I’ve been following the CT primaries closely, and despite an apparent surge from the incumbent this weekend, it looks like progressive newcomer Ned Lamont is going to the Dem primary over former VP candidate and Bush appeaser Joe Lieberman.

The punditry on this issue is overwhelming, so I can add little to the mix.  Clearly, Joe Lieberman is the first to pay for his support of the Iraq War, and this bodes badly for Republicans in the upcoming congressional elections.

But it is even more than Lieberman’s support for the Iraq War.  He, like his Republicans buddies across the aisle, suggested that to go against Bush during a time of war is, yup, unpatriotic:

"It is time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be Commander-in-Chief for three more critical years, and that in matters of war we undermine Presidential credibility at our nation’s peril." – Lieberman, 12/06/05

Now that he’s running, however, Lieberman’s singing a new tune — he welcomes criticism of the President and the President’s war policy:

"I understand that many Democrats in Connecticut disagree with me and are very angry about the war… What I will say is this: I not only respect your right to disagree or question the President, I value it."

Connecticut voters are not fooled by this hypocrisy.

But is Lieberman’s loss a "watershed moment", as this WaPo article suggests?  Probably not.  Conventional wisdom says that whenever Democrats move too far to the left, they lose — which is why Clinton (a moderate) succeeded, and McGovern didn’t.

On the other hand, conventional wisdom in politics changes over spans of decades.  Conservatism was all but dead until Ronald Reagan took office.  Perhaps it has reached its high water mark, and the pendulum is swinging back. 

But it will take a while.  Politics, like geology, is pressure over time.  Just as a generation grew up hearing Rush Limbaugh and the "virtues" of conservatism, a newer generation is becoming politically aware under the follies of the Iraq War, and they don’t like this whole conservative thing.  This shows up in polls: while Bush has an approval rating of 40% nationwide, it is only 20% among Americans aged 18 to 24.  In another poll of Harvard students:

In the 2003 poll, 31 percent identified themselves as Republicans and 27 percent as Democrats. By 2006, 32 percent of college students said they were Democrats and 24 percent Republicans.

So I see the Lamont victory not as a catalyst for change, but a by-product of change.  The country, to put it bluntly, is moving left.

Anyway, there’s a good discussion of the Lamont-Lieberman fallout here.