Lamont to get Times endorsement

Rally 'round me boys, we have
the heretic on the run

CT-Sen: NY Times To Endorse Lamont
by DemFromCT
Sat Jul 29, 2006 at 11:02:06 AM PDT

The pillar of northeast establishment, the NY Times and its editorial board, will be endorsing Ned Lamont over Joe Lieberman tomorrow.

That report comes from Adam Nagourney, writing about Lieberman's troubles in taking Lamont seriously from the get-go.

The New York Times, in an editorial published on Sunday, endorsed Mr. Lamont over Mr. Lieberman, arguing that the senator had offered the nation a "warped version of bipartisanship" in his dealings with President Bush on national security.

The problem that Joe has had in painting Lamont supporters as far-left blogger-driven fringe people is that just about none of it is true. In an earlier post today, I referenced many of the quotes from local voters who have many issues with Joe from a long-standing and general lack of attention to CT issues, to his stance on nationalizing Terri Schiavo's case, school vouchers, and the Alito confirmation in addition to his stance on the Iraq War (which is becoming less defensible every day - the claim about Iraq being better off than a year ago that he made in the debate is hurting him badly, as is everything else he's previously said about Iraq).

It becomes harder still to make this a blogger-driven campaign with the Times endorsement. The fact is that the issues that are driving CT voters to the polls are mainstream issues that the rest of the country will have to deal with in due time.

The NY Times endorsement doesn't guarantee a win for Lamont any more than Bill Clinton's appearance guarantees a win for Lieberman. Both sides will need to get their people to the polls, an unprecedented task for an August primary this meaningful. But it does mean that the issues driving the primary will get even more of a hearing than they currently are. These are issues of interest to all the readers of the Times, both locally and nationally. It will be most interesting to read the endorsement in more detail when the link is available, but I think it's safe to say that mainstream opposition to Bush's foreign policy debacles (substituting surprise visits in a war zone for substance) just got turned up a notch. And although we've known it for a while (we read the polls), that's now a mainstream point of view.