We have been paying marginal attention to the Democratic primary fight in Connecticut, mostly because we despise Whiney-Joe for the Fox News Democrat he is. Lieberman may yet pull out a Diebold-enhanced victory, but we sure as hell hope not.
Lamont: “This is not Fox News, Sir” | Salon News ... But aside from a few minor verbal stumbles -- such as saying billion rather than million when referring to the number of illegal aliens in this country -- [Ned] Lamont gave a credible and sincere, if not necessarily inspired, performance. The novice debater even got off a few one-liners of his own, responding to a Lieberman interruption by snapping, “This is not Fox News, sir.”Most post-debate spin has the predictability of an Israeli-Palestinian joint TV interview, but occasionally a morsel of honesty emerges from the soundtrack of leftover rebuttal points. Chatting with reporters after his prime-time moment, Lamont got it mostly right when he said, “Look, I went toe-to-toe with a former candidate for vice president who last debated Dick Cheney. I think people now know that Ned Lamont is a potential U.S. senator.” (Lamont's one annoying verbal tic was to frequently follow the pompous politician's penchant for referring to himself in the third person.)
....But the biggest boost for Lieberman's chances in the too-muddled-to-handicap Aug. 8 primary was that the senator's backup plans for an independent candidacy never emerged as a major motif Thursday night. When Lieberman announced at a Monday press conference that he would soon circulate petitions to put his name on the ballot in November in case he lost the primary, he faced the political danger that this sore-loser-man gambit would dominate his faceoff with Lamont. Instead, the topic was only raised in passing and, as a result, Lieberman did not have to spend the evening explaining why he was prepared to stand up against his party's official nominee to mount an independent campaign for reelection.
