Of schooldays and a Senate race
It seems like everyone wants a piece of my old pal Ned Lamont. Why should I be left out?
Ned and I overlapped for two years at the upper-crust finishing school known as the Phillips Exeter Academy. After college we both went to work for a newspaper in Ludlow, Vt. Thirty years later, I am still writing for a New England newspaper, and Ned has amassed a $300 million fortune in the cable television business. Life is like that.
I haven't seen Ned or even thought about him for donkey's years. I remember that we used to make fun of his loony-left relative, the white-shoe Stalinist Corliss Lamont, described (more or less accurately) on the Internet as ``born to Wall Street wealth, yet he championed the cause of the working class." I also remember Ned as one of the most decent, uncynical , and straightforward young men I've ever known.
As I write this, Ned is attempting to pull off the first major political upset of this election year, opposing three-term Senator Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary in Connecticut. It's quite a story. Ned didn't want to run, and was hoping to bankroll a more viable candidate. His on-the-job training shows. Ned faltered in his televised debate with Lieberman, and he doesn't project much mastery of the broad ranges of issues that should concern a US senator.
Ned was running on one issue alone: his opposition to the Iraq war, which Lieberman supports. And Lamont may win. Good for him.
I recall the exact date when I woke up to Ned's political adventure: On April 17, I spotted a picture on the Internet of Hartford Courant columnist Colin McEnroe pretending to fall asleep while watching a video clip of Lieberman on a TV talk show. (Here's the link). I remembered Lieberman as the man whose lugubrious demeanor freighted down Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign; now he was back again, boring us all to death.
The always-excitable left-wing blogosphere embraced the Lamont candidacy early and spread his story to mainstream media stiffs like me. Good for them. The problem is, some of Lamont's online supporters spew so much hate and vitriol that their support may prove counterproductive. Earlier this week, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, creator of the Daily Kos website, was raving about the ``jokers" in Washington, the ``idiots" in the Democratic Party, and the ``useful idiots in the media," Vladimir Lenin's coinage for unwitting Communist sympathizers. One pro-Lamont blogger posted a doctored photograph depicting Lieberman in blackface.
Zuniga's bottom line on Lieberman: ``We need to crush him." Zuniga appeared in one of Lamont's first TV ads. With friends like these. . . Let's just say Zuniga has aroused a sympathy for Lieberman I hadn't felt before.
Ned is in the awkward position of the dog chasing the car. What if he catches it? What if he wins? His presumed Republican opponent, Alan Schlesinger , is a nonentity. I don't think Lieberman will go quietly, and he has said as much, indicating that he may run as an independent in the November election. He well knows that independents can succeed in Connecticut. After Lieberman bumped off Lowell Weicker in the 1988 Senate election, Weicker returned to politics two years later, winning the governor's seat as an independent.
If Ned wins, he should expect to absorb some body blows. New Republic editor and Lieberman supporter Martin Peretz issued a welcome-to-the-neighborhood broadside in Monday's Wall Street Journal, lumping Ned in with various fellow-traveling peace dupes of yesteryear. Peretz's conclusion: ``Ned Lamont is Karl Rove's dream come true." Peretz derided Lamont's one-issue campaign, but Peretz himself is pretty much a one-issue guy: Israel, right or wrong.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com. 
