Domino Effect? Lieberman is a casualty of war for the muscular liberals - but which one...

Senator Joe Lieberman the so-called 'muscular liberal' or pro-war left's poster boy on the Democratic side of Congress has lost his primary to an anti-war newcomer.

On Sunday the Washington Post was reporting that the Connecticut Race Could Be Democratic Watershed explaining, as the anti-war challenger Ned Lamont raced ten points ahead in the pollls, that:

"The passion and energy fueling the antiwar challenge to Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman in Connecticut's Senate primary signal a power shift inside the Democratic Party that could reshape the politics of national security and dramatically alter the battle for the party's 2008 presidential nomination, according to strategists in both political parties.

"A victory by businessman Ned Lamont on Tuesday would confirm the growing strength of the grass-roots and Internet activists who first emerged in Howard Dean's presidential campaign. Driven by intense anger at President Bush and fierce opposition to the Iraq war, they are on the brink of claiming their most significant political triumph, one that will reverberate far beyond the borders here if Lieberman loses.

"An upset by Lamont would affect the political calculations of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who like Lieberman supported giving Bush authority to wage the Iraq war, and could excite interest in a comeback by former vice president Al Gore, who warned in 2002 that the war could be a grave strategic error. For at least the next year, any Democrat hoping to play on the 2008 stage would need to reckon with the implications of Lieberman's repudiation."

Lamont's stunner of a result asks further question for Democrats debating the parties best stance in the next Presidential campaign, as the Post ponders.

Its not just about bringing the boys home from Baghdad for all that the reverse is currently happening with even regiments due for time back in the US sent straight back onto Baghdad operations, it is also about how much the current war in Lebanon is starting to influence the domestic US analysis of the last (and ongoing) one in Iraq.

Sure Lamont campaigned on opposition to the Iraq war, but the growth of his lead in the polls as Lebanon burned, the UN fiddled and the US supplied the bombs, suggests that it might juist be what Israel's government likes to portray as the new front in the War on Terror which actually cost Liberman the Senate nomination.

Lebanon, for people like me, who have Lebanese friends with relatives in Beirut now, is above all about Lebanon; but for the voters of Connecticut Lebanon is also about Iraq and about the War on Terror and above all about the nature of the US' engagement with the wider world. For them, perhaps, Lebanon is about the future, about whether US troops are once again in a peacekeeping role in the middle east and about which peace they will be trying to keep.