Joe Lieberman gets his head handed to him:
With the nation watching, Connecticut Democrats thronged to the polls in unexpectedly high numbers Tuesday to reject Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman and endorse his anti-war challenger, Ned Lamont. Unofficial results showed Lamont winning 52 percent of the vote, defeating a three-term incumbent who had come to be defined by his defense of the war in Iraq despite an advertising blitz begging voters to judge him on a progressive labor and environmental record.
Lieberman, 64, a vice presidential nominee in 2000 and a presidential hopeful only two years ago, conceded at 11:03 p.m. in a Hartford ballroom packed with national and international press, then defiantly announced he would press on as a petitioning candidate, forcing a three-way race in November.
Now, conventional wisdom would have it that the Lieberman defeat compounded by his decision to run as an independent would have the Republican commentariat dancing in the aisles. But instead, the August 9th editorial from The Editors of National Review is entitled “A Friend in Need” and explicitely endorses the pro-abortion, pro-tax Democratic vice-presidential nominee over a Republican they term a “non-conservative nonentity”. Because, of course, Joe Lieberman’s support for war in the Middle East washes all of his other sins away, leaving him white as pure, conservative snow.
And a snow job is precisely what it is. This is neither pragmatism nor principle, it is naked and unadulterated prostitution to the political elite. Because, as Andrew Stuttaford points out, nothing matters as much as Dear Leader and his Global Struggle.
Then there’s the fact that the Lamont win makes it even more likely that the November vote will be a referendum on (a) a president whose ratings are, well, choose your grim adjective and (b) a war for which public support has ebbed substantially.