Connecticut Primary Update

I've been (thankfully) out at a meeting tonight, so I haven't been able to follow each excruciating moment, but apparently it's a nail biter:

11:08 PM
98% of precincts reporting

Lamont: 51.8%
Lieberman: 48.2%

If Lieberman was hoping that his "hacking" story would give him the excuse to run as an independent, he'd better find another one. Because even the National Review is now skeptical:

It appears as though joe2006.com was DoS’d this morning, hit with a huge influx of traffic, or both. All 74 websites (reg. wall) on the joe2006.com server were unreachable, including the company joe2006.com appears to be hosted with: myhostcamp.com. Myhostcamp.com rents one server from The Planet. I contacted The Planet this morning and they wouldn’t disclose any more information.

The joe2006.com server is running cPanel 10, which explains why Rob of DailyKos found a lot of open ports. The “Suspended Account” page that many saw could have been triggered not only by a delinquent bill: over-usage of bandwidth and over-usage of storage are other possibilities. To my knowledge, cPanel displays the same page by default, no matter the cause.

Joe2006.com was setup by Dan Geary who has an e-mail address at Hotmail and no discernable website. Likely, someone in the Lieberman camp knew Geary to be “technical” and someone who could help out. I’ve never heard of myhostcamp and I’ve been working with websites and website providers a long time, making it possible that Geary personally knows, or is even involved with, the myhostcamp.com hosting company.

While it’s possible that someone actually hacked joe2006.com, from what I’ve seen, this seems to be the least likely option. More likely, this whole episode started last night with a simple over-usage of bandwidth. In the rush to get the server back up, a temporary site using minimal bandwidth was likely uploaded — “Vote for Who You Know, Vote Joe.” I looked at the source code on this particular page, and it didn’t appear to be coded by a hacker — the code was much too fancy. (Who ever heard of a W3C-compliant hacker?) Probably, the page was put together in DreamWeaver or FrontPage. My instinct tells me FrontPage since cPanel can be setup with FrontPage Extensions. (Nevermind that a hacker would be more likely to say something obnoxious about or denigrating of Lieberman.)

Because joe2006.com appeared to have been hacked (a sensible guess when the site went down on election eve), bandwidth problems were complicated by the ensuing deluge of hits, finally bringing down the entire server this morning. Drudge links and heavy traffic tend to do this when there isn't a backup plan in place. The site has been up and down ever since.

As for a staged operation, that seems unlikely given all of the above. This looks to be simply the work of an inexperienced technical consultant, but that’s just my guess.

Even if Lamont wins, Joe Lieberman owes him an apology. His own staff wasn't up to the job, and he accused without having any evidence, let alone proof.

But that's Lieberman for you -- he's All About Joe.

(Hat tip: Joe in DC)

UPDATE: Heh. Sometimes it pays to be the little guy. Kos and MyDD are both kerblooey at the moment, so this Little Engine That Could is giving you another update:

96% of precincts reporting:
Lamont 51.9%
Lieberman 48.1%

And Joementum has just conceded.

Now we're going to see fully exposed the love affair between the right wing and Joe Lieberman. For Joe Lieberman is no "moderate Democrat."

Glenn Greenwald, the fastest-rising blogger in the world, said as much last month:

Those who are most supportive of Lieberman and angry about the challenge he faces are people like David Frum and David Brooks. Why would hard-core Republican neoconservatives be so emotionally attached to defending Democrat Joe Lieberman? Why do pro-Bush, highly conservative Republicans such as blogger Mark Coffey proclaim themselves to be "huge fans" of Lieberman? Because far more than he is a Democrat or a "liberal," Joe Lieberman is a neoconservative and therefore -- on the issues that matter most -- is their ideological and political compatriot. In the 1990s, Joe Lieberman's positions on the dominant issues of the day may have rendered him "moderate to conservative," but on the issues that matter most now -- in light of the ideological realignment we have had in the wake of 9/11 -- he is nothing of the sort. He is a neoconservative, and therefore the political enemy of those who oppose that philosophy. Why would opponents of neoconservatism possibly support the re-election of a neconservative?

Much of the criticism directed at the challenge to Joe Lieberman is based on the premise that dissatisfaction with Lieberman is driven merely by one little issue - Iraq. But that argument is at once both factually false and absurd. Lieberman is supportive of the neonconservative agenda almost across the board. And this ideological conflict, far from being one little issue, is really the issue, and Joe Lieberman is on the other side, politically and ideologically, from those who are opposing his re-election. He has even adopted the neoconservative rhetoric of equating criticisms of George Bush with undermining American interests and national security. What could be more legitimate than urging the defeat of an elected official who has enthusiastically embraced and promoted a disastrous and destructive philosophical approach to the most significant foreign and domestic issues our country faces?

If Holy Joe follows through on his promise to run as an independent, and any Democrat (Sen. Boxer, I'm talking to you) who decides to support him will be aligning him/herself with the likes of William Kristol and Sean Hannity, and will similarly deserve our contempt.

Republicans will, of course, do whatever they can to defeat Ned Lamont by turning out in droves for Joementum. And it might even work. But if it does, Lieberman will no longer be able to position himself as a loyal Democrat, because once he lies down with dogs, he's going to wake up with fleas.