I've been following American politics for quite a while, and this Tuesday's primary election in the small US state of Connecticut was certainly one of the more interesting events in recent times. In fact, it was so interesting even French TV network TV5Monde reported on it in their nightly newscast last night, much to my surprise.Three term Democratic senator, 2000 vice-presidential nominee and 2004 presidential candidate Joe Lieberman lost his party's nomination for the midterm elections in November. He lost to a political novice, Ned Lamont, whose only previous experience as a candidate was city politics and a failed bid for the Connecticut state senate.
How does a long-term, scandal-free and relatively popular senator, with the support of the party establishment, lose against a challenger no one's even heard of a year ago, in a country where some 95% of all non-retiring incumbents are re-elected? In fact, this past May, Lieberman led Lamont by an insurmountable 65% - 19%!Lieberman's almost unconditional support (with some token criticism) of President George W Bush in a time when only about two persons in the entire US actually approve of him couldn't have helped.
Another essential reason is the war in Iraq. As the war has gone from bad to worse to hell on earth, Lieberman is one of few still supporting the war, being enthusiastic about it even. Contrary to conventional wisdown and spin, discontent with the war alone would not been an issue enough to defeat Lieberman. That said, without the war in Iraq, there would have likely not been a primary challenge to begin with.
Of course, one cannot forget the biggest reason for Lieberman's loss: Lieberman. By all accounts, he seemed to have run an extremely inept primary campaign, which included him announcing mid-June that he if he didn't win the primary, he would still run in the general election as an independent, a terrible performance in the primary debate, and generally making statements to the effect that he "owned" his seat in the Senate and that the voters had little right to take it away from him. All in all, not an effective campaign strategy.
The Republican candidate for Senate, Alan Schlesinger, is a non-entity. Not only is Connecticut heavily Democratic, Schlesinger has to fight off a gambling scandal, involving him incuring massive gambling debts under an assumed name. In other words, the winner of the Democratic primary would likely be the winner of the general elections as well.
But the story doesn't quite end there. Lieberman, immediately after conceding the race, announced his candidacy for the election in November, as a candidate for his own newly formed party, "Connecticut for Lieberman", the plan being to win over enough Republicans and independents to win in November. I don't think he has much of a shot, though. A poll taken prior to the primary indicated that in a three-way race, Lamont and Lieberman would be tied at 40% each (and Schlesinger receiving a paltry 13% of the vote). This was before Lamont was a winner and Lieberman was a loser, and this was before the entire Democratic establishment unconditionally backed Lamont (by virtue of him winning the primary). Lieberman has also lost most of his Democratic campaign staff, and building a new staff from scratch with only a few months to go will be a difficult task indeed.
