After the first barrage...

From Ken Mehlman using "defeatocrats" and "adapt and win" roughly 1,450,342 times, to de facto GOP nominee Joe Lieberman lying out of his incumbent anus for the last 7 straight days, to the Weekly Standard all but putting a "Yes, Massa" caption by the cartoon of Sharpton, to Chuck Roberts calling Ned Lamont the "al Qaeda candidate" on national television, I think it's safe to say that last Tuesday's Connecticut primary was the official "Game On" signal for the 2006 midterms. How have Democrats responded? I must say, I'm impressed.

* First of all, all major Democrats (from here on out, I don't consider Mark Pryor a major Democrat), including the majorest of major Democrats (h/t FDL), came out to stand behind Lamont and denounce (in some degree or another) Joementum and the Joementum candidacy. That's good.

* Then, Lamont and Howard Dean and Russ Feingold went on Sunday talk shows and did quite well, doing their best to tie Lieberman to Dick Cheney (which, not surprisingly, is quite easy)...an extremely smart strategy given Cheney's -36% or whatever approval rating.

* Then, Arianna Huffington went on CNN and chastized the network for Roberts' "al Qaeda candidate" line...eventually getting Roberts to apologize to Lamont on-air.

* Then, Chris "Bandwagon Whore" Matthews made fun of the dying Joementum candidacy on Hardball, which is always a verification of where the conventional wisdom is headed.

In other words, it's 1-0 Good Guys. Well played. There are 84 more battles to be fought, but well played nonetheless.

Oh, and E.J. Dionne has a pretty decent look (h/t Susie) at the Battle for Dollars between Dean and Emanuel. My initial instinct was "Dean good, Rahm baaaad," but Dionne does a pretty good job of showing the logic behind Emanuel's actions. I still side with Dean, mind you, but it's pretty well-written.

(h/t to Crooks and Liars for all the great video links, by the way. Great site...not real sure why they're not on the blogroll...)