Quote of the day: Now that everyone else here has had his/her say, let's pile on in appreciation of Ned Lamont's historic victory over Holy Joe

Is it our imagination, or does this Reuters photo (similar to one, also taken by Jessica Rinaldi, that the NYT cropped tighter for its front page today) show His Holiness standing behind a podium that says, in somewhat postmodern fashion, "Joe Lieberman Fighting for Joe Lieberman"?

"While [Ned] Lamont's success has been widely attributed to the rising power of the antiwar movement and liberal Internet bloggers, the 52-year-old upstart from Greenwich became a political giant-killer by blending both new- and old-style politics. He tapped the Net roots to promote his cause--but the grass roots to win over voters."
--Shailagh Murray, in a Washington Post election sidebar, "Lamont Relied On Net Roots--And Grass Roots"

As a relative newcomer to blogworld, I sympathize with the mainstream media types who have this terrified image of a world of lunatic radicals sucking out the blood of mainstream-media children.

Of course there is a certain amount of that. (Sorry, MSM kiddies, but such is life.) However, that's hardly what Howard Dean tapped into in his 2004 presidential race, or what helped propel Ned Lamont to his startling victory in yesterday's Connecticut Senate primary.

And while many of us may be disappointed by the closeness of the result, we shouldn't forget just how earth-shaking the Lamont victory is. "Six months ago," as Shailagh Murray writes in her Post lead, "Ned Lamont's name recognition was, within the margin of error, zero. He made campaign fliers on a copy machine."

I have not-so-much sympathy for the political types who similarly view the online progressive movement as a ragtag band of Bolshevik pariahs. Sure, there's a substantial measure of ignorance there too, but maybe even more than with the MSM types there's a heavy helping of "protecting our turf"--i.e., the cozy top-down, insider-directed political landscape they've grown so comfortable with.

Before I was a DWT writer, I was a DWT reader. As anyone who's read any of Howie's coverage of our present-day political scene must surely understand, his biggest target has been the Inside the Beltway political establishment and its state and local counterparts, spanning both major parties, an establishment that--in feverish cahoots with its deep-pocketed corporate benefactors--runs the country in pursuit of its own best interests.

As he has reported on local races around the country, looking for candidates who offer us some hope of lifting us out of our current mess, the words that come up most often are "progressive" and "grass roots." Unfortunately for the country, nearly all of the "progressive grass-roots" candidates he's found aren't Democrats fighting Republicans but insurgent Democrats fighting Republicrats being foisted on Democratic voters by their party's power elite, most perniciously Rahm Emanuel, boss of the House Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

What Howie helped me see is the astonishingly consistent pattern by which Boss Rahm attempts to saddle local Democrats with candidates whose values run counter to all the good traditional Democratic values, candidates who are encouraged to mouth nothing but lame platitudes, above all candidates with no real stake in their communities.

Nothing seems to drive Boss Rahm crazier than an independent Democrat with deep progressive beliefs and deep roots and support in his/her community. In California's San Joaquin Valley, to pick an example with which DWT readers are intimately familiar, he seemed less interested in unseating unspeakably vile Republican Rep. Dick Pombo than in imposing his hand-picked stooge on 11th District Democrats, who had the temerity to overwhelmingly reject the stooge in their primary, nominating grass-roots progressive Jerry McNerney.

Most of us have tended to assume, naively, that Rahm-the-Dems'-Tough-Guy focuses on picking Candidates Who Can Win, which is why they seem to be so, er, not-so-progressive. Howie has demonstrated to my satisfaction (way beyond, in fact) that that isn't what's going on at all. Boss Rahm's interest seems limited to candidates who are easily controllable. (In fairness, he also places high value on candidates rich enough to be able to finance their own races.)

I suppose the reason someone like McNerney gives the boss nightmares--worse maybe than the prospect of scummy Dick Pombo holding onto his seat?--is that when McNerney joins Congress in January, assuming he can withstand the spending orgy the Republicans will mount to hold onto a seat that now seems sure to be lost otherwise, he won't owe anything to Rahm and his Big Money bankrollers.

Is it possible that the mainstream media may finally be catching on to what's happening at the grass-roots level? That's what's encouraging about Murray's Post story this morning. As she reports:

"The story is really about voters in Connecticut who stood with Ned Lamont," said Tom Matzzie, political director for the antiwar organization MoveOn.org, one of numerous outside groups that promoted Lamont's candidacy. "He went from town to town, house to house, for months. It defined grass-roots campaigning."


ALSO TALKING--Can Holy Joe buck party pressure, national and local, to get out of a race the primary results say he's already lost?

"I predict that Joe Lieberman will get out of the race."
--Rachel Maddow, in the weekly "Predictor" segment of her Air America Radio show this morning