"The Soy Lattes Won"

With few exceptions (Michael Barone), it has been funny to listen to and read the coverage of the Lamont/Lieberman primary and note it's complete lack of nuance and detail. This is especially odd since much of the MSM grand poobahs live in Connecticut or here in New York and would presumably know a thing or two about the Constitution State's demographic/electoral dynamics. Basically you have the Limousine Liberal Riviera towns on the Long Island Sound populated with Kennedy-style landed gentry and hedge fund magnates. Lamont all the way. Then you have Litchfield County, the summer and retirement paradise for NYC-based middle-aged gay couples and aging flower children from the Upper West Side. These people would vote for Trotsky if he was running. All Lamont. Finally, of course, there is that hive of socialism Yale Township, also known as New Haven. Do I need to tell you? Lamont. In Lieberman's corner were the decrepit cities that time forgot, that mostly live on the government dime and rely on Lieberman's seniority to keep the federal dollars flowing - places like Bridgeport, Hartford, and New London.

So it was union guys versus very, very rich people. The only question was turnout. Had there been a charity wine auction to benefit the Amazonian rainforest in Westport that day, Lieberman would have won.

To draw national implications or even implications for the general election from this totally predictable primary would be silly.

Sure enough John Fund writes in his Political Diary today:

"If you tell me how far you live from Long Island Sound and the water, I can pretty much tell you how you voted," one Connecticut political analyst told me. He noted that all of the tony towns close to the water went overwhelmingly for Ned Lamont, led by his native Greenwich, which gave Mr. Lieberman only one-third of the vote...Mike Barnicle of MSNBC noted that the split reminded him of an updated version of the battle between Eugene McCarthy's anti-war college student supporters and union hardhats over the Vietnam War: "Today, in Connecticut it was a battle between Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks, and the folks holding the soy lattes won."