HUGE GQ article on Lamont-Lieberman race (16 pages!)

[NewJeffCT]

THE KISS OF DEATH

How the frenetic, heated, and borderline-insane race to oust Democratic Senate hawk Joe Lieberman brought new meaning to the term “partisan politics”

By Kenneth Cain

The final leg of the campaign starts early, in already sweltering heat. Ned Lamont, his wife, Annie, and their aide-de-camp Marc Bradley stand outside the Messiah Baptist Church in Bridgeport, Connecticut, waiting for Congresswoman Maxine Waters to arrive. Outsiders tend to think of Connecticut as leafy, white, and wealthy, but its three biggest cities—Hartford, New Haven, and Bridgeport—are hardscrabble, black, and poor. Which means they’re rich in Democratic primary voters, and on this morning the biggest collection of those voters is at church. As dozens of parishioners stream by in their colorful Sunday best, Ned stands in his somber business suit, looking awkward and anxious. He turns to Marc and says they should go in and sit down, but Marc insists that they wait for Maxine to usher them in. “Tom was very clear about that,” he says, referring to Tom Swan, Lamont’s bulldog of a campaign manager. Eventually, Maxine arrives and leads them to their pew. She follows the sermon with her Bible open, while Ned and Annie survey the scene, looking pleasant and a little uncomfortable. Then Maxine stands up and introduces Ned—an extremely wealthy former selectman—as a man “speakin’ my language” because of his outspoken opposition to the Iraq war.

“Morning, everybody,” Ned says to the congregation at Messiah Baptist, without waiting for Messiah to answer back. “I’m Ned Lamont, and I’m running for U.S. Senate.”
Six months ago, Ned was just another Democrat outraged at Bush’s war and at the way in which the White House, as he saw it, avoided taking responsibility for the disaster it had created in Iraq by branding as unpatriotic anyone who dared criticize the direction of American policy. What ultimately persuaded him to run, though, was when Congressman Jack Murtha, a decorated Vietnam vet, called for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, and in the national conversation that followed, Joe Lieberman declared, “We undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril.” To Ned, this was the final straw—not just a Democrat saying he still supported military involvement in Iraq, but a Democrat implying there was no place in America for the questioning of a policy that a majority of Americans now disagreed with.
It’s somewhere between forbidding and impossible for a primary challenger to defeat an incumbent senator, and in early May, Lamont trailed Lieberman by forty-six points in the polls. But progressive Democrats are as angry now as they’ve been in generations, about Iraq and Katrina and about a centrist Democratic philosophy that they believe is gutless in its unwillingness to confront a failed Bush regime. And when Ned entered the race, Joe quickly became a lightning rod for that rage.

http://men.style.com/gq/features/landing?id=content_5003

[AX10]

1. K & R!

Looks like it's worth reading.

[madfloridian]

2. These paragraphs about the kids in Lieberman shirts.. Interesting.

"Forty machinists line up outside the gates of a Pratt & Whitney aircraft-assembly plant in Middletown. Their union PAC is delivering a $5,000 check to Ned’s campaign today. As Ned and Jesse arrive for the ceremony, ten kids in Lieberman T-shirts stand across the street and scream Joe! Joe! Joe! The Lamont bloggers call these kids “Lieberyouth,” an unfortunately callous reference to Hitler Youth, especially considering Joe’s religion. But as usual, the bloggers are simultaneously over-the-top and onto something. These kids are a little too organized, and there’s often someone vaguely thuggish lurking at their periphery. (The bloggers did make a course correction, eventually calling them “Lieberkidz.”) I cross the street to check out the scene and see a slightly older guy dressed in jeans, a dress shirt, and oversize dark sunglasses standing a few feet behind the kids.

I ask him if he’s a volunteer for the Lieberman campaign. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t think I’m supposed to say.”
“Wait, you don’t know who you work for?”

“The less I know the better,” he says.

“What are you guys up to, exactly? Are these kids supposed to be protesting the machinists’ endorsement of Ned?”

“I just brought them out here,” he says. “That’s all I do. That’s all I know.”

[annabanana]

3. Boy, I'd love to know who's buying the gas

to dress & transport those kids!

[NewJeffCT]

4. Didn't the College Republicans come up to help him?

At least, I thought I heard that. The aggressiveness sounds kind of like them.

[speedoo]

8. We all know who is writing the check...

the address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC.

TraitorJoe's campaign is being run by KKKarl.

[Cha]

7. Freakin' Weird but that's

lieberman style.

[lonestarnot]

9. WTF? Red Rover what in the hell are you doing?

[NewJeffCT]

5. morning kick

I thought this would get more interest?

[Cha]

6. OH, Yeah!

"But progressive Democrats are as angry now as they’ve been in generations, about Iraq and Katrina and about a centrist Democratic philosophy that they believe is gutless in its unwillingness to confront a failed Bush regime. And when Ned entered the race, Joe quickly became a lightning rod for that rage."

joe begged for that "rage"!