Could the pendulum be swinging?

This is pretty remarkable... the Democratic Senate primary race in Connecticut has been (surprisingly) hotly contested and (recently) highly touted as the earliest indicator of how far from the status quo SNAFU that the voters of our great nation are leaning/fleeing.

It looks (dare I say it) that Ned Lamont might actually be about to pull this off... With 83% of votes reported, Lamont leads the incumbent 52% to 48%. I have to admit, that I was undecided in this race until last evening. I am not a Democratic party loyalist... I have several complaints about "politics as usual" within and among the DNC. But last night, I decided that I wanted to be sure above all else that i cast a vote FOR someone and not AGAINST someone. So I picked up the phone when a representative from Lamont's headquarters called and started asking questions... NL is against the sacrifice of civil liberties in the name of the war on terror. He believes that health care is a right not a privilege. He is committed to education:

What our country spends in one year in Iraq could provide a year's free tuition at the University of Connecticut for every college freshman-aged American and Head Start for every four-year-old. We need to refocus our resources and our attention on the children and young people here.

Lamont is for full marriage equality:

I am proud that Connecticut was one of the first states to legalize civil unions and remain hopeful that we will be one of the first to enact full marriage equality. Unlike Senator Lieberman, I would have opposed the Federal Defense of Marriage Act.

And perhaps most importantly, Lamont opposes allowing George Bush to continue to go unchecked in waging a war started under false pretenses. This war has not made us safer and done little to positively impact anyone except for the few Americans who have significant financial stakes in the low or no-bid contracts offered by the current executive branch of the US government.

I thought i was undecided, until I started to consider Joe Lieberman. Joe has 1) left my people high and dry and 2) snuggled up nice and close to King George whenever the Snickerer in Chief needed to point across the aisle and say, "We all stand together."

But seriously, in my final evaluation of the situation, I realized that the deal-breaker for me was the emotional blackmail offered up by the Big Man on Campus. Back in July, the man who ran as the Democratic candidate for Vice President of the United States a mere 6 years ago announced he would NOT honor the collective voice of the democratic voters of CT. If he lost the primary, he would run as an independent... Because I guess Joe Loserman feels that it is not the Democratic party or voters that he owes anything to... It must be his winning personality that has kept him in the Senate since I was a high school softball star!

Lieberman is so committed (to HIMSELF) that at the first opportunity, he will become an independent and leave open the chance for the party that created him to lose the seat entirely. Rather than wait to see the outcome of the primary, Lieberman started crying foul the minute it looked like someone might have a shot at his job. Upon (potentially) losing, he could have conceded that he made mistakes, that he played this last set poorly, and then regroup for the next challenge. Instead, his first instinct was to make a play to split the party to save his own A$$. Why allow the Dems of CT to make the call of who represents them just because it happens to be the very purpose of a primary??? I really am all for a multi-party system, but this guy is a piece of work...

May the best man win!!!