MOVING ON ... DOWN?

JOE LIEBERMAN


I'm not sure about anyone else, but I know that I was a little disheartened a couple of days after Ned Lamont's victory over incumbent Joe Lieberman as early polling by Quinnipiac showed that Lieberman held a solid double digit lead over Lamont and Republican nominee Alan Schlesinger. I thought that all the hard work that the Lamont people had done would surely be for naught as Lieberman would be able to hold onto most of his supporters from the primary and snag quite a few Republican votes away from the hapless Schlesinger. The numbers showed Lieberman up 53% to Lamont's 41%, a sizable margin for an inexperienced politician like Lamont to overcome.
Based on some recent polling however, I suppose my somewhat defeatist attitude* might have been a little premature.
*A quick note on that defeatist attitude of mine. Please forgive me - I'm a New Orleans Saints fan. As such, we are raised to expect the worst to happen at the most inopportune time. History has borne this out more often than not. It's terrible way to go through life, I know, but being a Saints fan means that one must become a student of the law, as in Murphy's Law. Seriously, I don't know how many sports fans read this blog, so I won't dwell too long on it, but the Saints were able to sign a guy by the name of Reggie Bush this past offseason. They guy is amazing. He's electric. He's being touted as one of the best players to enter the league in years. And all that I can do when I'm watching a Saints game is wonder if he's going to break his leg on the very next play. Sick, I know, but that's how Saints fans operate. But I digress... .
So anyway, two polls released today have pepped me up, one from Rasmussen and one from ARG. The Rasmussen poll has Lieberman with only a two-point lead, 45% to 43% (which demonstrates a net gain for Lamont of 3 points over a two-week period). Not a whole lot of movement, but ARG's poll seems to back up the spread as Lieberman leads Lamont 44% to 42%.
It seems that as Lieberman positions himself in an effort to gain support from the Right, while still claiming that he's a super duper Liberal, more and more Democrats are being turned off by him. If the numbers continue to to trend in this direction perhaps it's not such a pipe dream to hope that Lieberman might actually come to his senses and drop out (thereby clearing the way to get that juicy Secretary of Defense position I keep hearing about...). Right after the primary, I thought that Joe might go on until mid-September before packing it in, and maybe that prognostication isn't that far off. Maybe things will work out for the best and Joe Lieberman will drop out and Reggie Bush won't break his leg. All I ask for is your forgiveness if I sometimes expect the worst. Being a Saints fan will do that to you.