Saturday, May 20, 2006

Joe's Bad Show

Firedoglake - Firedoglake weblog: ". . .Colin McEnroe has this to say in the Hartford Courant today:

There were stories circulating on the floor about Lamont voters who stayed home rather than show up and be squeezed by the rest of their delegations. And several Democratic elected officials admitted to me they were voting for Lieberman in the public forum of a convention while fully determined to vote for Lamont in the privacy of a booth.

I think 33 percent is a pretty bad number for an incumbent senator to give up to a challenger nobody ever heard of. Certainly, the Lamont team members were staggering around like dazed lottery winners. 'Pinch me,' Lamont campaign manager Tom Swan told a comrade. The Lieberman team was acting like they knew it all along. 'Can we count or can we count?' Lieberman manager Sean Smith languidly told a reporter. He was unpersuasive. It may have been a number that tumbled out of their worst-case game theory, but it certainly was not a number they wanted.

The real number is lot worse for Lieberman than 33 percent. I don’t know how big the Lamont vote would get if you could tabulate the no-shows and the sleeper cells of delegates who plan to vote differently in the primary, but I do know it’s a bigger number. And the convention is full of party regulars, usually the easiest people to keep in line. Wisdom of the ages would suggest that the "amateur" voters are potentially much more rebellious."

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