Scarborough had a panel on last night to discuss the Lamont/Lieberman race. The panel included Pat Buchanan and Kinky Freedman.
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Download Buchanan is predicting a Lieberman loss in November, unless Lieberman does some very negative ads against Lamont, which is not Lieberman's style (per Buchanan). I think Joe has it in him to do some negative ads and I don't think that will help him one bit.
An interesting point brought up is about motivating the base. In a liberal state like Connecticut, being against the Iraq war is the base. According to the most recent poll, 60% of Americans are against the war, and that makes one large base.
The same argument could be used in contrast to Republicans. Over the past couple of months, we have seen them try to motivate their far-right base with their failed attempts to ban gay marriage, the estate tax repeal and the stem-cell bill. With the exception of the stem-cell bill, this has all backfired. With a majority control in both houses, the Republicans could not muster up the needed votes to pass this legislation. The moderate base of the Republican Party has viewed this as more evidence of a do-nothing Congress because they have wasted time on these issues while failing to address more pertinent issues like the budget, economy and Iraq. Also the far-right base is looking at the failure of the gay-marriage ban and estate tax ban as the fault of the Republican Party. They know that picking up seats in either house will be next to impossible this Fall, and that is the only chance they have to get their radical legislation passed.
So it sounds like the Democrats are doing more things right when it comes to motivating the necessary voters than the Republicans right now. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that mid-term elections are won at the local level. What works in Connecticut may not work in Ohio or Pennsylvania. The candidates for House and Senate need to focus on what their constituents want and not what the national party wants. This is one of the keys to winning in November.
