he did with Colin McEnroe? Will he laugh heartily at one of those idiots' racist or homophobic jokes? We'll have to wait and see.

• Don't forget about the MoveOn/DFA rally for Ned Lamont in New Haven tomorrow at noon. If you can make it on your lunch hour, go! RSVP here. (Apparently, some of Joe's hardcore right-wing supporters are encouraging Republicans to show up to defend him.)


• The Fairfield Weekly talks with Tom Matzzie from MoveOn about the groups' plans for supporting the Lamont candidacy.


• Ned will be out in the 2nd CD today, at a restaurant in Willimantic for a meet-and-greet at 5pm.


• BranfordBoy reports on a campaign kickoff for his state senator that turned into a Lamont rally yesterday after Ned showed up. This just keeps on building.

It's getting really hard to keep track of the vast and growing number of far-right and neoconservative Republican supporters Joe has been racking up.

The list extends from his national political godfather William F. Buckley, to his good pal and would-be fundraiser Sean Hannity, to Dick Cheney, Chris Shays (who wanted the GOP to cross-endorse him), the Wall Street Journal editorial board, David "Axis of Evil" Frum and AEI, Marshall "I'm a Republican working for the DLC" Wittman, John McCain, the reborn neocon all-stars at the Committee on the Present Danger, the entire right-wing blogosphere, and now to Richard "Prince of Darkness" Perle, who recently said that he hoped Lieberman would run for president in 2008.

These are the people and institutions to which Sen. Lieberman answers, not the people of Connecticut - and certiainly not Connecticut Democrats.

An absolutely huge win in Montana tonight for a real populist Democrat taking on a corporatist "centrist" Dem in senate primary. As Markos points out, a senate class of 2007 featuring Jon Tester, Bernie Sanders, and Ned Lamont is sounding very sweet... and more and more likely.

David Sirota has more.

Update: Tester ended up winning by an astounding 60-35 margin. This from a candidate who was outspent 2-1.

It actually ended up being almost exactly the same margin as the race in CA-36, where longshot challenger Marcy Winograd ended up losing to Rep. Jane Harman by a very respectable 62-38. Lamont is a much more serious candidate than Winograd, and is running against a much more vulnerable incumbent, in a much friendlier district, and with much more support.

• Somehow, I am getting the sense both rank-and-file and high-level Democrats across the state are coming to the same realization that this commenter at MyDD apparently has:
  

  Well I defended Lieberman here and at Kos for a very long time, but I can't any more. I agree that he is hurting the party. Not sure how I feel about the Lamont campaign, though. I feel that resources being used to take Lieberman out (money, volunteer time, etc.) would be better used against incumbent Republican senators. That being said I wouldn't be sad to see Lamont win either.

  
  The "resources" argument is of course based on a false premise, that there's one fixed "pie" of political donations to be split up. The fact is it isn't zero-sum. Regardless, I'd argue that this is just the type of race where resources should be directed in the hopes of building a progressive movement. But that's another post.


• The comment above, incidentally, is in response to this post by an ex-employee of the DLC, who has also dumped Joe:
  

  I don't want to get rid of Lieberman because he talks within GOP talking points, or he was the first to applaud Bush, or that he kissed Bush on the cheek, or even the War. I hope that Connecticut primary voters ditch Joe because his very presence in the cloakrooms, strategy sessions, talk shows, articles, etc. are a cancer on the Democratic Party's hope for reclaiming governing power.



• Ari Melber talks to Sean Smith and writes about the ridiculousness of Joe's recent P.R. conversion into an "angry" politician. Ironic that this is the same guy who complained about Howard Dean being too "angry" throughout the '04 primary season.


• Ned will be in D.C. a week from tonight for a DFA-sponsored fundraiser, and will join David Sirota for his book signing in New Haven on the 21st.


• Lots of sites out there covering the primaries around the country tonight. In terms of Lamont's chances, it will be most interesting to see how Marcy Winograd does in CA.

It's about ten minutes long but well worth watching. From this morning:



Major hat tip to Scarce and Spazeboy (who has the interview up as an mp3). More video at the YouTube Nedheads group.

Turns out the claims in Sen. Lieberman's desperate Memorial Day attack ad were not merely misleading, but demonstrably false:

Joseph Lieberman’s attacks against Ned are not even "technically accurate." They take votes to reduce increases and present them as cuts.

Simply not true.

It has now been two weeks since the convention. It is two months until the primary. It is time for some honesty from Joe Lieberman.

As CTBlogger says, it's time for Joe to fully and clearly address the question he's been evading since the day Ned Lamont entered this race:

Will you support the winner of the Democratic primary? Or will you run as an independent?

If Lieberman leaves the party, he will likely do so soon. He will do so because he is scared to death of Ned Lamont and the progressive movement he has inspired. He will cause great damage to his state and national party, as well as to Democratic candidates like Dianne Farrell, Joe Courtney, and Chris Murphy. He will deserve zero support from the DNC, the DSCC, and prominent Democratic donors. And he will become persona non grata with his peers in the senate who have stood up for him only to see him betray them, cutting-and-running like a coward from a little primary challenge.

If Lieberman leaves the party, it will be Joe - as usual - selfishly putting his own career over the needs of his constituents, the health of his party, and, really, the democratic process itself.

Sign the letter asking Joe to pledge to remain a Democrat.

You can tell Joe's progressive, cause the word "progressive" is spelled out in big capital letters on the second page of some literature his campaign has been handing out.

Never mind that this dedicated "progressive" may be planning on leaving the Democratic party in a matter of weeks, that this claim relies almost solely on the distorted ratings from issue groups that Paul Bass debunked the other day, or that other claims made in the text are outright lies. Some highlights:

• In the 8-page piece, there is not one single mention of either foreign policy or Iraq. Interesting that while Joe doesn't want to even discuss such minor issues - the thousands of dead and maimed American troops, the hundreds of billions of dollars wasted, the complete loss of America's reputation and prestige - with the voters of Connecticut, he will happily discuss them with any neoconservative foreign policy think-tank in D.C. who wants to give him an award.


• On a page entitled "Human Dignity," the text claims Lieberman has had "A Lifelong Commitment to Equality, Affirmative Action." In fact, he once railed against "policies that are based on group preferences as opposed to individual opportunities."


• On the same page, the text states Lieberman is "Protecting A Woman's Right To Choose." Tell that to NOW, who endorsed Ned Lamont, or to the 2/3 of pro-life voters in CT who approve of Lieberman's job performance, or to the CT rape victims he told to "take a short ride" to another hospital for emergency contraception.


• On a page entitled "Environment," the text touts Lieberman's positions on the issue. In fact, the senator has long been a friend of Big Oil and Big Energy.


• And there's more - including a repetition of the ridiculous claim that Lieberman somehow stood up to Bush on Social Security privatization.

A few pages of the literature (click for larger versions):

An eager and boisterous crowd showed up at a bar in the Flatiron district of NYC this evening for a DFNYC-sponsored fundraiser for Ned Lamont. It was clear the excitement for Ned's campaign crosses state lines in a big way, as the folks who showed up said they wanted not just to contribute their money but their time and effort to this campaign, seemingly to a person. Jim (who sounds eerily like his brother to someone who had never heard him speak before) introduced Ned as "the next senator from Connecticut," and the the crowd cheered loudly. Ned then gave his ever-improving stump speech to a crowd who received it enthusiastically, and stayed to do a live interview with the Majority Report on Air America before taking a couple of questions and mingling with the crowd for a bit. (Unfortunately none of my shots of Ned or Jim turned out any good.)

Another report can be found at this dKos diary. And don't forget about the DFA/MoveOn rally for Ned Lamont in New Haven this Thursday at noon, where Jim Dean will join Ned again.

I guess Joe Lieberman was right, and Iraq really isn't that big a problem, because President Bush and the senate are today turning their focus to a much more dangerous problem in America: same-sex marriage.

So now that we're talking about the really important stuff, let's recall the two candidates' respective positions on marriage equality:

Joe Lieberman: "Although I am opposed to gay marriage, I have also long believed that states have the right to adopt for themselves laws that allow same-sex unions."

Ned Lamont: "If two people want to get married, God bless them."

• Attention New Yorkers: join Ned and Jim Dean of DFA for a small-dollar ($25) fundraiser tonight at 6:30pm at Prey Bar and Lounge in the Flatiron district. 48 people are already signed up to attend via the events page at NedLamont.com.


• Let your online and offiline social networks know about the local blog scene in CT covering the race with this handy tool at the official website.


• DWT has more on yesterday's takedown of Lieberman in the Courant.


• Lieberman's latest defender in the punditocracy is not only a Republican, not only a hardcore neoconservative, not only a former high ranking official in the Bush White House, not only personally responsible for one of the most damaging pieces of foriegn policy rhetoric in decades, but Canadian to boot. Well, I'm sure Frum will help Joe land a job at AEI after he loses.

Joe asked, and today, Connecticut reporters and TV pundits obliged.

Paul Bass's blistering column is the hardest shot yet, and is making huge waves.

It even seems to have single-handedly changed the mind of one of Lieberman's own delegates (hat tip MLN):

I was a Lieberman delegate and plan to vote for him in the primary because my primary goal is to see at least one house of Congress flip to the Democrats. My fear is that a three-way race will allow Schlesinger to sneak in ala Weicker in 1970 or, far worse, Damato in NY in 1986. In addition, while I thought starting the war was an incredibly stupid idea, we've ruined the lives of ordinary Iraqis and I feel we owe it to them in install some semblance of social order before we leave.

All my friends and family are voting for Lamont and Bass's piece makes it more likely that, in spite of the foregoing, I might do the same once the voting booth curtain closes on August 8th.

In a very well-reasoned article in the Courant this morning, Mark Pazniokas writes about the influence of wealth and money on the senate race.

People are throwing around terms like "self-financed" and names like Corzine (who spent $60 million+ to win his senate seat) and Bloomberg (who spent $70 million+ to get into NYC City Hall). But I think we're looking at a new paradigm with Lamont. Here's a candidate who, while he probably couldn't self-fund to those obscene levels, could put in a lot more of his money than he already has. Yet instead he's relying on asking for small donations from the netroots - and what's amazing is that he's getting them in huge numbers. People have been excited to donate $25 or $50 a person to a millionaire. That's something new. They know this campaign is about them as much as it is about Ned.

And both Ned and his supporters know what political scientist and author Jennifer Steen points out in the article:

Steen writes that the self-financed candidates typically lose because they market themselves with expensive television campaigns while neglecting to develop the foundation of a campaign field organization.

"Perhaps because of their inexperience, self-financers tend to wage strategically imbalanced campaigns," Steen writes. "They often fail to provide strong ground support for the air war."

In so many ways, this campaign takes the typical self-financed campaign and turns it on its head. From the beginning, they've been the ones focusing on the ground game (Lieberman started his campaign by running radio and TV ads). They've been the ones who have offered to cap spending at Lieberman's current fundraising total of $7 million (Lieberman has declined that offer). They've been the ones who have successfully painted their opponent as an out-of-touch elitist (Lieberman has been incredibly helpful with his actions).

So, no, this isn't a typical self-funded campaign. Ned is getting the kinds of things that money just can't buy.