Waterbury

The Associated Press has declared Joe Lieberman the winner in Connecticut, avenging his loss to Ned Lamont in this summer's Democratic primary.

Lamont lost the momentum in this race literally days after his stunning primary triumph-- when he took off for a vacation in Maine. His campaign manager's ugly verbal attack on the city of Waterbury -- a socially conervative Lieberman stronghold in the primary whose voters, late in turning against the war, could have been Lamont converts in the fall-- didn't help either.

-- Steve Kornacki

The polls were right about one thing: Ned Lamont's undeniable appeal to people who are well-off and white.

According to the town-by-town returns, Lamont padded his margins over Joe Lieberman in places like Greenwich, where he received 68 percent of the vote, and New Canaan where he got 62 percent.

But most impressive was his performance in Cornwall, a pleasant-looking town of 1,400 up in Litchfield County, where Lamont drew 91 percent of the primary vote.

How does that happen, exactly?

-- Josh Benson

UPDATE: Steve Kornacki has more analysis. From an email:

"Yeah...although Lieberman loses New Haven, his hometown. His best town in the state is East Haven, the lily-white New Haven suburb. And Lieberman owns the Naugatuck Valley...Waterbury, et al. Waterbury was, I think, the only East Coast city (population: 100,000+) to vote for Bush in '04. It's a real throwback town: gritty, but socially conservative and dominated by a GOP machine. Lamont's dominance in Litchfield Co. is interesting too: In theory, those are the kinds of voters who an independent would be counting on in the fall."

UPDATE UPDATE: From Kornacki:

"For what it's worth, I looked up Waterbury's '04 numbers, and Kerry actually eked it out by 161 votes. But the point is still the same."

The American painter John Frederick Kensett (1816-72), whose late paintings are currently the subjec  read more »