Wow this race has gotten interesting.

After an angry and self-destructive primary, Joe Lieberman has changed course and is running an excellent campaign.  He knows that he is vulnerable on his dishonest support for Bush and the right-wing, so he's going after working class voters on the issue of experience and getting things done while in all likelihood coordinating with the right-wing to keep the Republican base intact.  Watch his most recent ad; the people in it are the voters he got back during the primary in the closing days, and that's who he's counting on for his general election campaign.  He's already lost once to Ned Lamont, yet he's running as an Independent voice for Connecticut instead of a pandering loser out for himself.  He's quite a skillful pol, with a clear strategy.

Sure there's fear-mongering mixed in to his campaign, but mostly Lieberman is running on the 'bring home the bacon' theme, using the Groton sub base that apparently every politician in Connecticut personally saved.  Still, watching Lieberman over the past six months has convinced me that when he's under control he's an excellent politician, maybe the best I've ever seen.  Ned Lamont should be preparing for the debates next week with tremendous intensity; Lieberman is terrific on TV, and like an old and seasoned politician has the ability to lie with incredible persuasive dexterity.  It's no surprise that Lieberman has a strong lead in the polls, since he has convinced the electorate to think about this race in terms of local issues and how Ned Lamont doesn't really know how to be a Senator.

Partly this is due to instinct.  Joe doesn't like Democrats, and never really has.  When he was freed from having to pander to the Democratic primary universe (which he first decried as low turnout before there was record turnout), he found his sea legs.  By contrast, it's fairly evident that the Lamont campaign was basically paralyzed for the month after the primary, and that the torture moment, where Joe voted to allow Bush to torture and suspend Habeas Corpus, was a missed opportunity to distinguish the two men.  Lamont had the right position, but didn't speak loudly enough.

Over the last week, the Lamont campaign has tightened up its messaging, and Lieberman has begun to find strains in his embrace of both the right and the middle.  On the Foley cover-up, Lieberman apparently got his talking points mixed up when he said on a local Fox affiliate (minute 6:05 of part one) that he supported the investigation into the Foley cover-up by former FBI Director Freeh.  There is no such investigation, that was just a trial balloon floated by Hastert and the Republicans before Pelosi quashed it.  Lieberman attacked the Democratic leadership on the Foley cover-up, answering the question of whether Democrats would have handled the scandal differently with a scathing 'Well I'd like to think so but who knows?' (watch him at minute 4:52 of part one of this interview).  Lieberman also calls the scandal nonpartisan, saying 'That's a classic example of Ned Lamont making something that is an outrageous but nonpartisan tragedy into something partisan.  It's not.'  Dancing between the Democrats and the right is a tough task, and it's starting to show.

As Colin McEnroe points out, Lieberman was caught lying on video about the Foley cover-up, and so his obviously pandering speech today about protecting children is an opportunity to paint Lieberman as a selfish man who is part of the problem in DC.  Lieberman's assertion that the scandal is nonpartisan when the cover-up is clearly a Republican scheme shows that he has a delicate position, walking the fine line between supporting the Bush administration to sustain his Republican base and distancing himself to attact low information anti-Bush independents and Democrats.  He's walked it successfully so far, but now that the Lamont campaign is starting to punch again there's the possibility that these contradictions are going to fall apart, as they did during the primary.

Lieberman's strategy is to continue his extreme negative campaign against Lamont while putting forward his ability to bring pork back to Connecticut.  He's hoping that voters will look at Ned Lamont and wonder whether he can represent Connecticut the way Lieberman has since 1988.  Lieberman desperately wants to keep his flip-flopping on Rumsfeld, on Hastert, on Al Shartpon, on nuclear weapons and Saddam, and on basically every national issue out of the debate.  He wants to keep this race local.  As the Hastert coverup of Foley's predatorial behavior washes over the campaign, North Korea is now peeking its head into the public debate.  This is a really tough spot for Joe.  If there's one thing he's criticized Bush on, it's Bush's mishandling of North Korea.  The right-wing's talking points on the North Korean tests are that it was Clinton's fault; how is Lieberman going to spin that?  We don't have the military forces to credibly handle North Korea, and that's because of Joe's happy war in Iraq.  Any way Lieberman deals with this he loses.  Is he going to continue to criticize Bush on North Korea, which will turn off his Republican base?  Is he going to temper his criticism of Bush and look inconsistent and weak, a Bush puppet once again who is now flip-flopping and pandering to shore up his right-wing voting base?  Is he going to bait Clinton by saying that it's both Bush and Clinton's fault?

The media environment is not Joe's friend.  All three Congressional races in Connecticut are hard-fought, with Democrats like Chris Murphy working as aggressively as possible to nationalize the race as possible, and every candidate claiming that the sub base is their accomplishment.  By contrast, the one important localized race, for Governor, looks like a cakewalk, which means that local issues will have less relevance in the media debate because reporters just won't be that interested in what looks to be a Rell romp.  Joe's current lead shows that he is an excellent politician, and that he has a strong hold on the hearts and minds of Connecticut resident.  His problem is that there's just no incentive for these voters to think of candidates in localized terms, and as the Lamont campaign ratchets up once again, Joe's contradictory positioning is prone to unraveling.