A Thursday Round-Up
Senator Lieberman has already abandoned his “nobody wants to end the war in Iraq more than I do” act (via CTBob):
Joe was the same guy who said, repeatedly, that “nobody wants to end the war more than” he…well, I’m starting to think that by “ending the war”, Joe means either when the entire Middle East will be a smoldering pile of charred rubble; or when the entire populace of Iraq will suddenly put down their weapons and immediately embrace Western-style Democracy and wave U.S. flags with wild abandon (and go against centuries of culture and religion).
There are three new posts at the official Ned Lamont blog this week:
Mr. Lamont Shakes Up Washington
Greenwich’s Ned Lamont calls the $15 million in personal funds he spent on his U.S. Senate campaign “one of the greatest investments I’ve ever made.” But money doesn’t begin to measure Mr. Lamont’s contribution to participatory democracy. He lost Tuesday’s election, but his campaign resonated with the public and influenced American foreign policy in Iraq. [...] Mr. Lamont’s success gave anti-war activists legitimacy and heft and moved the Iraq debate to the center of American discourse, where it became the top campaign issue for congressional and Senate candidates throughout the country.
Lamont Hailed as Spark for Democrats
“People owe this guy a lot,” said Jim Dean, a Fairfield resident, the head of the pro-Lamont Democracy for America grass-roots liberal group, and brother of Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean. “I don’t want to get too crazy about this, but he really was an integral part of what happened on Tuesday.”
Thank You from Thirman L. Milner
The campaign continues to get wonderful emails from people who have been involved with the campaign. Thirman L. Milner, former Mayor of Hartford sent to following letter that I thought it would be great to share with everyone, since it sums up nicely the feelings of many of us.
Dear Ned: Thanks for running and allowing me to be a part of a victorious campaign. I call it victorious because, although you did not win, you made a positive difference in our state, nation and even world. You shook things up.
There’s a cool new project that I’m going to try and affiliate myself with, called The Progressive Wave. I think it’s PsiFighter37’s brainchild, and he posted about it over at MyLeftNutmeg:
It’s great to see citizen journalism in action. A project here at Daily Kos is picking up steam – where we ‘adopt’ a congressional committee and keep tabs on their progress. It’s a great idea, and by all means one that we should encourage; after all, a democracy thrives when its citizens participate actively within it.
Before the election I was thinking of taking a similar principle and applying it to our newly-elected Congresspersons and Senators in the U.S. Congress. Many of our newly-elected representatives come from extremely close races (such as Patrick Murphy in PA-08 or Joe Courtney in CT-02), or they are in areas that will make it a challenge for them to be re-elected every time they are up (Nick Lampson in TX-22 or Nancy Boyda in KS-02). While the Netroots-endorsed list has only included challengers, it’s inevitable that we will have to begin defending our incumbents, beginning in 2008.
And that’s where we come in.
Oh yeah…Joe Courtney officially won yesterday (in case you were living under a rock).