He Went Too Far

by digby

I wonder what would be happening in Mississippi right now if Trent Lott were more popular among Democrats than Republicans? Do you think the Mississippi Republicans would be happy?

This handy chart comes from Political Arithmetic, who writes:

It is incredibly rare to see a Senator more popular among opposition partisans than within his own party. Yet that is increasingly the case for Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. Since late in 2005, Lieberman’s approval rating among Democrats has dropped from around 70%, to the mid-50s. In two early June polls, Lieberman fell again, to under 50% approval among Democrats. This was after Democratic primary challenger Ned Lamont’s strong showing at the CT Democratic Convention, but before Lieberman made public his plans to run as an independent should he lose the primary. (The data in the graph are taken from Quinnipiac University polls and from SurveyUSA’s 50 state tracking poll in Connecticut. The two polling houses track each other reasonably well in CT, so I’ve pooled the data and won’t focus on differences between the two polling organizations here.)

While slowly trending down recently, Lieberman’s job approval among Republicans remains in the upper 60s, while job approval among independents has fallen to the mid-to-upper 50s, as has overall approval.

Now here’s the question. What happened in late 2005 that made Lieberman tank among Democrats? It certainly wasn’t blogofascist attention at that point.

I’m guessing it was this, which was picked up by all the local papers in Connecticut.

If Trent Lott told his Republican constitutents they were betraying the country by speaking out against a Democratic president, I suspect he’d find himself in the same straits as Joe Lieberman does today.

It was the straw that broke the camels back.

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