I dont live in (or vote from) Connecticut, so I admit its an outsiders view, but its hard to see just what it is that Joe Lieberman wants.

Apparently, what he wants more than anything else at the moment, is to be the Senator from Connecticut. Easy to understand that. Joes been a member of the club for eighteen years now and he knows where to find the coat-hook with his name on it.

It looks as if Joe will be a spoiler, now that his constituents have turned their back on him in the primary. Which is sad to watch. Joe ran admirably as the Democratic vice-presidential candidate with Al Gore.

Al was able to get over being not-beaten and it seems Lieberman just cant figure out how to deal with an honest old regular loss when it comes.

Politicians pay homage to the power of the ballot. A good many of them have had to choke down that homage when it ran against them. Standing up, shaking hands and saying I want your vote is a time-honored spectacle in American politics.

Standing up and saying I heard you and I think youre wrong and Im going to run as an independent in November is a dishonor to all that Joe ran on. It's akin to telling your home crowd they don't know what they're doing and have no idea of the tragic mistake they just made. It's a put-down and an insult to the same folks that sent you to the Senate three times. Who knows? Maybe the home-folks didn't like Joe hedging his 2000 vice-presidential run by keeping his Senate seat. It's possible Joes just run out. Out of gas, out of time and out of good sense. The honorable thing would have been to shake Ned Lamonts hand, give him a set of keys to the office and campaign for him.

If Joe loses as an independent candidate, which seems likely, hell have been made a fool, although my old daddy always said no one could make you a fool but yourself. If he wins, he says hell caucus with Democrats in the Senate, but his coat-hook may not be as reliable as it once was for holding up his reputation in that rarified atmosphere. If he and Lamont both lose to their Republican opponent, almost a sure-thing, Joe will retire dishonored.

In 2004, Connecticut went Democrat, 54% to 44% and it voted pretty much the same way and in the same proportion for the past three or four elections. But, anyway you slice it, that 54% is a loser when its split between two Democrats. Even if the Republicans are particularly unpopular this November, itll be a squeak. It certainly won't be a pretty sight to watch two 'Democrats' savage one another, but it should make great Republican campaign ads nationwide.

What resonates most significantly for the Lieberman crowd is Joes seniority and you can bet hell run that play for yardage every time theres a scrimmage. But some of Joes positions have been very hard to swallow for Connecticut Democrats. Its not even so much the Iraq warthere are a lot of honest folks who dont quite know how the hell to get out of there.

But Joe has been uncritical in times when honest criticism was in very short supply and most needed. So have many of his fellow-Democrats and it remains to be seen what price they will pay for what many Americans see as unconscionable subservience. Connecticut is New Yorks bedroom. It will be interesting to see how Hillarys middle-roading will play out on the campaign trail, but at least she's not facing a November test.

On the Republican side, its probably either curtain-time or big-money time for Alan Schlesinger, the current Senatorial candidate. A throw-away nominee in what was expected to be solid Lieberman country, Schlessinger has suddenly become the GOP focus for a Senate seat that might actually be winnable. Hard to move him aside a mere two and a half months before elections, but stranger things have happened.

But for Joe, its Johnny Cash's sad walk in a cold rain. The low-road rhetoric has already begun, with Lieberman commenting after the British bomb scare, that Lamonts position on getting out of Iraq will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England."

With a start like that, its hard to see Joe Lieberman coming out of this election, win or lose, with anything even close to what might be called a victory or a reputation.