Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who rose to national prominence as the 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee, appears likely to face a serious primary challenge this year that could measure the depth of his party’s discontent over the Iraq war.<\/p>\n
Ned Lamont, a businessman and war critic, last week began publicly seeking support for a run against Lieberman in the state’s August nominating contest. Lamont is attracting interest largely because of Democratic grumbling — in Connecticut and nationally — about Lieberman’s unflinching support of President Bush’s policies in Iraq.<\/p>\n
“The indications I have is that a primary would be good for the party and very doable,” said Lamont, 52, who founded a cable television company.<\/p>\n
Lieberman, 63, said he was prepared for a fight. “I am totally energized by this,” he said. “I’m proud of my record and I’m ready to defend it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Realistically, Lieberman has reason to be confident. Three-term incumbents with flush bank accounts, high approval ratings, universal name recognition, no scandals, and no meaningful opponents from the opposite party, as a rule, win re-election without trying.<\/p>\n
And yet, a recent poll of Connecticut Dems asked whether they’d like to see Lieberman win a fourth term — 52% said yes, but 39% said they would prefer a new candidate. All things considered, those aren’t encouraging results for the incumbent. In fact, it’s already enough to make Lieberman very nervous, as evidenced by his recent outreach to Democracy for America activists.<\/p>\n
I have limited inside-info on this, but keep an eye on Lamont’s decisions over the next few weeks. And on Lieberman’s sudden scramble to sure up his base.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In March 2005, John Orman, a poli sci prof at Fairfield University who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1984, said he would take a big risk: he’d take on Sen. Joe Lieberman (D) in a Dem Senate primary. Six months later, Orman looked at his campaign coffers — he’d raised $1,000. Lieberman had $3.8 million. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}