ANOTHER MISERABLE WEEK FOR BUSH'S FAVORITE DEMOCRAT, JOE LIEBERMAN

Last week started-- after a lousy week-before-- with Lieberman stumbling all over himself to try to salvage a re-election campaign swirling right down the toilet. When is the last time you heard of an incumbent U.S. Senator starting a mud-slinging campaign with a blitz of vicious tv spots? Normally sitting Senators try to look detached and statesmanlike. Instead Holier-than-thou Joe looks like what he's always been: a charlatan and dirty gutter confidence man, masquerading as a The Righteous Man. The Lieberman ads are so terrible that Ned Lamont's campaign are asking people to watch them! And the day after they ran the JOURNAL-INQUIRER slammed them in an editorial concluding that "Lieberman's attack ads look like the appeals of just another sleazy, desperate pol, grasping madly to hold on to office."

Then the new Quinnipiac poll was released and for the rest of the week no one mentioned Lieberman's name without talking about the speculation that he would run as an independent instead of as a Democrat, a rumor that Lieberman has always fed. The key to Lieberman's deepening sense of despair in this poll is right in Quinnipiac's opening paragraph: "Anti-war Connecticut U.S. Senate candidate Ned Lamont has gained ground on Sen. Joseph Lieberman, and now trails the incumbent 55 - 40 percent among likely Democratic primary voters, including undecided voters who are leaning towards a candidate." On top of that Lieberman's approval rating among Democrats has plummeted to under 50% for the first time as more and more people start to understand that he is a major Bush enabler on the war in Iraq and in unrelated areas that are important to Connecticut Democrats. (Of course, he's still wildly popular among Republicans who appreciate all the support he has given their agenda, especially in the last half dozen or so years.)

Just one month ago, 60% of Democrats approved of Lieberman; now only 49% do and that number will continue to tumble, not only as Ned campaigns, but as more and more people get a chance to see Lieberman up close!

And everywhere Lieberman goes, no matter what he wants to talk about, people ask him why he won't commit to supporting whomever wins the Democratic primary. And he steadfastly refuses to budge-- as he does so often on so many things-- and refuses to rule out running as an independent, angering more and more Democrats. I hope Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd and Barack Obama are happy now that they endorsed him without wringing an iron-clad guarantee out of him that he couldn't weasel out of.

To end the week, Lieberman flew back to Connecticut and did some clumsy photo-ops and silly, pointless publicity stunts. Beau at LaResistance has an hysterical account of his run-in with the hapless, clueless Lieberman at an Italian restaurant in Bristol. When Beau asked him to commit to running as a Democrat and not an independent and spoiler Lieberman scurried away and a Lieberman campaign worker can over to deride him and try to shoo him away. It's really well written and worth reading.

And if you want to put your two-cents into the well deserved retirement of Holy Joe (or more), you've come to the right place.