Even though Ned Lamont didn't win last night, and watching Lieberman's victory speech was incredibly painful and upsetting, the progressive movement took a big step forward. We challenged a sitting incumbent, the VP nominee of the party in 2000 and the popular vote winner, and a credible Presidential challenger in 2004 who was leading in the polls until early 2003. I know it hurts, but that is a big fucking deal.
Ned Lamont's campaign was always a longshot, but the bottom line is that we in the progressive movement took this campaign and made it happen against the wishes of the entire Connecticut and DC machine. Turnout was not quite what we had hoped it would be, and the machine really turned on the spigot for Lieberman. There is a large and powerful set of interests that backed Lieberman, and they will fight tooth and nail to make sure that one of their own stays in power. They won last night, but we're going to keep coming at them, again and again and again.
At the same time, we came up tantalizingly short, and a moral victory isn't the same thing as a victory. The right-wingers are going to crow over how the liberal blogs keep losing, and insider Democrats are going to continue to say that internet can't turn people out to vote, that it's not real except as a fundraising mechanism.
Still, a two point loss really is amazing, and Senators all over the country are shifting uncomfortably as they wonder whether they might find themselves in a primary campaign as well. Up until the end, it looked like Lamont had it, which caused a lot of insiders to wet their pants. And keep in mind that Lieberman pumped around $10M into his campaign, versus around 5M or 6M from Lamont, and had President Clinton and every top surrogate and single-issue group coming in on his side. If the playing field had been more even, Lieberman's two point victory might have been a loss, and he would have had to activate the Connecticut for Lieberman Party. We faced a lot of firepower, and we lost, but we didn't fold.
Finally, this is a long-term movement, building from nothing. And we are sending notice to Democrats that they will be challenged if they hew to Bush's failed conservative policies. So now it's time to unify around the great set of candidates that we have challenging the Republican Congress.
Ned Lamont may have lost to Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary, but the progressive movement had a clear and unequivocal victory. A moral victory, sure, but they know that we can take a loss, and keep coming.
Also, nyah nyah.
