Nope. Sorry, that's not good enough. I want the original cite from the New Haven, which is my home town paper and a source I trust. All you've linked to here is a reference in an opinion piece at some alternative weekly in L.A., the basis of which, for all I know, is a third hand rumour about something that appeared in the Register. I'm willing to bet that quote either never appeared or is taken WAY out of context.

I love that, "TNC is a major opponent of private property rights". All they fucking DO is buy property. They ARE a private property owner, and a huge one. I know reality isn't these guys' strong point, but sometimes the things they say are just so stunning in their up-is-downness.

Why is it a requirement to be "interesting"? That's an awfully high bar, once you add it to "attractive", "smart", "good speaker", "good fundraiser" and the rest. Why don't you wait and see how she does on the campaign trail before dismissing her as "boring." Sheesh, you would think you were a high school kid commenting on the race for homecoming queen.

I'm a huge Tester supporter and believe (and hope) he will win on Tuesday. But I gotta say, this post is WAY over the top. Morrison is a very decent guy and (judging by the polls) a perfectly fine general election candidate who has won statewide before. We all have our preferences and it's always hard to contemplate "our" guy or gal losing, but for god's sake, lay off the Dem bashing for a second here. Ask yourself this: If Morrison wins, what are you going to do? Sit it out? When this is one of the six races we need to win to take the Senate, make Reid the Majority Leader, and start holding Bush accountable?

I would also add that I REALLY hope you aren't talking like this to Montana voters. Nothing, absolutely NOTHING, turns voters off more than telling them a choice between two rather similar (from their point of view, not ours) candidates is  the moral equivalent of the end of the world. That  comes off as arrogant, weird, and highly suspicious. Quite possibly the reason Dean lost Iowa. Don't do it again.

Good thoughts. I agree!

Umm, sorry ... perhaps being so far away from CT I'm missing something. What's wrong with that e-mail again?

Lieberman did win, and he did win overwhelmingly (33 points is a lot of overwhelming in most definitions). And the e-mail even concedes "there's a lot of work to do." Which is of course true. Seems pretty close to dead on to me. But I'm 2,000 miles away. I'm sure you know better, from Des Moines.

I sure hope you're prepared to be as happy as you are today if Joe wins by 30 again in August. Because unless Lamont raises a ton of money between now and then, and Lieberman spends his badly, that's pretty much what's going to happen.

Not to state the obvious or anything, Matt, but Lamont didn't actually win anything. In fact, he lost about 2:1, which is almost exactly where he is in the polls right now. I'm not sure where you get your idea that the convention "overstated Lieberman's strength". In fact, conventions are where party activists and others who follow politics closely are at their strongest. This would be the only audience in the state where Lamont has 100% name ID. The polls don't lie. Lamont is still 30 points down with a 10:1 money hole. And Lamont spent a whole lot more on the run-up to the convention than Lieberman did, with those ads he placed last week. I imagine he's got less than 2-3 days of TV time in the bank right now.

In Colorado in 2004, a guy named Mike Miles challenged Ken Salazar for the Dem nomination for Senator. He was the favorite of liberals and party activists, whereas Salazar was the favorite of the party apparatus and moderates (not to mention Republicans). We also had an August primary, and had our state party convention around this same time. And Miles actually WON the convention (not lost by 30 points like Lamont). You all know what happened in the actual primary (Salazar by about 35, as I recall, give or take a few points). The similarities are quite striking. This is a nice start for Lamont, but he's only got 2 1/2 months to go, he's broke, and Lieberman's ad barrage is about to begin in earnest (he's got about 8 weeks worth of saturation buys in the bank, probably 10 weeks with additional fundraising --- Lamont's got 3 days).

Still a long long longshot.

This analysis is all kind of irrelevant if he doesn't have the bucks to run these ads. And right now, he doesn't. He raised $60k in April. $60k! Lieberman probably raises that before he even gets to the microphone at one of his fundraisers.

I dunno. My experience with party conventions (albeit in CO not CT) tells me that Lamont will probably do very well. These are party activists, remember, not average Joe blue collar Dems who are less likely to be interested in intraparty fights.

You guys are missing the big story of the day on Lamont-Lieberman, though, and that's money. Lamont released his financials (wow!) and in the same story it was noted that he raised a paltry $60k in April, plus $120k from his wallet. He had $350k on hand end of March, so combined with his burn rate and the placement of those ads this weekend I'd suggest he probably has less on hand now than he had March 31. There is NO WAY he can win this race unless he has the bucks to go on TV around mid-July. And right now, he has enough to go on for a couple days max.

When's he going to dump the $2-3 million of his own fortune that he needs to be competitive?

I read in the story on Lamont's personal wealth that he only raised $60k in April. That's not going to cut it. If he does that every month, he won't have enough to go on TV for more than a couple days.

Anyone have any inside info on whether he's going to kick in big bucks himself (as in the $2-3 million range?)

Oh my freakin god. These are the most god-awful ads I've ever seen. I love Hillsman and think he's done wonders in Colorado (ditto Minnesota) but the ads he did there were tough, hard nosed, and aggressive, as well as fun. Lots of people thought they were TOO tough and personal, but they worked. These are like something a city council candidate would put on cable access, amateurish (likely deliberately so) and very very soft. He's still introducing himself to voters with about 75 days to go (and not coming off well, either ... he looks and sounds like a rich geek whom other people are pushing to run and telling him what to say, including his children!).

And on top of that, the underdog one spends about 25 out of 30 secs with Joe freakin' Lieberman's name on the screen! Talk about violating the first rule of politics -- you've actually got to be paying attention to even get this is AGAINST Lieberman! And the Kos one would scare the daylights out of me were I a CT voter -- message: we've got a bunch of out of staters who think it's "really important" for Ned to run, invading CT to campaign for us. Yuck! (And no, it doesn't matter that, except for Kos, they probably aren't out-of-staters. All viewers are going to know is that these people aren't like US.)

I'm assuming this is a tiny, tiny buy, maybe even just a day or two. To get earned media attention in the run-up to the convention, and hoping to attract some hardcore politicos who (for some bizarre reason) haven't heard of Lamont yet.

Anyone know how much $$ they've got in the bank? Last I saw, they don't have enough to fuck around with crap like this.

Maybe, but there's a real question about scale here. Except for Howard Dean and John Kerry, who were of course a national candidates, most beneficiaries of netroots fundraising get somewhere in the range of $100k or maybe twice that. That's not enough even to go on TV for a week in most markets. For a successful challenger campaign in even a semi-major market, you're talking $2-3 million per seat. Successful as the "new frontier" of electronic fundraising has been, I really haven't seen the scale even approach what is needed to support a successful campaign. At best it's a nice supplement to the real fundraising, which unfortunately has to be the old-fashioned dialing-for-dollars.

Take that back, I guess one or two presidential candidates HAVE lost by 20 points, but you get my point.

Well, I do know that the party is investing big bucks on technical "innovations" (innovations for our side; the R's have been using them for years) in database management and micro-targeting. But there's just no way that adds up to $50 million. There were a few races in 2005 they might have ponied up for, especially for GOTV. And New Jersey and Virginia are expensive states. Still, the number is worrisome. I really hope they're not wasting it all on consultants.

That is a very good question. I SERIOUSLY doubt that $60m number is accurate. From what I've read, in addition to being upset with what Dean is doing with the money, Emmanuel and Pelosi and others are mad that he's not raising very much period. He's leading the only party organization not out-raising his Republican counterpart. Likely, if true that's precisely BECAUSE he's not raising for those sexy swing races. It's always hard to raise money for long term building.

So if he truly has spent $60m, I'd be stunned. Are you sure that's not DNC, DSCC, and DCCC together?