Lieberman v. Lamont redux?

After yesterday’s victory by Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary for Connecticut’s US Senate seat, the vanquished candidate Joseph Lieberman promised supporters that he would continue the fight as an independent candidate in November’s general election. A quick calculation of the electoral arithmetic reveals that Lieberman is hoping that he can pick up enough independent and Republican support to offset the Democrats whose support he’ll lose to the party’s nominee. Once the reality of his defeat sinks in and the depth of the disappointment slackens, will Lieberman press on?

At this point, Lieberman’s political career as an elected representative from Connecticut is presumably over should he throw in the towel. He has already lost the support of partisan Democrats in the state, so one point of view would suggest that Lieberman has little to lose by following through on his intention to stand as an independent in November. The only thing he risks by doing so is greater personal embarrassment.

My own feeling is that Lieberman should go away. He made his stand and lost. In his concession speech, Lieberman couched his defiance in terms of personal effrontery, suggesting that the Lamont campaign played dirty and misrepresented Lieberman’s record, but Mr. Lieberman has been in politics long enough to know how hollow this must sound. Perhaps he is genuinely stung that fellow Democrats would ambush him so mercilessly, but for a politician of Lieberman’s tenure to rattle on about dirty tricks beggars belief, and more likely, is the product of a displaced anger with himself, for he had clear indications that this primary would be a fight, yet he didn’t really join the fight until it was too late. Lieberman has no one to blame but himself: the slim victory margin for Lamont was smaller than most pre-election polls would have predicted, suggesting that Lieberman’s late push yielded results, but too little, too late. Lieberman’s early campaign torpor was such that even Bill Clinton’s visit to Connecticut couldn’t sway the result enough to rescue the incumbent.

Concerning Lieberman’s prospective general-election strategy, it’s a given that he’ll lose a significant number of the 105,000 primary votes he garnered, but how much impact will that have in a general election? The last time Connecticut held a US Senate election during a mid-term was 1998, when Christopher Dodd defeated Republican challenger Gary Franks. Dodd pulled in over 628,000 votes to Franks’s 312,000. In sum, there were nearly one million votes tallied in the 1998 election; by contrast, according to this morning’s tally, Ned Lamont has received just shy of 116,000 votes—that’s a lot of ground to make up. Of course, primary elections are well known for lousy turnouts; typically, only politically active people tend to vote in them, so one should be wary about drawing conclusions based on comparing primary results to past mid-term general elections. Still, Lieberman corralled 828,000 votes in his 2000 campaign for US Senate. There is obviously a pool of past support out there that didn’t show up for the primary; Lieberman feels he can tap into that support in a general election.

Lieberman may have at least one significant advantage come November. Those politically active voters who turn out for primaries are typically situated farther from the political center than the general electorate. These folks do not represent Lieberman’s electoral strength. General-election campaigns are typified by candidates moving to the center in an attempt to capture independent voters who often swing elections. In Lieberman’s case, he already holds the center—for now.

Lieberman hopes to use this to combat Lamont’s advantage, which is the sure and steady support of the Democratic Party. In short, Lamont has an electoral base; Lieberman must now cobble one together from moderates in both parties (and lest we forget, the Republicans are also fielding a candidate). Lieberman’s task in this regard will not be easy.

Lamont could help himself in the interim by maintaining the insurgency, rather than falling into the familiar poses of the favorite. If the Lamont campaign too quickly takes up the mantle of the ‘establishment’ candidate, Lieberman could play that against him. Lamont would do well to mute those calls for Lieberman to drop from the race and instead run his general-election campaign against ‘all comers.’ Time and money are now on his side.