Looks like I was in one of the few comfortable places to be last night if you favor Republicans, and somewhat ironically, that was at Lieberman party HQ.

First I want to mention how impressed I was with the professionalism of the Pajamas Media crew (picture in this post). They (lead by Andrew Marcus) were working their nards off until late into the night, coordinating video uploads with the folks out in California and the web site crew to bring polished, professional video out ASAP. It was most impressive to watch. One of my little contributions is here, speaking with one, Attorney Martin Luther Carter talks about some voting irregularities he had witnessed:

I was basically wandering around with a fancy digital camera that did video, too, looking for interesting opportunities. Sissy and Tuck were also there, and had a close hallway encounter (see link), and of course the inimitable Pamela made her presence known.

I stuck around until just before midnight. Not having secured a room, and with the garage closing, I blew out for the two hour drive home and got in this morning at around 2am. Figured I may as well get in half a night's sleep at home instead of some highway Econolodge.

OK, let's put a game face on for a minute and do one final analysis. What happened in the race? Why didn't Lamont make it?

I'm going to stick with my analysis back in this post. Let's state it again for the record.

Lamont ran against the war in Iraq and against President Bush, outflanking Lieberman far on his Left -- a direction Lieberman was vulnerable from -- to defeat the incumbent in the primary battle. So far, so normal. Candidates always run hard over to appeal to the base in the primaries, because it's the party faithful that tend out toward the edges that vote most reliably in those things.

Conventional wisdom dictates, however, that in the general election, it's time to shift gears and try to appeal to the broad middle, that wide bell curve of voters who hold the keys to the office in their hands.

But Lamont had a problem, whether at first he was so overcome by Leftist anti-War zeal that he didn't know any better, or he just didn't have a very good campaign, Lamont never shifted gears out of primary mode. As I noted when he started running his anti-Lieberman "turncoat" ads:

Indeed. In fact, it seemed Lamont at times did feint toward a strategy other than pounding on the Iraq War, but it couldn't work, because on other issues, Lieberman is a big government liberal just like Lamont, only Lieberman can do it better, because he's got more experience -- something Lieberman pushed in his advertising. Health Care? Education? Lieberman is for all that, too, and it's not convincing that a newcomer like Lamont would be able to succeed where an experienced and connected pol like Lieberman couldn't.

So the numbers work like this: You've got people on the Left (and the nutty Right) who hate the War on Terror, Iraq, and anyone who would making common cause with George Bush on anything so much that the primary battle is the only one you need to fight again to get their vote.

But then you've got a mass of people on the Left and many moderate conservatives for whom the bread a butter issues -- health care, education, etc. -- not national security -- are paramount. As we've seen, Lieberman beats Lamont handily on this count, and a lot people are not going to vote one way or the other on Iraq and spite themselves at home. So for this group, it's advantage Lieberman.

OK, you ask, what about conservatives and Republicans? Why vote for Lieberman and not Schlessinger? Because for a large number of these people, national security is the issue of paramount import. They know two things: Schlessinger can't win, and Ned Lamont and his Leftist baggage train of Vietnam era reenactors are a disaster that must be avoided at all costs.

They can live with Lieberman's liberalism, they've survived so far, but they cannot live with a Lamont Democrat's approach to the War on Terror. Advantage Lieberman again.

So what to do if you're Ned Lamont? You've tried to broaden the base but quickly realize there's no room to work there in a middle well owned by the incumbent, so it's back to run a hard primary-style campaign, and hope that there are enough angry people out there that, when combined with the number being sliced off of Lieberman by Schlessinger out on the Right, you'll be left with enough votes to win in a three-way race...something that may have worked in a true three-way race -- something that never developed despite the best efforts of Lamont and the Lefty bloggers to get conservatives to pay attention to Republican Schlessinger.

In the end, anger just wasn't enough. Self-interest played its usual part, and it's a 10 point win for Joe Lieberman.

Posted by Solomon at 10:50 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)
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