Last week, Senator Joseph Lieberman lost the Democratic Primary in Connecticut. In effect, he’s been booted out of his own party, no longer able to run for Senate under the label “Democrat.”

The Democrats in Connecticut excommunicated Lieberman because he was seen as being too supportive of President Bush’s foreign policy. So, the Democrats’ former Vice Presidential nominee will now be running as an independent in order to keep the seat that he’s held since 1988.

After it became clear that Lieberman was no longer considered a Democrat in good standing by Connecticut’s voters, I argued that it was “a great loss for Connecticut, for Democrats, and for America.”

Brain Terminal reader Keith Leonard disagrees with the level of importance that I and others have placed on the outcome of the election:

Although Lieberman lost it was only by a close margin (52-48).  I keep hearing from pundits, and you, that this is a resounding victory for the anti-war left.  On the contrary, I think it shows that the Democratic party, at least in Connecticut, is split on the issue.  I think the ‘reasonable’ left (as opposed to the radical left) deserves more credit.

It’s true that the election was not a landslide, but that doesn’t mean that the results are insignificant. The pacifist left has shown that they now have enough power in the Democratic party to knock off a guy who, just six years ago, was respected enough within his own party to be nominated for Vice President. There’s no question this is a turning point.

When one faction within a party achieves dominance over another, that’s significant. Perhaps the reasonable left deserves credit for being reasonable, but they can’t claim credit for controlling the Democratic party, at least not in Connecticut. The reasonable left lost to the pacifist left. There’s no other way to put it. And if anyone should doubt whether the reasonable Democrats lost, just look at the latest Rasmussen poll to come out of Connecticut:

Half (52%) of Lamont voters believe Bush should be impeached and removed from office. Just 15% of Lieberman voters share that view.

More than half of the Democrats in Connecticut who just voted to remove Senator Lieberman from office also believe that President Bush should be impeached. That’s a pretty big bloc of Democrats, and if this bloc represents the new power base of the Democratic party, then they should put their money where their mouths are and try to play that hand.

For a long time, the Democratic party leadership has gotten away with a double game: criticize everything about President Bush’s handling of the war on terror, but don’t offer any solutions of their own. They know that if they offer specifics, those can be criticized as well. But they want to avoid that criticism, so they keep quiet when it comes time to suggest alternatives.

If the Democrats are this cowardly in fighting the war of words that surrounds the war on terror, how can anyone expect them to effectively fight the war on terror itself?

The Connecticut primary shows that the pacifist wing of the Democratic party is on the rise. And if they should ever find themselves holding power in Washington, their first priority would not be to fight the Jihadists whose bombs are exploding all over the world, their first priority would be to impeach the only president who’s made a serious effort to combat those Jihadists. Interesting priorities.

Trying to put President Bush on trial for being too aggressive in fighting this war will tell the rest of America exactly where today’s Democratic party stands. I don’t think they’re politically suicidal enough to try something like that, but if Ned Lamont’s voters had their way, that’s exactly what would happen.

Will the Lamonties have enough influence within the party to push the Democrats towards impeachment after the November elections? Only time will tell.