Lieberman is in such a state of shock right now that he's running on adrenalin and chutzpah. Give him a few weeks for it to sink in that he died Tuesday night, that he's no longer breathing, that the organs are shutting down, that there's no going back, that the funeral service is over and the casket is closing, that he's being lowered into his grave and the mourners are beginning to disperse. All that remains is for Gore and Dean come into Connecticut and throw dirt on the grave by campaigning for Lamont.
What's Lieberman going to do, embrace the Republicans while even the Republicans up for election are running away from Boooosh? He's finished. He has not only estranged himself from his own constituents, but he is now working hard on estranging himself from his own party. And if the Dems take the White House and one or both houses in 2008, he has to know that there's no profit in this for him; he cannot be an effective senator. If this doesn't register on him in the next several weeks -- if he is unable to subjugate his own ego to that extent -- then I believe that the voters will punish him severely.
Keep in mind, it's not just that Lieberman has lost the majority of Democrats in almost every town of his state; he is out of step with the majority of Americans on Iraq. And with the ongoing fiasco there, he's not going to turn public opinion around by himself. He's fighting a losing battle, and he's in it as a spoiler. This is going to become very clear to the voters during the coming weeks.
Lieberman's big idea now is to forsake Democratic voters even while he professes to try and save the party, and to appeal to Republican and independent voters. But, as the sounds come out of his mouth, it's bound to occur to him that he's caught in a fatal contradiction: He can't adopt this tact while at the same time denying that he's Boooosh's lapdog. Everything that the purported angry Left was saying about him only seems to be accentuated. Moreover, by seizing on the airline plot and echoing Cheney's remarks, he sounds hysterical.
We are witnessing a meltdown here. Lieberman is like the drowning swimmer flailing his arms to try to stay afloat, and nobody is throwing him a rope. He's going under.