Quote of note:

"It's not his voting record that's so bad," said Keith Crane, a Connecticut resident who runs DumpJoe.com and is part of an effort to find a primary opponent in 2006 for Mr. Lieberman. "It's his rhetoric that's horrid. We're an opposition party now. That means we all have to stick together."

Here's Why the Centrist Democrat Is Feeling Unloved
By NICHOLAS CONFESSOR
Published: April 3, 2005

...Often, centrist Democrats thrived as in-house critics of their own party. Henry (Scoop) Jackson jabbed at his colleagues' dovishness; Daniel Patrick Moynihan at their unwillingness to rein in entitlement spending; Joe Lieberman at their reluctance to talk about values.

But like many species that have departed the world, centrist Democrats today struggle with an unfriendly environment. After more than four years of Republican dominance in Washington, the ecosystem that allowed them to thrive is shrinking fast. There are fewer deals to be cut, as when Ernest Hollings, a Democratic senator, partnered with the Republicans Phil Gramm and Warren Rudman on deficit reduction in the 1980's; much less incentive to reach across the aisle, as the Democratic Senator John Breaux did on Medicare in the 1990's; and in some ways less for the Democrats' self-styled moderates to criticize in their own party.