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The Best Of Lieberman-Lamont

The defeat of Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman at the hands of intraparty rival Ned Lamont in Tuesday's Democratic primary has dominated the attention of both the mainstream media and the blogs. I haven't had much time to write about the battle myself, but I've been reading plenty of the coverage.

Here are some of the stories and blog posts that grabbed my attention the past couple of days:

-- What was the scene inside Lamont headquarters on Election Night? There were lots of escatic bloggers for one thing, once again putting to the lie Lamont's statement last week that he doesn't "know anything about the blogs." Ari Melber has more at The Huffington Post and The Nation how bloggers came to be such a force in Lamont's campaign.

-- Lieberman had barely conceded the race before Democratic bloggers like John Aravosis of Americablog started attacking him -- and again urging readers to donate to Lamont, a wealthy communications executive who has largely self-funded his campaign.

-- Cato Institute founder and president Edward Crane sees a lesson about campaign-finance law in Lamont's victory. "More than 60 percent of Ned’s campaign expenditures came from Ned," Crane wrote. "Without Ned, Ned loses. ... Give everyone the 'loophole' of being able to spend as much of their own money to promote their political beliefs and we’ll throw a remarkable number of incumbents out of office. And with good candidates instead of bumbling millionaires."

-- Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos named winners and losers in the battle, while MyDD highlighted the benefits of Lamont's victory. Instapundit said the end result is newly earned power within the Democratic Party for liberal bloggers -- and voiced hoped that Republican bloggers also might get more respect from politicians in their party.

-- Kos tried to put his enhanced power to work by rallying his "Crashing The Gate" troops to apply pressure for robbing Lieberman of his Democratic committee assignments, among other things. The response from Right Wing News: "That's right! Fall in line, boys, because there's a new boss in town! ... Everyone get to work or else you'll have to suffer the wrath of Kos!"

-- John Cole at Balloon Juice questioned the conventional wisdom about Lamont's presumed victory: "I would like to point out that no one has really won anything yet, as the election is yet to come, and the netroots left has already won a number of primary elections. This is no first, this Lamont victory; it just seems like it because of all the hype."

-- You can count John Hawkins of Right Wing News among the Republicans who now hope Lieberman wins, and he told others why they should. Hawkins also ran the numbers to arrive at a scenario that easily re-elects Lieberman. Never mind the fact that Lamont already proved his ability to beat the spread.

-- Democratic candidates across the country are invoking Lamont's name in their races. MyDD has a list and is looking for more names of people trying to hitch a ride on Lamont's coattails.

-- Experts at the Sunlight Foundation praised Lamont's new approach to using the Internet as a way "to enable people's creativity and passions, instead of simply to direct door-knockers and mobilize (though they did that, too). They brought to the campaign people with enormous creativity and passion, rather than shunning them."

-- The Washington Post credited Lamont's victory to the netroots and grassroots. Liberal bloggers no doubt loved the distinction because they have been whining for days about journalists not knowing the difference. The whining apparently was heard by at least one reporter in the ivory tower.

-- Bloggers in the netroots also have complained about journalists saying their animosity toward Lieberman is based on a single issue: his support of the Iraq war. The New York Times apparently didn't get the memo, as it published a post-election story that says Lamont's blog-endorsed success will force more Democrats to distance themselves from the war. At least one netroots-friendly blogger, though, is on the same wavelength as the Times. So is Tim Chapman of the Heritage Foundation.

-- The National Republican Senatorial Committee has a blog of its own but used the broader forum at Congress Blog to say that Lieberman's defeat proves that the "angry, fringe left has taken over the Democrat Party." Rather than veer left, one Democrat told blogger Andrew Sullivan he is bolting the party.

-- Oh, and I love the irony of Lieberman's Democratic foes using the "Sore Loserman" slam that Republicans created in 2000 to bash the man Democrats once supported for vice president.

Posted by Danny | 08:26 PM

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