MSNBC Hardball with Chris Matthews - Transcript

MSNBC Hardball with Chris Matthews - Transcript

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MATTHEWS: Ned Lamont, you‘re challenging an 18-year incumbent senator in the hottest race in the country this year. Do you feel that you ran the best campaign you could?

NED LAMONT (D), CT SENATE CANDIDATE: I do. It was a good campaign. Everybody asked me, what would do you different and I can‘t think of anything I would do different. We stuck to the issues. I think the issues were on our side, people fundamentally want to change in Washington D.C.

The people of Connecticut think that stay the course is not a winning strategy in Iraq. They want to start bringing our troops home. They want to start investing that money back in the United States of America, so I stick to the issues and that was very favorable for us.

MATTHEWS: If you were to win the general election and to go into the United States Senate, what would do you about the war in Iraq?

LAMONT: I think the people of Connecticut have said loud and clear, it‘s time for us to start bringing our troops home and I think that will resonate with the November elections and that would mean by early next year, we could have a resolution, we start bringing our troops home.

MATTHEWS: If you beat Joe Lieberman tonight in the Democratic primary in Connecticut and you beat him by any margin, do you believe that you can talk him out of running as an Independent?

LAMONT: I don‘t think that‘s for me to talk him out of anything, but I‘ve said I‘m following the rules of the Democratic primary, I‘m going to support the winner of the primary and my hunch is there‘s going to be an awful lot of Democrats around the state and elsewhere who are suggesting maybe that‘s what the senator should do as well.

MATTHEWS: Do you believe that Chris Dodd, the senior senator from Connecticut, will play a role in any power brokering to try to reduce the Democratic division here and have only one candidate with Democratic support, that means you?

LAMONT: I would hope so.

MATTHEWS: You hope he would come in and talk Joe out of running as a third party?

LAMONT: Look, that‘s his call to make.

MATTHEWS: But you‘d like him to do it, right?

LAMONT: I think it would be better for the Democratic Party. I think we should be united going forward. Look, this campaign, we‘ve got close to 30,000 Democrats that have registered in the last four months alone. That‘s a lot in a state like this. We‘ve got folks who are getting off the couches, coming off the sidelines, getting involved in this race and I think it‘s important that on August 9th, we be unified and go forward together.

MATTHEWS: Bill Clinton campaigned for Joe Lieberman in the primary. Whatever happens in the primary, do you believe that the winner of the primary, if it‘s you, would you go and call for Bill Clinton to campaign for you in the general?

LAMONT: Absolutely. I think he was a good president. I don‘t think in a heartbeat he would have had a unilateral invasion of Iraq and I would be proud to have him come back to the state.

MATTHEWS: Would the victory of Ned Lamont scare Hillary Clinton into taking a more forthright position against the war?

LAMONT: Ask her.

MATTHEWS: Do you think it‘s fair to morph Joe Lieberman, 18-year Democrat, into George W. Bush? Is that fair to morph him?

LAMONT: I do, because he went to the well of the Senate, right when we had the Reed-Levin amendment that would have us start taking our troops out of Iraq, he took Republican talking time and he stood up and he took those points and said the Democrats are wrong, they‘re undermining the president, they‘re undermining the war effort. And he sounded an awful lot like George Bush.

MATTHEWS: Should he have refused the kiss from the president?

LAMONT: I would have preferred a respectful handshake, but everybody communicates their own way.

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, will you cooperate in this investigation, should it be undertaken by Richard Blumenthal, the attorney general, into who sabotaged the election machinery of Joe Lieberman today?

LAMONT: Well, we‘ll cooperate with anybody. Absolutely.

MATTHEWS: Who is going to win tonight?

LAMONT: I think we are. I think the people of Connecticut are ready for a change, they‘re ready for a change of course. They don‘t want to stay the course in Iraq and they want to start investing here in the United States of America. That‘s what I hear.

MATTHEWS: Will you support the winner of the Democratic primary, whoever it is?

LAMONT: Yes.

MATTHEWS: Will Joe Lieberman?

LAMONT: I hope so.

MATTHEWS: Thank you very much.

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