Arianna Huffington asks readers to scribe an early concession speech for Ned Lamont, in the grand tradition of “as if.” Her point: Lamont is being micro-managed by professional muddlers who, in an effort to have him appeal to some imagined “middle” have only succeeded in quelling his originality and his chances to defeat the E. coli of candidates, Joe Give ’em Gastric Distress Lieberman.

Arianna writes:

It is bitterly ironic that instead of building on that momentum by continuing to make his case against Lieberman, Lamont has let himself become enmeshed in the same consultant-driven culture of caution and blandness that has produced a steady stream of modern candidates more worried about stepping on the land mines laid out by their opponents’ campaign teams than stepping forward to lead. The addition to the Lamont campaign after the primary of Democratic insiders Howard Wolfson, Doug Schoen, and Stephanie Cutter has been part of the problem. According to their poll-driven culture, one must move to the center and appeal to those in the middle. And, as a result, once-promising politicians are insidiously encouraged to lose their moral bearing — and the authenticity that made them so compelling in the first place. In the attempt to appeal to everyone, they end up losing their appeal. As Bill Curry puts it in the Hartford Courant , “Inundated with insider advice, [Lamont] grew more cautious; his message became blurred and ineffective…Three televised debates in the next eight days may tell the outcome. To win, Lamont must come off the ropes and go on the attack.”

My contribution to her blog was more an imagined mea culpa than a concession speech (yeah, tough guy, I rhymed the motherfucker):

Friendless Friendly Fire

It is in Autumn’s bowing grace
that I stand broken, bent and beaten
Not by Autumn’s falling haste
But by a Constitution eaten

With the ring inside my grasp
My opponent grabbed an ax
To chop a primary, to amputate
To add a second act

What is this ploy, this feint,
this countenance betrayed?
His party shed like so much skin
and tossed like a dish rag

I had won the bout
to face the other’s ire
When from the rear came Lieberman
wielding friendless friendly fire

And this is where I stumbled
Unsure of what to do
I trusted not intention
but let the devil have his due

To all who hear me in post script
Connect, Connecticut!
You have been used and sore abused
no ifs or ands or buts

My head is bowed, my heart a weight
my task not quite completed
I won the race but did not grasp
fair play could be defeated

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Let’s write our concession speeches in sand…

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Lieberman: He of the Friendless Friendly Fire!

You heard it here second!

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