In political campaigning the best offense is a good offense...if the GOP wants to claim Joe Lieberman as one of theirs, and Joe Lieberman seems fine with this, then Joe Lieberman is the republican in this race...and hammer on it!!!  C'mon Ned take the offense!!! 

C'mon guys, August is vacation time for democratic candidates! Remember Dukakis, Kerry?

At least we know it all ends well in the end.

I love how Ned Lamont is now getting all kinds of advice on how to run a campaign. He got in the race as a nobody against an incumbent with 70% approval ratings and beat him flat. Now everybody is giving him advice. Lamont will do just fine. The only negative ad he ran was Joe Lieberman's own words with a graphic morphing into George W. Bush. He's got plenty o' bullets left in the gun to take down Mighty Joementum. And all this quick knockout talk is off the mark. Joe Lieberman has the biggest ego in DC and was never going to drop out of the race. Anyone who saw his "concession" speech should recognize that Joe Lieberman believes Joe Lieberman is the world's most important man.

Lieberman called Lamont a Republican the entire primary and now he's calling him a dangerous leftist. I'm guessing Lamont has media in the works to bring that craven flip-flop, along with Lieberman's pork funding method for Homeland Security that directly contradicts the 9/11 commission, Lieberman's breezy confirmation of Michael Brown in which he never so much as checked his references, and his massive ties to lobbyists in DC. And this thing called Iraq is not getting any better.

Lieberman's 'principled' switch from true Democrat to the GOP candidate can be destroyed in 2 weeks of paid media with just the facts. What is Lieberman going to do in response - have the GOP 527s attack Lamont? Lieberman introduced legislation requiring 527s to report their funding like PACs. It's going to play into Lamont charge that Lieberman is an out of touch DC creature to have Virginia-based GOP-backed 527s smearing Lamont in a "new politics of unity and purpose". Unity between Joe Lieberman and whatever craven method keeps him in his House of Lords finery for the purpose of keeping the GOP's favorite poodle peeing on the Democratic rug. Well, screw that.

Ned Lamont is running on optimism, face-to-face campaigning in CT, and change. He's got plenty o' time to even the independent vote and gain the 5% points among partisans he needs to win. All this talk of Connecticut being a distraction and Lamont screwing up his campaign is hooey. It's fun and good practice for the netroots to smack down everyone of Lieberman's bogus charges and flip-flops in August. Come October there will be tens of thousands of netroots denizens so energized by Lieberman's hypocrisy and slander that they spit fire. That fire will be unleashed in local races, not Connecticut.

Why do I get the feeling that most Democratic leadership is perfectly happy supporting the "Republican" candidate?

If Lamont loses could be his mistake was in running as a Democrat in the first place. As long as the Democratic Party is this conflicted, it seems that we don't really have a big tent, we have two tents, and one is more comfortable with Republicans than its fellow Demoratic tent.

Well, all I can say is, did you do any research at all before writing this column? Like, actually investigate what Lamont is doing now and in the immediate future?

The answer to that question is obviously, "no," as he is in the news here in CT (has been above the fold in the Waterbury Republican-American twice in the past week) and has an immediate event calendar on his web site that looks like this:

Ned will attend the Lyme DTC picnic Date: Sat, August 19th 5:30 pm

Join Ned at the 105th annual Hamburg Fair, in Lyme Connecticut
Date: Sat, August 19th 6:30 pm

Ned will join the Burlington Democrats at their summer picnic
Date: Sun, August 20th 1:00 pm

Ned to speak at Machinists picnic in Granby
Date: Sun, August 20th 2:00 pm

Join Ned at the Dozynki Polish Harvest Festival
Date: Sun, August 20th 3:30 pm

Orange DTC picnic
Date: Thu, August 24th 6:30 pm

Ned will participate in a candidate forum at Emanuel Synagogue in West Hartford
Date: Sun, September 17th 11:00 am

The New Britain Seniors will host Ned at a candidate forum
Date: Tue, September 19th 1:00 pm

Gosh, what a concept -- he's politicking in his home state instead of schmoozing Beltway pundits.

mp

If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.
-- Louis Armstrong

Not to mention Jack Aubrey's favorite maxim from his own hero, Lord Nelson: "Never mind tactics--go straight at em!"

I think what's Reed's commenting on is his visibility. He was very visible during the primary - thanks to great ads, and plenty of challenging public statements. He doesn't have to stop politicking the locals one bit to spend 15 minutes a day on TV attacking Lieberman. And God forbid he fall into the Democratic fallacy of being too highbrow to take the highroad. Now's (or better, a week and a half ago) the time to knee the opponent in the nuts.

You can't possibly cover enough ground at local events to reach enough people. Besides, most campaign events are such that the candidate is preaching to the choir, and are a deceptive way to gauge real support.

When someone criticizes what appears to be, at least to me, a poor job by Ned Lamont's campaign, it shouldn't be taken personally. It's a stretch to say that Lamont has been effective since he won the primary. Going on vacation afterward was stupid regardless of how much he was on the phone--if in fact he really was. He could have gone on a real offensive against Lieberman and tried to seal a victory in the first week instead of dragging this out.

I'm a Democrat and want the Democratic nominee to win, but that doesn't mean I think Lamont is being effective--in fact, he's losing handily according to the latest poll.

I think he should have done more, but I sincerely doubt that he could have sealed the victory given that 1) the corporate media treated him like a curiosity who just happened to beat "our man" Joe Lieberman and 2) the party in unison did not call for Lieberman to drop out in honor of the results of the primary.

To the MSM, Lamont was just an accident that happened. If he had called upon Lieberman to bow out (which he should have, but still), he would have been mocked as a nobody trying to dictate terms to a somebody, no matter how justified Lamont would be.

TV, TV, and more TV. Local events are nice in primaries (though even there they are of limited value), but in a general election fight with, what, a million and a half voters to talk to, TV is the only real way to do it. Take the criticism personally all you want, be the "little guy standing up to the beltway idiots", whatever. We're just offering some objective reaction. Fact is, Lamont has pissed away his momentum by not IMMEDIATELY going on the air with a defining ad or two. If he needs to go dark for money reasons, the couple weeks around Labor Day would have been a much better choice. Not right after the primary.

What I'm afraid of is that Lamont is going to try and win with an "outsider" campaign that is "people powered" and "based on issues." Pul-leeze. That and three-fifty will by you a grande latte. His only path to victory runs through about $10 million of his own money (or $9 million of his and $1 of everyone else's). Cynical, of course. But true, by every historical model you can muster.

Here's the problem: Even though Lamont won the primary, he (amazingly) has a net negative approval rating, considerably worse than Lieberman's. And he has a 70% name ID. That's very very bad. He needs to turn that around fast, and the only way to do that is with some good ads.

Unleash underdog again, Ned.

Joe Lieberman must think that little pooch is a werewolf.

I don't think there is a more important race in the country.

If Ford takes Frist's place, there will be a wonderful change of scenery but that is about all as near as I can tell. The two men appear ideological twins.

Lieberman is the best proof you can find that rating of votes is far from a great index of a politician's value or leanings.

Andrew Sullivan writes:

Nedrenaline: The long comedown
http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/08/nedrenaline_the.html

It's tough to say goodbye; it'll be tough for bloggers to stop shovelling bucks at the first candidate they actually sorta-elected. But how much support does Lamont really need? The man is worth at least $100 million. Now that he's built his political cred and a successful campaign team, he's probably gotten all the blog help he needs.

Damn right Lamont should have gone on the offense right after the Primary. OK, if he wanted to give Holy Joe a day or even two in order to see what he was going to do, that would have been understandable. But to allow all this National TV coverage pillorying him (Lamont) with no strong response and counter attack has been pure idiocy.

The FIRST thing the Lamont campaign should have done (and this should have been done the very next day after the Primary) was to DEMAND an apology from the Lieberman camp for accusing Lamont's people of computer hackery with absolutely no evidence whatsoever. That immediately would have put Holy Joe back on his heels, (where he belongs), and forced msm coverage of Lamont's side (aka The Truth) about that damn hacking story that got so much coverage.

Yes, it's nice that Lamont is doing lots of CT compaiging. But most people don't attend campaign events, they watch TV. I fear Lamont's pissed away all the momentum he had. If he doesn't start fighting hard soon, he'll never get it back.

http://www.myspace.com/ladyskay

Two minor corrections: 1) Andrew Sullivan didn't write that, but a guest blogger and 2) TPM Reader DK, not Josh Marshall, wrote the initial TPM post. That said, I hope that what this guy is saying is true, because I'd like to think that the Lamont campaign is capable and well funded enough to make it on its own.