Bizarre

Ned Lamont may actually unseat Senator Joe Lieberman as the Democratic nominee in Connecticut.

It's far from a done deal, but I just saw Ned interviewed by Stephen Colbert tonight, and it was crazy refreshing to see/hear a budding politician speak sense to power and offer so much hope for a reasonable U.S. future.

I think Crooks and Liars must have crashed tonight due to overwhelming download demand. It was plugged on Firedoglake which has actively supported Ned's campaign from the start. YouTube's much sturdier servers are the ticket if you don't already have it on TiVo.

Not only does he hold his own against Colbert, Ned can play a mean boogie-woogie electric piano at a neighborhood event.

The New York Times came out for Ned on Saturday. Worth reading as it covers Lieberman cozying up to Gonzales as well as the war, but here's the conclusion:

If Mr. Lieberman had once stood up and taken the lead in saying that there were some places a president had no right to take his country even during a time of war, neither he nor this page would be where we are today. But by suggesting that there is no principled space for that kind of opposition, he has forfeited his role as a conscience of his party, and has forfeited our support.

Mr. Lamont, a wealthy businessman from Greenwich, seems smart and moderate, and he showed spine in challenging the senator while other Democrats groused privately. He does not have his opponent's grasp of policy yet. But this primary is not about Mr. Lieberman's legislative record. Instead it has become a referendum on his warped version of bipartisanship, in which the never-ending war on terror becomes an excuse for silence and inaction. We endorse Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary for Senate in Connecticut.

I've been thinking lately that what's happening to Joe is just like what happened to longtime New York Senator and moderate (some would way liberal) Republican Jacob Javits. In both cases a once impregnablincumbentnt faces an unexpected challenge to their renomination. The aged Javits lost to a much younger Al D'Amato in the 1980 conservative (Reagan) sweep, for his party's nomination.

Maybe Lieberman can look forward to having a big-ass convention center named after him.

So E.J. Dionne Jr. goes into it in his latest Washington Post column:

Ideologically based primary challenges to important incumbents almost always signal major changes in the political winds. That's as true of Lamont's strong campaign against Lieberman as it was of D'Amato's victory, following as it did the primary defeats of two other liberal Republican senators...(the) cleansing of progressives from Republican ranks was part of a long conservative march that culminated in Ronald Reagan's 1980 victory and the hold that conservatives now have on the elected branches of the federal government.

Sounds like the beginning of a progressive swing for America. If we survive that long. (Be resilient, America!) E.J. is sensing the same energy on the Left he saw when the Right came to power:

But Lieberman's troubles are, even more, about a new aggressiveness in the Democratic Party called forth by disgust with the Bush presidency -- an energy comparable to the vigor that a loathing for liberalism brought to the Republican right in the 1970s and '80s.

Like the earlier generation of conservatives, today's Democratic activists are impatient with accommodating the powers that be. They demand that Democrats stop trying to chase a "center" that has veered ever rightward since 1980. Instead, they want to haul that center back to more progressive terrain. That's why so much of the political energy in Connecticut seems to be with Lamont.

Major shockwaves if Ned and his supporters in Connecticut pull it off next Tuesday.

But just think about what happening now, today. A Democrat is speaking out clearly and truthfully, challenging the poisoned D.C. 2006 status quo, and garnering gales of enthusiastic supporters wherever he goes.

Bizarre.