Victory in Connecticut?

Well, Ned Lamont and the Democratic voters of Connecticut did something rather remarkable yesterday, and were treated with disdain, scorn, and dishonor. The purpose of primaries are to democratically pick candidates for office from all the various parties who then run in the general elections held in November, but apparently, that simple calculus is too much for Joe Lieberman to handle. What should have been his concession speech last night was instead his opening salvo against what was his own party, as he begins a run for the Senate as some sort of quasi-independent (he can't run as an actual "Independent", because that Party already has a candidate, as do all of the parties that actually exist in Connecticut). This incredible turnabout of fortune is made all the more sickening because, much like the Green Party candidacy in Pennsylvania, this campaign will be supported almost entirely by Republicans.
Shades of 2000 and Ralph Nader's quixotic attempt at consciousness-raising? Exactly, but we know what the stakes really are this time around.
Both Nader in 2000 and Lieberman today had/have every right to run for office by any means legal--I freely admit that. My argument then and now remains, though, to what ends are these men dedicated? We now know what results we got from Nader's run (and yes, I am fully aware that Gore ran a less-than-stellar campaign, but there is no single factor outside of Republican fraud that cost him the election other than Nader's vote-draining in a any of a handful of the crucial states)--virtual destruction of our entire country's fund of goodwill everywhere in the world, an almost certain financial and economic catastrophe in the making, and the deaths of pretty much countless numbers of people--and I am not arguing that Lieberman's spoiled child act will prove as disastrous as that. The stakes in this and the next election, though, are higher precisely because we now have to live in the shadow of Nader's run. We have far less of a margin for stupidity or selfishness nowadays; every Senate and House seat up for grabs in the US Congress and the Presidency itself has now become vital to the interests of humanity, and I would defy anyone to tell me that that is hyperbole. That Lieberman thinks he alone can represent the voters of Connecticut--even though they themselves (since Connecticut is a seriously Democratic state; no one believes, even in a three-way race, that the Republican candidate has any chance at all of winning the general election) just told him he doesn't--is the height of arrogance, snobbery, entitlement, and solipsism. He is behaving exactly like his hero Smirky does when told he can't do something--he does it anyway, regardless of the consequences to anyone in the entire world. The only difference between the two is that Smirky holds all the cards in his realm, while for now, the good people of Connecticut hold Lieberman's. They can still tell Joe "no". And they should. They must.