The Sen. Joe Lieberman campaign announced that Bill Clinton will be up in Waterbury, Conn., to campaign for the Senator. All while Hillary is declining to publicly do much for her next-state neighbor.

The Clinton arrival comes at the same time as a Quinnipiac poll that shows Lieberman’s challenger in the Democrat primary, Ned Lamont, now leading Lieberman by a couple of percentage points. MoveOn and the Kossacks must just be laughing manically about this. After seeing their anti-war babe McKinney essentially lose on Tuesday night (she’s in a runoff), this is uplifting news.

There are a number of what we’ll call “reasonable” Democrats in Washington and elsewhere watching the Lieberman race closely, not so much because of what it means for Lieberman, but for what the outcome means for the party and the 2008 presidential race. “I don’t think people on the far left understand what they are doing,” says a Washington-based Democrat political consultant. “It’s alarming to a lot of us, and we’re not sure why it isn’t alarming to more people within the party hierarchy.”

Meanwhile, Republicans are quietly watching, and hoping — regardless of the outcome in the Democrat primary in Connecticut, a lot of people believe the only winner is the Republican Party.