Dear Senator Lieberman-

Congratulations on your campaign to retain your Seante seat. It was a good campaign, and it concluded with the voters speaking. Unfortunately, you lost.

Do you understand? You lost.

Now, as I understand it, you are contemplating running as an "independent" in the November election. There are several reasons why you should not do this.

First, you are not an "independent". You are a Democrat. You ran in the Democratic Party's primary and lost. Fair and square. No one in Connecticut (or anywhere else in this country, for that matter) would see your running in November as anything short of a cynical attempt to circumvent the bona fide results of a fair election.

Second, as a Democrat, you should want to actively refrain from doing anything that would weaken the Party, either within Connecticut or nationally. You must see that an attempt to run as an "independent" serves only to weaken the Party. Besides giving the opposition ready fodder for its never-ending character assassination of anything or anyone progressive, it diminishes you personally and politically within the Party hierarchy.

Third, none of the results of your continued pursuit of this post can come out positively. In the best case (for you), you win the seat as an "independent". Your influence in the Party will have been diminished, and the potential for further chaos within the Democratic Party is quite possible and even likely; as other Democrats take the "sore loser" approach and circumvent the Primaries, the use of the primaries as a tool to allow the Party to select "the best possbile candidate" is reduced to rubble. Furthermore, the "real" Democrats in the Senate will know they cannot count on you to work toward the benefit of the Party, and so your influence and ability to get things done in Congress will be further reduced.

And consider the worst possible case: You split the Democrat voters in Connecticut and allow a Republican to win the Senate seat. This would be the ultimate snatching-defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory scenario. Given that Connecticut is widely seen as being a Democratic state, and that one of the primary goals for the Democratic Party is to take as many Congressional seats away from a weakened and unpopular Republican Party as possible, your candidacy effectively giving away a seat would be regarded as nothing short of treason by Democrats nationwide. As I said, nothing good could come of this.

So, Senator, it's time for you to take a step back, put your bruised ego back in your pocket, and work to elect real Democratic candidates (read: those who have won their Primaries) to office. Unless, of course, you really are a proxy for the Bush administration. I'd rather not believe that charge, but your actions in the next weeks will do more to confirm or deny that charge than any words you may utter from now until Doomsday.

Most sincerely,

Jay Burns