An article in today’s NYT discusses the concerns of Democratic leaders that Joe Lieberman’s “independent” senate campaign will bring more Republicans to the polls, hurting the Democrats’ chances of winning a couple of key House races.
As Senator Joseph I. Lieberman begins to mount a vigorous and well-financed re-election campaign as an independent, many Connecticut Democrats say they are worried that his bid could jeopardize their party’s ability to win in three hotly contested House races this fall.
Mr. Lieberman, a centrist Democrat who lost in the Aug. 8 Democratic primary to Ned Lamont, a wealthy businessman, is now running on his own line. With polls showing that many Democrats are eager for a change, Democratic officials say they expect Mr. Lieberman to campaign aggressively to win over Republican and unaffiliated voters.
If he does, Democratic strategists say, he may well attract voters to the polls who are likely to support the state’s three Republicans in Congress: Nancy Johnson, Rob Simmons and Christopher Shays.
As Steven Taylor notes, this would indeed be an ironic result of the purge of the impure from the Democratic ranks. Of course, the Republicans could wind up countering this if the hard liners are successful in knocking off the “RINOs” like Lincoln Chaffee and replacing them with candidates that would be great for Alabama but get trounced in swing states.
