Call it the "expectations game", but I was merely hopefuly that Ned Lamont would break the 15 percent threshhold. I didn't think he had it in the bag, not with the Lieberman machine putting extreme pressure on delegates to side with Joementum. If I was playing with anyone's expectations, it was my own. That he more than doubled the support he needed for ballot access was beyond astonishing.
Colin McEnroe, who is now a nationally known pundit thanks to this race, wrote about exactly how dramatic this was for Lamont.
There were stories circulating on the floor about Lamont voters who stayed home rather than show up and be squeezed by the rest of their delegations. And several Democratic elected officials admitted to me they were voting for Lieberman in the public forum of a convention while fully determined to vote for Lamont in the privacy of a booth.
I think 33 percent is a pretty bad number for an incumbent senator to give up to a challenger nobody ever heard of. Certainly, the Lamont team members were staggering around like dazed lottery winners. "Pinch me," Lamont campaign manager Tom Swan told a comrade. The Lieberman team was acting like they knew it all along. "Can we count or can we count?" Lieberman manager Sean Smith languidly told a reporter. He was unpersuasive. It may have been a number that tumbled out of their worst-case game theory, but it certainly was not a number they wanted.
The real number is lot worse for Lieberman than 33 percent. I don't know how big the Lamont vote would get if you could tabulate the no-shows and the sleeper cells of delegates who plan to vote differently in the primary, but I do know it's a bigger number. And the convention is full of party regulars, usually the easiest people to keep in line. Wisdom of the ages would suggest that the "amateur" voters are potentially much more rebellious.
McEnroe thinks Lieberman must be really thinking about an independent run, allowing him to campaign amongst people that like him a lot better (i.e. Republicans) than Democratic primary voters.
Lieberman promised Reid and Schumer that he wouldn't bolt the party. It's why those two Senators (and others) wrote letters in support of Lieberman to convention delegates. But who knows how desperate Lieberman might be.