Karl Rove is excited:

“We have been here before. Left-wing Democrats are once again fielding single-issue “peace candidates,” and the one in Connecticut, like several in the 1970s, is a middle-aged patrician, seeking office de haut en bas, and almost entirely because he can. It’s really quite remarkable how someone like Ned Lamont, from the stock of Morgan partner Thomas Lamont and that most high-born American Stalinist, Corliss Lamont, still sends a chill of “having arrived” up the spines of his suburban supporters simply by asking them to support him. Superficially, one may think of those who thought they were already middle class just by being enthusiasts of Franklin Roosevelt, who descended from the Hudson River Dutch aristocracy. But when FDR ran for, and was elected, president in 1932, he had already been a state senator, assistant secretary of the Navy and governor of New York. He had demonstrated abilities.

At least in this sense, Mr. Lamont comes to this campaign for the U.S. Senate from absolutely nowhere–and it shows in his pulpy statements on public issues. Here is a paradigmatic one: “We need to provide parents and communities the support they need to assure that children start their school day ready to learn.” Of course, he also thinks that U.S. troops should be replaced by the U.N. in Iraq. Does he know anything at all about the history of the idea that he so foolishly rescues from the dust? So what we have in this candidacy is someone, with no public record to speak of but with perhaps a quarter of a billion dollars to his name, who wants to be a senator. Mr. Lamont has almost no experience in public life. He was a cable television entrepreneur, a run-of-the-mill contemporary commercant with unusually easy access to capital.”

As I said here, it’s 1968 all over again. Democrats unable to win on specific issues of today (war on terror; economy, etc), flash back to the era of negativity, doom and gloom.

Can’t wait for ‘Jimmah’ and the “Malaise” to set in. But even more glaring is the negativity on Lamont from even the most progressive of writers and opinion makers such as Mr. Peretz. As I noted before, the uber left thinks every democrat is a Kos Kid, and nothing could be farther from the truth. But “sssshhhh”, don’t tell ‘em, this is going to be fun to watch.

AJ has a good take on this here as well.

UPDATE: Last Sunday on ABC “This Week”, Cokie Roberts tells George Stephanopoulos, just what I’ve been saying.

UPDATE II: You know when Lanny Davis compares Kos to McCarthy, you have trouble in the house.

“WASHINGTON–My brief and unhappy experience with the hate and vitriol of bloggers on the liberal side of the aisle comes from the last several months I spent campaigning for a longtime friend, Joe Lieberman.

This kind of scary hatred, my dad used to tell me, comes only from the right wing–in his day from people such as the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, with his tirades against “communists and their fellow travelers.” The word “McCarthyism” became a red flag for liberals, signifying the far right’s fascistic tactics of labeling anyone a “communist” or “socialist” who favored an active federal government to help the middle class and the poor, and to level the playing field.

I came to believe that we liberals couldn’t possibly be so intolerant and hateful, because our ideology was famous for ACLU-type commitments to free speech, dissent and, especially, tolerance for those who differed with us. And in recent years–with the deadly combination of sanctimony and vitriol displayed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Michael Savage–I held on to the view that the left was inherently more tolerant and less hateful than the right.”

I told you that the mainstream Democrats STILL wan’t nothing to do with the uber-liberal left. More at Decision 08, who warns about what you get with a Lamont.