An Embarrassing Last Day Of Campaigning In Connecticut
I feel almost sorry for Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont. On the last day of the Senate primary, Leiberman went out to campaign amongst the people, and found very few people to campaign amongst.
"Are there any real people here?" Mr. Lieberman asked cheerfully as he squeezed through the narrow corridor of the diner in North Hartford, shaking hands with members of his own campaign team.
Almost everywhere he went, the answer was: no.
Campaign workers for Leiberman and Lamont engaged in what the New York Times called a "showdown of minuscule proportions." Ouch.
While Lieberman was desperately looking for voters with whom to shake hands -- a privilege some voters told lies to avoid -- Lamont holed up for most of the day. It seems a bizarre strategy, but maybe it won't matter.
One union worker saw through Lamont's pose:
In one of Mr. Lamont's only encounters with voters on Monday, Ken Delacruz, a union official, came by to shake his hand. From the back of the crowd, a worker called out, "You'’ll never be that close to that much money again."
Lamont is a millionaire, and after he criticized Wal-Mart it was revealed that he in fact is a shareholder in Wal-Mart.
Lieberman looked dead in the water a few days ago, but the most recent polling puts him almost within the margin of error. Couple that with the polling advantage the more leftward candidate gets, and it seems possible that he might actually pull out a win. That's why it seems odd that Lamont stayed off the road on the Monday. Even though the campaign events were a little preposterous, the news in Connecticut, I would expect, will be about Lieberman's activity and Lamont's inactivity, creating a negative appearance for Lamont. George Bush famously stopped campaigning in the last days of 2000, probably figuring that there was little left to gain. As a result Al Gore slipped into Florida on the last day before the election, and what looked to be a safe win for Bush became an infamously close result.
We'll know more soon, since no doubt exit polls will be reported somewhere.
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