ok, so where are we now, and what have we accomplished thus far?
at first blush it may seem that since we are still engaged in a tough campaign fight with joe lieberman, that therefore nothing has really changed from a practical standpoint, ie, as joe said last night, we are now merely beginning the second half of the same lamont vs. lieberman basketball game, blah blah blah -
I am sure that this is the framing that joe would like the world to believe, but putting aside the obvious moral victories that we achieved last night, some very significant practical things also changed DRAMATICALLY last night!
(more below)
POINT: Joe and his politically poisonous pro-bush & pro-iraq-war philosophies are now entirely OFF the CT Dem ticket!
even though joe and his enablers are resurrecting the term "independent Democrat" to describe joe, joe is no longer on the CT Democratic ticket, period. last night when we successfully forced joe lieberman off of the CT Democratic ticket, we also forced joe lieberman's loser pro-bush and pro-iraq-war stance off the CT Dem ticket as well, which means that we unshackled and cleared a path for our three CT Democratic house challengers to go after their respective incumbent repub opponents and attack george bush's failed domestic & failed foreign policies with both hands now; no longer will anyone on the CT Dem ticket have to delicately dance around and be constrained & compromised by the perverse joe lieberman worldview. now chris shays and nancy johnson and rob simmons and joe lieberman can collectively have bush's lousy poll numbers and bush's failed policies all to themselves and can all run on such -
the races of our three CT Democratic house challengers ( Chris Murphy (CT-05), Joe Courtney (CT-02), & Diane Farrell (CT-04) ) are absolutely key to the DCCC strategy to take back the house in 2006, and DCCC leader Rahm Emanuel totally gets it that they all needed to be cleanly uncoupled from joe lieberman to succeed:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
"This shows what blind loyalty to George Bush and being his love child means," said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the leader of the Democratic House Congressional campaign. "This is not about the war. It's blind loyalty to Bush."
with the DCCC and the DNC now squarely in support of ned lamont,
harry reid, chuck schumer, and the DSCC will be compelled to do the right thing here, which is to endorse & support ned as well, whether they want to or not.