The Ned Lamont campaign....(past tense)

[DKW 86 7,441]

http://www.observer.com/20061106/20061106_..._newsstory1.asp

In Lamont Race, Bitter Democrats

Do Pre-Mortems

Lieberman Seems to Hug Big Lead in Connecticut;

Ned Speaks in Past Tense;

Lefties Blame Wolfson;

Brazile: Bloggers ‘Give You Wind But Not Sail’

By Jason Horowitz

Ned Lamont, Connecticut’s Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, crossed the rainy street alone. Struggling to keep an umbrella convex above his head, he froze at the curb to pat down his pockets, looking very much like someone who realizes he’s left something behind.

Life for Mr. Lamont has changed dramatically since the heady days of his victory over incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman in August’s primary. There is still a week to go until Election Day, but the enthusiasm that impelled his unlikely insurgency has ebbed. The exhilarating Lamont experiment has fizzled.

“During the primary, it was more person-to-person,” Mr. Lamont said on Saturday morning, after taking shelter from the rain inside his Ford Escape, parked on Black Rock Avenue in New Britain, Conn. “I find that in a general election, everything is more compressed—lots more TV and more 30-second spots and media hits back and forth. And you know, there Joe went at us pretty good, pretty early, and I’m relatively new to the political landscape.”

Down more than a dozen points in the polls, Mr. Lamont has practically become a self-financed candidate, pouring $12.7 million of his own money into his campaign to compensate for lackluster fund-raising. He is sorely missing the grassroots fervor and national attention he enjoyed early on, when he was the darling of the blogosphere and the bellwether of Democratic politics. Mr. Lamont is making a last-ditch effort to refocus his message on Iraq and regain his prior momentum, but it seems to be too little, too late.

Democratic strategists and consultants, some of them sympathetic to the campaign, are already talking about it in the past tense.

“I think it was possible for Lamont to pull it off,” said Bob Shrum, a veteran political analyst. “There were moments right after the primary where it was basically a tied race.”

The apparent end of the much-ballyhooed Lamont phenomenon is causing a great deal of soul-searching and recrimination in all corners of the Democratic Party. The bloggers that once championed Mr. Lamont as an awkward but earnest savior now alternately blame Washington’s strategists for hijacking their candidate and Democratic leaders for abandoning him. Beltway consultants fault the Lamont campaign for failing to move the candidate beyond his left-wing celebrity and define him for a greater electorate.

“You know, it’s Ned Lamont’s campaign,” said Mr. Lamont.

He bristled at the suggestion that he got caught in the middle of a Democratic power struggle and argued that the party had come around to his message on Iraq. “I’d like to think we’ve made a small difference in that, but more important, I think the nation is reaching the same conclusions we were at, about a year ago, that it is time for that change.”

Despite that shift in climate, it is Mr. Lieberman who seems poised to win re-election. Running as an independent, the 18-year incumbent has taken advantage of his wide network of established political connections to raise more than $15 million from conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans across the country.

Mr. Shrum added that Mr. Lieberman benefited greatly from the absence of a plausible Republican candidate. That notion was echoed by Steve McMahon, a Demo­cratic strategist whose media firm represented the Presidential campaign of another candidate who owed his initial surge and ult­imate demise to liberal Internet act­ivism: Howard Dean.

“Ironically, the success of the Lamont primary campaign is what positioned Joe Lieberman to win the general-election campaign,” said Mr. McMahon.

“The primary was much more about anger at Bush and the war,” said Josh Isay, a media advisor to Mr. Lieberman and former consultant to Mayor Michael Bloomberg who joined the campaign in August. He stressed that the Lieberman campaign was taking nothing for granted, but argued that the general electorate played much more to his candidate’s favor. “You have different people going to the voting booth; you have Republicans, independents, unaffiliated—a bigger pie of Democrats.”

The Lamont campaign didn’t exactly help their cause.

[Tiger Al 0]

http://www.observer.com/20061106/20061106_..._newsstory1.asp

In Lamont Race, Bitter Democrats

Do Pre-Mortems

Lieberman Seems to Hug Big Lead in Connecticut;

Ned Speaks in Past Tense;

Lefties Blame Wolfson;

Brazile: Bloggers ‘Give You Wind But Not Sail’

By Jason Horowitz

Ned Lamont, Connecticut’s Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, crossed the rainy street alone. Struggling to keep an umbrella convex above his head, he froze at the curb to pat down his pockets, looking very much like someone who realizes he’s left something behind.

Life for Mr. Lamont has changed dramatically since the heady days of his victory over incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman in August’s primary. There is still a week to go until Election Day, but the enthusiasm that impelled his unlikely insurgency has ebbed. The exhilarating Lamont experiment has fizzled.

“During the primary, it was more person-to-person,” Mr. Lamont said on Saturday morning, after taking shelter from the rain inside his Ford Escape, parked on Black Rock Avenue in New Britain, Conn. “I find that in a general election, everything is more compressed—lots more TV and more 30-second spots and media hits back and forth. And you know, there Joe went at us pretty good, pretty early, and I’m relatively new to the political landscape.”

Down more than a dozen points in the polls, Mr. Lamont has practically become a self-financed candidate, pouring $12.7 million of his own money into his campaign to compensate for lackluster fund-raising. He is sorely missing the grassroots fervor and national attention he enjoyed early on, when he was the darling of the blogosphere and the bellwether of Democratic politics. Mr. Lamont is making a last-ditch effort to refocus his message on Iraq and regain his prior momentum, but it seems to be too little, too late.

Democratic strategists and consultants, some of them sympathetic to the campaign, are already talking about it in the past tense.

“I think it was possible for Lamont to pull it off,” said Bob Shrum, a veteran political analyst. “There were moments right after the primary where it was basically a tied race.”

The apparent end of the much-ballyhooed Lamont phenomenon is causing a great deal of soul-searching and recrimination in all corners of the Democratic Party. The bloggers that once championed Mr. Lamont as an awkward but earnest savior now alternately blame Washington’s strategists for hijacking their candidate and Democratic leaders for abandoning him. Beltway consultants fault the Lamont campaign for failing to move the candidate beyond his left-wing celebrity and define him for a greater electorate.

“You know, it’s Ned Lamont’s campaign,” said Mr. Lamont.

He bristled at the suggestion that he got caught in the middle of a Democratic power struggle and argued that the party had come around to his message on Iraq. “I’d like to think we’ve made a small difference in that, but more important, I think the nation is reaching the same conclusions we were at, about a year ago, that it is time for that change.”

Despite that shift in climate, it is Mr. Lieberman who seems poised to win re-election. Running as an independent, the 18-year incumbent has taken advantage of his wide network of established political connections to raise more than $15 million from conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans across the country.

Mr. Shrum added that Mr. Lieberman benefited greatly from the absence of a plausible Republican candidate. That notion was echoed by Steve McMahon, a Demo­cratic strategist whose media firm represented the Presidential campaign of another candidate who owed his initial surge and ult­imate demise to liberal Internet act­ivism: Howard Dean.

“Ironically, the success of the Lamont primary campaign is what positioned Joe Lieberman to win the general-election campaign,” said Mr. McMahon.

“The primary was much more about anger at Bush and the war,” said Josh Isay, a media advisor to Mr. Lieberman and former consultant to Mayor Michael Bloomberg who joined the campaign in August. He stressed that the Lieberman campaign was taking nothing for granted, but argued that the general electorate played much more to his candidate’s favor. “You have different people going to the voting booth; you have Republicans, independents, unaffiliated—a bigger pie of Democrats.”

The Lamont campaign didn’t exactly help their cause.

Don't you wish you lived in Connecticut just so you could vote for Joe?

[otterinbham 0]

If anything, it should be an object lesson to Democrats. If people don't want to vote Republican, it doesn't necessarily mean they want to vote Democratic. The people of this country really crave a centrist political party that's not run by religious flakes or some goofy alliance between Hollywood, Labor Unions, and the TinFoil Hat Brigade.

[DKW 86 7,441]

If anything, it should be an object lesson to Democrats. If people don't want to vote Republican, it doesn't necessarily mean they want to vote Democratic. The people of this country really crave a centrist political party that's not run by religious flakes or some goofy alliance between Hollywood, Labor Unions, and the TinFoil Hat Brigade.

When do we organize the Otter party?

And Al, it seems he has votes to spare at present. What happened to all that Internet cash Lamont was getting seemed it dried up quite a while ago.

[AURaptor 1,126]

I think it's funny that Rush calls him Ned Lament.