The quandary faced by anti-Lieberman bloggers...

If bloggers supporting Lamont keep pushing this race into the national spotlight (which is clearly the case), don't they run the risk of opening the floodgates for the primary? In other words, a vote previously dominated by "hard core partisans" becomes a more reasonable sampling of the Connecticut electorate because they've been more exposed to the race and understand the stakes in sitting on the sidelines.

If Dems - and a healthy number of previously unaffiliated voters - come out in large numbers for the primary...

About 900,000, or 49 percent, of the state's voters are unaffiliated. They're the largest block, followed by Democrats and then Republicans.

Some local registrars of voters said that this year they've seen a larger-than-usual number of unaffiliated voters ask to switch to a political party, typically the Democratic Party.

George Cody, the Democratic registrar in New Canaan, said some Republicans have asked to change their affiliation to vote in the primary. But it's too late. The deadline to change from Democrat to Republican or Republican to Democrat was in May.

Judith Beaudreau, the Democratic registrar in Vernon, said she heard some unaffiliated voters saying they wanted to become Democrats to vote in the primary between U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman and challenger Ned Lamont.

...Lieberman is fairly close to a 'sure thing.' If leftist bloggers continue to generate national attention, they are likely to ensure that happens...thus making them look less like the political kingmakers they envision themselves as and more like the 'netroots' that ran Dean so far down the wrong road in the 2004 Presidential primaries. Kind of puts them in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" sort of situation, eh? How to walk the line between stirring up their loyal, leftist base without stirring up the general electorate that disagrees with most of their message? A tough line to walk.