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My election night was very different from the election nights of many here on DU. One week ago tonight, I was standing in a hotel in Meriden, CT, my heart breaking even as news was beginning to trickle in that the Democrats were going to retake the House. Although I had been phone banking for the man for 2 months, and had been poll standing for him all day, in the rain, in a desperate attempt to wring one more vote out of the CT electorate, this was the first time I had ever heard Ned Lamont speak in person. He was amazing. Where there could have been bitterness, there was hope. Where there might have been dejection, there was pride. Only the occasional cracks in his voice betrayed any sense that he was just as disappointed as the rest of us.
Ned Lamont was the person who, by challenging an incumbent Democratic hawk, started the tsunami that eventually swept the Republicans out of office in Washington and around the country. Yet he lost his own election. As someone who worked with the campaign, and who spoke to over 300 CT voters, I think that I have some pretty good answers as to why that happened. Some of them have to do with the unique circumstances of this election, and some of them have to do with the people of CT themselves.
Lieberman has more experience/Why is Lamont so negative?
While phone banking, we asked every voter what the most important issue was for them this election. For those supporting Lieberman, the vast majority said "experience". Not the war in Iraq, not health care, not corruption, not regaining a Democratic majority; "experience". But as most of us on DU know, what good is experience if that experience is in the service of poor judgment?
Ned's biggest challenge was overcoming this concern from CT voters, because the truth is, if it came down to experience, Ned loses. It isn't even close. There was absolutely no question that Joe Lieberman had 18 years in the Senate, and Ned Lamont had zero. It was obvious that in order to convince voters that Lieberman's judgment was bad, and therefore negate his experience, Ned had to attack him. Which he did. ON THE ISSUES. Consistently, and convincingly.
That's when we started to hear complaints about our negative campaign.
In the end, Ned had two choices: run a "positive" campaign, talking about his vision and his qualifications, and lose because he didn't have enough "experience", or show why Lieberman was unfit to continue to be a US Senator, and lose because he was too "negative".
In fairness, Ned tried to do both. He lost. But why didn't CT voters want to hear his message?
How many classic rock stations does this tiny state need?
CT is considered to be a "blue" state based on how it's voted in the past several elections. "Blue", however, should not be confused with "liberal" or "progressive". CT is a wealthy state, and its people, by and large, believe in the status quo. CT is the model for the DLC. Many CT residents are rich white people who work in New York and share the same sense of entitlement that turns so many of us off about Lieberman. They are also elitists, which keeps many of them from voting for the wingnut, conservative, Southern breed of Republican that became so fashionable in the late '90s. Yet most of the state is extremely segregated. As I like to say, CT voters see themselves as just as far above racism as they are above black people.
The 30% of Democrats who voted for Lieberman were conservative Democrats. The independents who voted for him were conservative independents. And all share the same dangerous trait: they are all far less informed then they think they are.
You're just going to have to take my word on this, but I am an excellent guy to have phone banking for you. Due to the nature of my real job, I can take a lot of abuse and ignorance and maintain my composure and friendly demeanor. While I was phone banking for Lamont, I couldn't help but notice that the majority of Lamont supporters were passionate, excited and anxious to talk about the issues, while Lieberman supporters were snotty, condescending, and closed-off. Entitlement. If Lamont took that away from Lieberman, would he come for them next?
There's a Republican in this race?
Alan Schlessinger has a gambling problem. He's also a Republican (go figure). But he is also a charismatic, funny and down-to-earth guy who won all three debates and should have had a chance in this election. I'm not privy to Republican strategy sessions, so I can't tell you why they refused to support him with money, time, or people. It could be exclusively due to the aforementioned gambling problem, which developed into a minor scandal right before the primary. Or it could be that they decided to cut their losses and go with the next best thing to a Republican: Joe Lieberman. I don't know. What I do know is that Ned Lamont didn't go after the Republican vote at all. We phone bankers exclusively called Democrats and Independents. Some may view this as a tactical error, but I admire Ned greatly for it. He knew that his message did not, and could not, resonate with the Republican party of today, and he refused to pander or compromise.
Had there been a stronger Republican candidate in the race, Ned would have won. In a walk.
The storm hits home.
In the end, Ned's campaign was killed by irony. The same tsunami that he helped to create destroyed his candidacy.
There has been a lot of hang-wringing around DU about the amount of support Ned received from the Democratic party. And it is true that there was not much, especially late in the campaign. But I, for one, don't blame the party for this.
Thanks in part to Ned, and in part to the various Republican scandals, Democratic races suddenly became competitive all over the country, and we had a chance to win in places we had never even dreamed possible weeks earlier. It seemed like we might be able to take not just the House, but the Senate as well. That being the case, I believe that it made no sense at all for the party and party committees to dump money and manpower into a CT race in which both realistic candidates had pledged to caucus with the Democrats if elected. If even a fraction of the money sent to MO and VA had gone to CT, we might still have a Republican-controlled Senate now.
And while I'm on the subject, I want to make something very clear: I hate Joe Lieberman. I think he's a lying, self-serving, arrogant sack of shit who has promoted policies that have caused the death of thousands of innocent people. I don't trust him at all. That said, I think that Harry Reid and the Democrats need to give him whatever he wants right now. While I'd love to see the man get his comeuppance, it is simply not worth control of the Senate to satisfy my own need for revenge.
***
As I walked away from the concession speech, trying to savor the Democratic wave that was obviously building, it occurred to me that we couldn't have done it without Ned Lamont, but now we have to do it without Ned Lamont. And just as he did last Tuesday night, I have a lot of hope that his courage and willingness to fight insurmountable odds for what he believed in will continue to inspire us through the next several elections.
Goodbye, Ned. And thank you.
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