In the column I wrote for Time.com last night I said the Lieberman flame-out was part of a larger disconnect growing between Washington and the rest of the country, almost in the way tectonic plates grind against each other with mounting tension until the pressure is cut loose in a massive earthquake. I don't think it's ideological in the narrow sense, or at least not unidirectionally ideological. But given the Republican dominance of the federal government, it's really bad news for the GOP.

And look at yesterday's election. Joe wasn't the only incumbent to go down. Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) and Joe Schwarz (R-MI) both went down too. Schwarz, significantly, went down to a challenger on the right.

Each went down in their own way. And it's difficult to imagine a more inverted image than Lieberman and McKinney both getting whacked. But any pol watching this knows they're each a chapter of the same story. For three incumbents to go down in party primaries on one day when not that many elections were even held is close to unheard of.