My, how big your ego is!

Lawrence O'Donnell confidently predicts that Lieberman will drop out of the racea after the Dems' support for Ned Lamont has made it impossible for him to win.

Daniel Henninger sees it differently:

With the knifing of Joe Lieberman, the Democrats have locked in as the antiwar party. No turning back now. You're in or you're out. And this will be enforced.. . .

This isn't the moment for a politics based on comics turning the president and vice president into joke material. The national mood may not be right now for extended blogospheric daisy chains of smack-the-enemy or cool wordplays with people's names. This isn't a game anymore. Not after yesterday's news.

What the Democratic Party needs more than anything for the way forward is adult supervision. Who's going to provide that? Bill Clinton? Joe Biden? Howard Dean? Not likely.

Recalling the campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, he points out that closing your big tent to all but the pure antiwar types is not the way to bring swing voters to your candidates. As Hugh Hewitt puts it, "You may be unhappy with Bush, but no way are Democrats the answer.

My view is that 6 years of media drum beating for their Big Lie has taken its toll. People have been subjected to a constant stream of personal attacks on Bush, and he, being a Christian, has not answered in kind. He's faulted for saying the same things over and over, as he was lampooned in a very masterful montage of one word clips on John Stewart's program, but there are times when the truth is simple and the argument for it plain. Bush isn't much of a spinner anyway, in a world where people are used to a new formulation every day.

People can respond to anger by joining the mob or, realizing that the mob is in no mood for reason, by withdrawal. In the latter case, they may not put up a fight, but in the voting booth their true feelings will still emerge. If the Dems veer off into denial and refusal to confront terrorism, I can't see them earning the confidence of the nation. The polls from before yesterday are coming out and they look bad for Republicans, probably because everybody has been focused on the Lieberman-Lamont campaign, but give the Dems control again and they'll beat their chests and do a lot of irresponsible things, and they'll lose what gains they made. This is now the Ned Lamont/Maxine Waters/John Conyers party now.

The Dems may retake control of Congress. The constant drone that things are going badly in Iraq has taken its toll, despite the fact that it isn't true. Be that as it may, events are swirling in the Middle East and the new proof that the terrorists haven't given up, as Bush and others warned us from the outset. Bush's efforts to urge us to keep our resolve have been drowned out and his fellow Republicans, having the moral courage of a bunny rabbit, are trying to change the subject. So much for leadership.

Ah, well. We seem to require disasters like 9/11 periodically to wake us from our lotus dreams. This fall may be the next round.

Update: Charles Krauthammer echoes the above.