Lieberman is a Ridiculous Self-Serving Prick

Joe Lieberman filed to run as an Independent candidate in Connecticut's Senate race today after losing the primary to Ned Lamont yesterday. As a long time Democrat, Lieberman should have more respect for the wishes of his party's voters in Connecticut, instead he risks preventing the Democrats from holding onto his seat by running as an independent.

The best coverage in the mainstream media that I have seen of the Lieberman-Lamont result last night came from the Diane Rehm show this morning which talked about the race as being about Lieberman's consistent record as an apologist for Bush, about how the Lamont campaign got rolling with the help of grassroots blogs, but was not a "blog anti-war" campaign, they rightly pointed out that Lamont would have gone no where if there was not already a lot of frustration with Lieberman. The rest of the media seemed intent upon discussing the race as a "moderates are being kicked out of the Democratic Party" dynamic, or as a blog insurgency dynamic, which would make one wonder how Lamont managed to get enough votes to win if it was just the blogs. This race was, as Rahm Emmanuel has pointed out, about what happens in 2006 when you're a Bush apologist.

Lieberman's Democratic colleagues need to make it very clear that he should respect the will of Connecticut's primary voters. Kos argued yesterday that he should be stripped of his committee assignments if he runs as an independent. That seems a little extreme to me, it should be made clear to Lieberman that the Party will not support him as an independent, but he should not be shunned too much because in the off chance that he wins we shouldn't alienate him so much that he caucuses with the Republicans.

In other news, Ed Perlmutter won the primary for the CO-07, and Cinthia McKinney lost her primary in the GA-04.