oops, double post. Apologies.

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First of all, as a CT. Dem, I'm going to the polls and voting for Ned Lamont.

I think Mark Schmitt's analysis is spot on here. He thinks Joe will be tagged as a loser, and will find it very difficult to even run as an Independant. There will be immense pressure on Joe to step aside and endorse the Dem candidate, from outside of CT. as well as here at home.

There was a story in the Courant yesterday that people are rushing to change their party affiliation to D just so they could vote in the primary. Does anyone think they're doing that to vote for Joe? I don't think so.

Don't forget, rightfully or not, people here feel like Joe abondoned us during his 2000 run, and they haven't forgotten that. In addition, people here are itching for change.

There was a story in the Courant yesterday that people are rushing to change their party affiliation to D just so they could vote in the primary. Does anyone think they're doing that to vote for Joe? I don't think so.

I thought that was a ploy people were predicting--GOP voters cross-registering to keep W's favorite Dem in the Senate? Especially since their own senate candidate is a turkey.

IIRC, the deadline to switch from R to D in order to vote in the CT D primary is long past, and those who have recently switched to D are Independent or non-affiliated. That being said, I have no idea which candidate these would break for. My gut feeling (my hope?) is that Indies lean Ned, since many are disaffected Dems (i.e. they are upset with the status quo of the Democratic Party, as rep'd by Lieberman...).

If forced to guess, I say Lamont by 7.

Despite Lamont's apparent lead there are some nervous progressives who believe that it it will be very close. It all hinges on turnout. I don't share the opinion above that people switching parties to vote is good news for Lamont. Sounds like GOP GOTV to me.
Liberman has run an awful campaign and Lamont has come across very credibly. The fact that it is even close at all is a nightmare for the Bush bots which is why they are caterwalling as they are.

Final pick: 52-47 Lamont

This one's been a struggle for me. But I'm going in on Tuesday and voting Lamont. I fought my guts out for Gore's running mate in 2000, and he votes right a lot. But the thing that made me break for Ned is Joe's talk about running as an independent. I can't countenance that kind of shameless selfishness.

Lamont will win by more then 10.

• The war and the kiss.
• The polls have it for Lamont.
• Undecides break for the challenger.
• Lamont voters are pissed and motivated.
• This is a primary and so the 'party' will have less sway, especially with Lieberman planning an independent bid.

You probably think that races tighten and they do in a general. But this isn't a general.

The midwest is sending a nice cool high pressure ridge toward the east coast, meaning the temps should be in the low 80's with little humidity on election day. This will lean toward a slightly higher turnout.

Of course I won't be voting in CT -- but I think it will track the recent polls -- Lamont by perhaps ten. I look forward to knowing, probably after the polls close, whether either of the campaigns had a GOTV effort to call independent voters, canvas them, and encourage Lamont or Lieberman supporters to change their registeration so they could vote their preference on Tuesday. All those persons re-registering suggests to me a quietly organized effort to accomplish this. It won't work in just any state, but with CT's rules it is an interesting tactic, and looks well executed. The deadline is noon tomorrow.

I don't think Lieberman, should he be down more than a few points, will find any support for an Independent Candidacy within the Democratic Leadership. They can read the public opinion polls as well as anyone, and "stay the course" is not a winning slogan or position. Adopting Lamont as the CT People's Choice is the winning strategy looking out to November -- standing by Joe is not. They may be pol's, but they ain't dumb.

I predict Lamont by less than 10, but still a solid margin (5-7).

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

I think Lamont wins rather comfortably...I'd say 54-46.  There have been a lot of indies changing their affiliation so they can vote in the primary and I think they break for Lamont in a big way.  The primary is a referendum and the Iraq War and public opinion in this state is VERY decidely against the war.  After Lamont wins the primary then the fun starts.  Will Joe or won't Joe run as a petitioning candidate?  And in a general election, while it will still be THE key issue, Iraq won't be the only thing Connecticut voters, en toto, will be considering.  If Lieberman doesn't run as a petitioning candidate then Lamont beats Schlesinger handily, if Lieberman does run then it is going to be even more bruising a campaign as the one for the primary was...

I stand corrected re my above skeptical question about GOPers registering Dem to vote for Lieberman. But if they're former Independents, the basic import of the question still stands. I thought Lieberman traditionally has had big support among Independents in CT? If lots of 'em are registering D, isn't it likely they're trying to shore up Lieberman? Anyone have a link to the Courant story?

All the chickens that have been counted based on unhatched eggs in this race has me spooked. I've got a bad election-night-2004 feeling about it. I'm guessing Joe by 1 or 2%, and hoping I'm wrong. If I'm right, I hope at least it's close enough to make it hard to dismiss the questions that have been raised by Lamont's amazing run.

As a Lamont win in the primary would be virtually the only way the republican candidate would stand a chance, the allegations that republicans are rushing en masse to switch their party affiliations to democrat to vote for Lieberman, a senator who votes liberal democrat consistently 90% of the time, are farcical. It's as transparent a lie as any that I've seen, whether here or from a right wing pundit propagandizing for Bush.

Anyone who recalls Lamont in the debates remembers the stammeringly weak, effete man who lacked any significant idea on the realities. He is NO sane persons idea of a good candidate for the senate. The polling data after the debates only confirms that. I don't claim to know what the change is in result of, but the only thing that changed was the vitriol and fascistic nature of the Lamontsters increased dramatically. The smears and slander. I don't know how that will be reflected in Tuesday's vote, my hope is that Lieberman wins the primary. If not, I do hope he runs as an independent and wins in the general election. Not just because Lamont would lose and the republican would win, but because Lamont is as bad as that republican, he is everything that the Lamontster liars accuse Lieberman of being.. and perhaps much worse.

Shame on Josh Marshall for not holding to journalistic ethics and standards by not speaking out and helping to facilitate such lies, and on occasion perpetuating it himself. As someone who started reading Talking Points Memo years ago because I'd come to respect him and rely on him as one of the rare voices adhering to those crucial journalistic ethics and standards, it is frankly more than mere  disappointment, it is a real loss when someone like him is quick to sell out those ethics and standards for what is politically expedient for him.

What this shows is that he is no different from his brothers and sisters in the right wing controlled press corps, who only speak to democratic theory, and lack any commitment to democratic practice.

I can only surmise that the fact that Lamont fired more than half of his workforce since '01, and has refused to answer questions about where those jobs went, that he not only owned stock in Halliburton, but in Walmart as well, that he actually selected the Walmart stock personally, and according to Swan, his campaign manager, refuses to sell either stock... isn't considered questionable to Marshall because his commitment to that kind of hypocrisy and corruption is speculative at best. Because Marshall has virtually sat silent on those topics. I guess your version of muck raking isn't that different from the Rovian school, eh Josh? You are the saranwrap to your own candidate and won't dare challenge him on his own serious hypocrisy.

I guess that perhaps due to the fact that the most people like Josh have had to suffer from during Bush's horrorific administration and republican lock on power is for example, the theft of his car that he talked about in an article, or the "big" dilemna of "should I stay with a pc or go with a mac".

A few weeks before Marshall's article about he theft of his car and his frustration with having to deal with the parking garage management, my husband had died. My frustration had been that not only had my husband died young, that he  was gone from mine and my daughter's lives, but that he had been discriminated against in getting access to the specialists he needed because we were too poor to afford supplemental health insurance. He had medicare, because he was in end stage organ failure, and been waiting for an organ transplant since '97.

In late May, he was hospitalized for what we thought was something minor, only requiring a few days in patient. But after they tested some abdominal fluid they had removed (something that should have been started years ago) they found that he was in the advanced stages of Burketts-like lyphoma, an extemely aggressive form of the cancer. He was given a 1 in 5 chance of survival, received one dosage of chemotherapy, and while the chemo actually weakened the lymphoma a bit, it destroyed what was left of his immune system, and sent his kidneys and liver into final failure. He died on the morning of June 14th, only three weeks after his admission and diagnosis. What was the most galling thing was that if my husband had been getting the regular testing a patient requiring a transplant would get, the lymphoma would have been diagnosed FAR earlier when it was more treatable. They wouldn't have had to be looking for cancer.

What is even more galling is that this same sort of thing is playing out to untold vast numbers of Americans.. I can't be specific because our so calle watchdog press doesn't pay attention to the realities of average Americans since the '80s. I guess that is why I valued the Josh Marshalls out there since I was able to get on the internet.. naive of me I guess to have believed that someone like him was immune to the disconnect that is so pervasive, in the world of the increasingly more affluent all the time... and that said disconnect could help make selling out so easy when it comes down to ones own bias on a candidate.

What I think will happen? I have no idea. I believe that if Lamont wins the primary, it would be the only way the republican candidate who has been found to be corrupt would stand a chance of winnng in the general election. While some state moderate republicans might not vote for their party's current corrupt candidate against Lieberman, they are less likely to vote for a Lamont who is seen as little more than stooge for the neo-left. Of course the national GOP are playing to the neo-left stereotyping of Lieberman, because it helps Lamont, and in turn getting an additional seat for republicans, and removing one controlled by democrats.

I don't own a crystal ball, I don't live in CT, but I do know that I was correct in 2000 when I spoke out about the dangers a Bush administration would bring, I knew my husband would lose his job, that he would lose his health insurance, and perhaps his life. I also spoke out against Bush's willingness to push us into war, and the Naderite version of the Lamontsters laughed those concerns off and accused democrats like myself of lying, that "Nader would never let them get away with it." (don't criticize my bringing Nader's name up, one of the tpmcafe.com's Lamontsters posted Nader's rant against Lieberman as a validation of the same.). Denial doesn't excuse one from accountability for your decisions, and it shows so called leftists and progressives as being as callously indifferent to the blood of innocents that is as much on their hands as it is on the right wing Bush voters.

I doubt that even the moderately affluent out there can survive much more of this, and by '08, if we continue with republican control, much of the lot of you stand a good chance of being right where people like my family are now.

Frankly, nobody knows what will happen on Tues.

But, it sure doesn't look good for Joenertia does it?

I would think a single digit win for Lamont unless there's some hidden GOTV effort that I'm missing. But Lieberman never needed a big ground game. He's been cruising through the stratosphere with the power-brokers for years now, with virtually NO opposition in sight.

And a crushing ground game is just not something you can improvise at the last minute. And of course there's apparently no buzz about a surge towards Lieberman, no intensity in his campaign appearances.

Joe just doesn't excite anybody, not even his supporters (discounting lobbyists like the Lamont heckler who apparently earned $300,000 in fees last year and doesn't want to lose his influence).

I have always thought that the talk about an independent run by Joe is just ridiculous. Nobody really wants to support a loser.

If he ditched the Democratic party sometime back in late May and announced his candidacy as an indie, then maybe he could make a case, but not as "I never wanted those grapes anyway" Joe! A loss in the primary is just crushing to Joe. At that point he should just gracefully go away and start earning those huge fees from speaking engagements before large corporate audiences. He could easily pull down high triple figures on the lecture circuit for a few years, write his book and basically settle down to a life of leisure. Not a bad gig if you can get it. No tears for Joe!

What's going to be interesting are the ramifications of Lamonts win within the democratic party. That alone brings up a whole host of very interesting issues.

How does Lamonts win impact other democratic races? Especially if it's a blow out. Do other democrats follow suit? How does the party react to a bottom up, people driven powered politics that's winning if for Lamont and thumbing its nose at the inside the beltway democratic establishments conventional wisdom? How does the party present its stance against the Iraqi war and Bushs policies to the general public? We all know what the Republicans are going to do and are democrats ready for it?

But that is all that the gamut the Lamontsters are working for.. this is an attempt to show that they have muscles to flex.. it's NOT about getting better representation in CT.

"But that is all that the gamut the Lamontsters are working for.. this is an attempt to show that they have muscles to flex.. it's NOT about getting better representation in CT."-Mary from RI

Come on Mary, it's not those "Lamontsters" that are winning this primary for Ned. It's the majority of CT democrats, just as it supposed to be in a democracy. Are you ascribing that majority of democrats as "Lamontsters?"

What you're doing, in effect, is casting aspersions on the democratic process.

Here's the link.

While the last minute registration concerns me, I still don't think it's enough.

Even a razor - thin loss is a loss, and the pressure on JL to get out then will be huge. Lautenberg et al may have done the Lamont crew a favor by implying that a close loss doesn't count, as it puts the spur under Lamont voters to drive harder, even if they buy the poll differential. A comfortable win (anything above 5) and it's a no-brainer, and double digits? I can't imagine even the JL campaign insiders spinning that.

If Lamont wins comfortably, he wins in the fall under any scenario.

With regards to "Joe just doesn't excite anybody," on the surface I'd say that's right, but I can't help thinking of the silent majority voters duing Vietnam (even after the war became unpopular) and the whimper that was Howard Dean when Iowa caucused.

It's now up to independents and those Democrats who only tune in on election day. I think they break toward Lieberman, but your guess is as good as mine.