Et tu, Ned?

I gritted my teeth a bit, I’ll admit, when I read here that John Kerry endorsed Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination; though I honestly don’t think Kerry was trying to slam John Edwards, I don’t think it showed much loyalty either (but then again, I think endorsing The Last Honest Man would actually have been the right thing for Al Gore to do in 2004; even though Lieberman had no shot, thank God, they did campaign together four years earlier).

But when I read here from Matt Stoller that Ned Lamont, the former Democratic senatorial candidate from Connecticut in 2006, endorsed Obama, that’s when I knew I had to say something.

I should note that the numbers definitely favor Obama over Edwards at the moment as we know, though Hillary has a huge lead in the super delegate count – sorry, but you’ll have to check The Daily Kos if you want to find out more about what that means exactly. And I also realize that many big Democratic names are jumping all over themselves trying to climb onto the “Obama-rama” bandwagon (Patrick Murphy’s decision to endorse when he did still looks prescient, but we’ll see).

But see Ned, here’s the rub; John Edwards campaigned for you. Not Barack Obama (who spoke out for Lieberman and didn’t even come to Connecticut for fear of offending Holy Joe), and certainly not Hillary Clinton (Bill, according to Stoller, went on Larry King soon after Lamont won and said “there was no difference between the candidates,” basically torpedoing Lamont’s support and costing him the election).

No, Ned, John Edwards had your back. And that’s one of the reasons we in the netroots hold Edwards in such high regard; because he stands on principle even when it’s unpopular.

I think you’re a fair minded guy who’s trying to do what you think is right for the party as a whole.

But still, you blew it.

Update: Jane Smiley of HuffPo has more here; Larry O'Donnell was a fraud when he lost his mind tearing into Willard Mitt Romney also - the last thing I'm doing to do is defend The Mittster, but that doesn't mean that you turn into a spitting, hysterical fool against him either.

And by the way, I encourage anyone reading this to follow Jane's example (here).