My Left Nutmeg has posted a letter put out by the Ned Lamont campaign announcing his intention to challenge Joe Lieberman in the primaries. Quoting the Lamont’s letter:
I will formally announce my candidacy in March — but first we need to do some more work. Joe Lieberman has already raised over $5 million and not surprisingly Republican lobbyists in Washington DC, including George H.W. Bush’s former Chief of Staff, are stepping up to raise money for the Senator that was voted the most popular Democrat amongst lobbyists and Republicans in the National Journal’s annual poll.
Ah, so perhaps this election cycle will be entertaining in Connecticut. I wasn’t looking forward to sitting on the sidelines, watching all the fun elsewhere.
However, this in my mind escalates the internal battle within the Democrats between moderates/centrists and progressives. While Connecticut is a pretty blue state, it’s also generally a pretty moderate state. I’d have to guess that Lamont’s campaign is going to be a bit of a long shot.
However, this post at Daily Kos seems a little more optimistic about Lamont’s chances:
Rasmussen. 2/15. Likely voters. MoE 4.5% (No trend lines)
Lieberman (I) 45
Lamont (D) 24
Republican 14Now this poll is pretty nonsensical, since Lieberman CAN’T run as an independent in the general election unless he were to quit the party before the filing deadline.
More useful, in the crosstabs of this poll we see that amongst Democrats, the breakdown is as follows:
Lieberman 47
Lamont 36
So Lieberman is under 50 amongst Democrats, just 11 points ahead, against a candidate no one has ever heard of. That’s absolutely insane.
Definitely got some interesting times ahead of us.
