As I'm sure most of you know by now, Joe Lieberman has filed to run as a member of a vanity party in the fall:
http://news.yahoo.com/....
As I am someone who has already been proven wrong in one respect on Lieberman (I thought he wouldn't go through with it), feel free to take my analysis here with a grain of salt.
Anyway, my thoughts on the implications of the three way race on the fall in Connecticut:
Senate Race
The race now will be among Lamont, Lieberman, and Repub Alan Schlesinger, who is a lightweight with some scandal problems. In his column yesterday (
http://nationaljournal.com/...), Charlie Cook flatly stated that "[t]here is no scenario where the current Republican challenger, Alan Schlesinger, wins a general election."
Ultimately, I think that the electorate in Connecticut breaks about 57% Democratic and Democratic-leaning and 43% Republican and Republican-leaning. As things stand, Schlesinger probably gets about 15-20% (35-47% of GOPers) when all is said and done, obviously all from the Repub side. The remaining Repubs will break heavily for Lieberman, with Lamont perhaps taking 5% of them or so--those being antiwar Republican moderates or people who simply don't like Lieberman for whatever reason (Gore's VP?) and want him out. Thus, of the Republican 43% of the electorate, Schlesinger takes 15-20%, Lieberman takes 20-25% and Lamont gets about 3%.
Of the 57% of the electorate that are Dems or Dem-leaners, Lamont absolutely holds all of his supporters. He took 52% in the primary, so he holds an even 30% of the electorate for certain. With the 3% he takes from the GOP camp, he sits about 33% for certain.
The swing voters that will decide it? The Democrats who voted for Lieberman yesterday (about a 27% share of the electorate). It is highly unlikely that any of this group goes to Schlesinger. Depending on how much of the GOP base goes to Schlesinger over Lieberman, Lieberman needs to make up anywhere from 8-13 points from this group. At the low end, Lamont can win if he takes 37% or so of Lieberman's primary voters. At the high end, Lamont needs only 26% or so of them.
The question becomes how many of Lieberman's votes yesterday were people who like Joe, like his positions, or like his posturing; and how many were rank-and-file old school Dems who supported him because he was the incumbent, the establishment candidate, and the guy endorsed by the bigwigs? Because the latter group goes to Lamont in a walk now that he is the nominee and the establishment is firmly behind him. I suspect that there are enough of these to put Lamont over the top.
The wildcard: the possibility the GOP gets Schlesinger to drop out and replaces him with someone better. Given the dearth of prominent GOPers in the state and the fact that Gov. Rell isn't going anywhere, I see four possibilities: The first three are the three embattled Republican Congressional incumbents, Rob Simmons (2d), Chris Shays (4th), and Nancy Johnson (5th). Cook discusses this possibility, specifically mentioning Simmons and Shays. He makes the astute point that if Schlesinger can be convinced to step aside (a big if), Simmons or Shays may be convinced that they "might have a better chance of getting 36 or 38 percent and winning a statewide election for the U.S. Senate than getting 50 percent and getting re-elected in their congressional district[]." This would set up a nailbiter of a three-way race, although I'd posit that that would simply doom Lieberman to third place and produce a very close race between Lamont and the Republican.
The fourth replacement possibility for the Republicans is the one suggested months ago by Shays himself: Joe Lieberman. That would set up another two-way Lieberman-Lamont race, this time across the entire electorate. The Repubs, however, would be idiots to offer this unless Lieberman agreed to caucus with them. If he did, he'd certainly lose the bulk of his Dem primary voters if he did. So Lamont should have the advantage in such a race, although this might be Joe's best chance to win in the fall--especially if there is no public acceptance of the Repub nomination by Lieberman.
Regardless, this race will necessarily suck resources from the challenges in Ohio, Missouri, Montana, Virginia, Nevada, and Arizona and the open-seat race in Tennessee (I'm optimistic that Casey will put away Santorum in Pennsylvania with his own funds and that Chafee will lose his primary in Rhode Island, turning the state into a safe pickup). And for that I blame Lieberman's vanity. Early on, as some will remember, I was vocal in arguing that Lieberman should not have been challenged because of the waste of resources on an otherwise Dem seat. And that still holds true. At this point, however, Lamont is the legitimate nominee and he needs to be supported--especially since the question of which party Lieberman caucuses with if he wins is now an open one.
House races
Pundits who claim that this outcome is anything but good for the Dems in House races are nuts. This three-way race promises to be a high-turnout affair, and disproportionately so among Democrats--as the two main candidates are the contenders from the Dem primary. The closest equivalent I can think of is in 2000 when Ralph Nader's presidential run cost Gore the White House but may well have won the Democrats a handful of Senate seats. With one exception, the close Senate races all broke for the Dems, and most were in strong Nader states: (Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Washington). Sens. Nelson, Stabenow, Dayton, and Cantwell owe their victories in small part to Nader bringing voters to the polls who then voted Dem downballot. The Lamont-Lieberman redux should do the same.
If Schlesinger is replaced by one of the Repub House incumbents, that seat becomes a very likely pickup (especially since the incumbent will likely only jump into the Senate race if they thought they were losing to begin with). The other two seats become more of a mixed bag, since the turnout equation becomes more even as Repubs have something to come out for other than to support the Democratic incumbent's ego candidacy.