A little over a year ago, I raised the possibility that Chuck Hagel could be primaried by the right in 2008 the same as the left did to Joe Lieberman in 2006. We’ll never know for sure how that would have played, because Hagel opted to retire and not stand for re-election. But the two senators’ fates appear tied nonetheless, as the top of Memeorandum at noon today indicates (see below left, image is also clickable).
Lieberman has already endorsed McCain, and in fact did so long before it was apparent that McCain would land the GOP nomination. In the Wall Street Journal article featured, Lieberman continues to make the case for his longtime colleague. Hagel has not yet endorsed Barack Obama, but it seems increasingly likely, as the Huffington Post article by Sam Stein just below suggests.
One more thing: Out of the blogs listed as following the two stories, a non-trivial majority are liberal or non-partisan reporter blogs. And there’s another imbalance: I see conservative bloggers supporting the Lieberman op-ed, and liberal bloggers criticizing it. Meanwhile, there are plenty of liberal bloggers supporting the article about Hagel, but no right-leaning bloggers weighing in on the same. I’ll grant that this is a very small sample, but I mention it because it’s a pattern I recognize: the leftosphere is more active than the rightosphere in contesting the opposing side’s storylines.
Then again, the left has had no small amount of practice going after Lieberman, while the right has ignored Hagel for awhile. Which may itself be part of the problem, and something to correct sooner rather than later.