WSJ: Ned Lamont, Kos Celeb

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

May 13, 2006

Ned Lamont
Kos Celeb
By JAMES TARANTO
May 13, 2006; Page A8

MERIDEN, Conn. -- An article on this page prompted Ned Lamont to run for the U.S. Senate against his fellow Democrat, Joseph Lieberman.

"When Congressman Murtha stood up and said 'stay the course' is not a winning strategy in Iraq, it was Sen. Lieberman who took the lead and took some of the Republican talking points . . . and wrote the piece in The Wall Street Journal 'Our Troops Must Stay,'" Mr. Lamont told me Tuesday, when I dropped in at his campaign headquarters here, about 20 miles south of Hartford. That article appeared in November, and it helped persuade Mr. Lamont that Mr. Lieberman had to go.

(snip)

"I think it's really doable," he says. "We're going to win." If he does, it will be the upset of the year, maybe the decade. Senators typically have a re-election rate of about 85%, and only three of them have been defeated in primaries in the past quarter-century. In a Quinnipiac College poll released last week, Mr. Lieberman, who is seeking a fourth term, led Mr. Lamont among registered Democrats, 65% to 19%... Party leaders in Washington frown on challenges to incumbents, and Minority Leader Harry Reid has reportedly asked Mr. Lamont to back off. But the challenger can count on strong support from the "netroots" -- left-wing blogs like DailyKos.com and Web sites like MoveOn.org -- which bring in money and moral support from around the country. Call him a Kos celeb, though the world of blogs is new to him. "I threw my hat into the ring in the old statehouse a couple of months ago. I had my family there, and my 19-year-old daughter introduces me -- her name is Emily -- and somebody sends my wife a blog entry that says, 'Ned is OK, but Emily is a hottie.' So I got introduced to blogs."

(snip)

"You talk to striking workers at Sikorsky -- they've since settled -- and . . . they say, how come we can spend $250 million a day in Iraq and we can't afford health care for all of our citizens? I teach a course at Bridgeport High School about how to start your own business. You talk to the guidance counselors there, and say, how come we're cutting back on sports and arts and not enough money for preschool education, and yet we can afford $250 million a day in Iraq? . . . We ought to be investing in our own future here in this country." Yet he stops short of calling for a total pullout from Iraq. "It's time to take our front-line troops, move them to the periphery, and start bringing our valiant troops home. We're going to be there in the background -- we'll be there for political support; we'll be there for logistic support; we'll be there for training; we'll do everything we can to keep the political process going. But having 132,000 troops in the middle of this bloody civil war is fueling the insurgency."

(snip)

Mr. Lamont criticizes Democrats -- and not just Joe Lieberman -- for timidity. "I think we should have been a lot bolder as a party during campaign, and probably the previous campaigns. Come out and say what you believe. . . . The Republicans are really good at talking about the principles that they believe in. And be bold. If you think preschool should be a right for all 4-year-olds . . . go out there and say it, and give people something to believe in." It's not enough, he says, to be anti-Bush, although he certainly is that. "This administration may be leading the country in the wrong direction . . . but there's also a sense that the Democrats aren't standing tall and being constructive and offering real alternatives, and want the Democrats to stand up and offer real alternatives."

Yet he faults Mr. Lieberman for doing just that, in ways that, in Mr. Lamont's view, depart from Democratic principles: "If you think vouchers or education savings accounts are a constructive alternative to investing in our public education infrastructure, yes. But within the party, I think there's a sense that that is taking resources away from public education. When it comes to private savings accounts as an alternative to Social Security as a defined benefit, he's always right at the edge, saying this is something we've got to consider, something we've got to think about. When it comes to universal health care for everybody in this country as a basic right, that's a principle of the Democratic Party that Sen. Lieberman has never quite embraced. He's come up with tax incentives for businesses to see if they might be a little more inclined to insure their people. So he generally has not embraced a lot of the Democratic goals and certainly the Democratic methods to achieving where we want to go."

(snip)


But politics is not without surprises. Just ask Mr. Lieberman, who 18 years ago upset a three-term incumbent, liberal Republican Sen. Lowell Weicker, by running to his right. Not surprisingly, Mr. Weicker, who subsequently left the GOP, this year is backing Mr. Lamont. All politics is local, even when it's national.


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