Joseph Lieberman, Democrat political leader has threatened to go independent. If Ned Lamont should win democratic nomination come August, independent is an option for Lieberman. Sounds like a veiled threat to the hefty fundraisers to direct money from their coffers for Lieberman to enable Lieberman to beat the young Lamont.
Lamont is sending ripples out to the party faithful that Lieberman is not on board with the democratic political agenda, in Lieberman's stay for course support of the war against terror. Lieberman wants a democratic president and Lamont wants to address the issues at the grassroots level. Lieberman is sure that Lamont is too independent minded and will tear the unified democrats further apart. Below is part of the debate between the young and the old guard.
GERRY BROOKS, WVIT - HARTFORD: Senator, you wrote a book on a man who wrote the book on Democratic politics, John Bailey, the former state and national Democratic Party chairman. If Mr. Bailey were here, what would he say about you running as a petitioning candidate instead of supporting Mr. Lamont should you lose the primary?
LIEBERMAN: Well, of course, the first thing Mr. Bailey would do is try to stop Mr. Lamont from hurting the Democratic Party's chances of electing a Democratic senator who might help to make a Democratic majority in the Senate, who would help the three Democratic challenging candidates for the House of Representatives, who might help make the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.
I have been a Democrat all my life. And I must say I laugh at Ned Lamont holding party loyalty up as a test of my candidacy. He fails that test. When he was on the Greenwich boards, he voted 80 percent of the time with Republicans against education, for cuts in healthcare, for lower health benefits for public employees.
Look at his campaign. He's got a former Republican senator, a former Republican state chairman working in his campaign. And the guy doing the ads he is paying for on TV helped to put George Bush in the White House in 2000, and tried to stop Barack Obama from being a senator a couple of years ago. So he fails his own test.
I'm the Democrat in this race and I know I can do better for the people of Connecticut than he or Alan Schlesinger can in the tough years ahead. That's why I'll go on if this primary doesn't work as I want it to. But I believe it will, because I think the voters see the difference between us.
NESTI: Thank you, Senator.
Mr. Lamont, one minute.
LAMONT: I think Mr. Bailey would ask Senator Lieberman to make up his mind. Are you a Democrat or are you an Independent? If you're going to run as a Democrat, play by the rules, stick with the Democratic rules as I have. Instead of going through the primary, I'm going to endorse the winner of that primary. I hope his name is Ned Lamont. We go forward together as a unified party. We'll be a stronger party for it.
Or if you want to be an Independent, run as an Independent, but you can't have it both ways. He brings up a lot of poppycock about the days when I was on the Board of Selectmen, the Board of Finance. All I can tell you is that you look at the press, the press has asked them to stop it, told him it's misleading, told them it's false. These rumors that he is passing around are just not true.
The point is, look, I convinced the Republicans to vote with me 80 percent of the time. It was questions about potholes and stop signs and the Board of Selectmen. But when he compromises, he's not compromising on questions of potholes. You're compromising on questions of principles and things that are key to the Democratic Party and what we stand for. And that's why I'm in this race.
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