I knew it was over for Joe Lieberman when I opened the latest copy of Time magazine at my gym and saw Joe Klein kissing him goodbye.

Lieberman’s career and stature in the Senate have been built, more than anything, upon the careful cultivation of columnists and opinion-makers like Klein who disdain partisanship and lap up Lieberman’s above-it-all centrism. Yet here was Klein not only issuing what amounted a political eulogy for the Connecticut senator but in so many words saying he had it coming.

“Given that the entire Middle East seems ready to collapse into chaos this summer, it might seem an appropriate time to revise or extend those remarks [in support of the Iraq war] — to regret his naivete or defend his long-term vision or slam Bush for carelessly betraying that vision ... or something. But the Senator isn’t doing that,” Klein writes. “I could never imagine myself voting against him. But he was profoundly wrong about the most important issue of the past five years.”

Maybe “over” overstates the matter. But certainly it’s clear now that Joe Lieberman is in the political fight of his life. And the outlook does not look good.

Until last week, the big question was whether primary challenger Ned Lamont could deny Lieberman the Democratic nomination. But few thought that Lieberman would actually be denied a fourth term in the Senate, given the crossover support from Republicans and independents he should gain in a general election.

But even that doesn’t seem a certainty now.

Last week, Quinnipiac released a poll that showed Lieberman behind Lamont by a four-point margin (47 to 51 percent) in the primary but clobbering him in the general (51 to 27 percent).

This week, however, Rasmussen released a poll showing a very different picture.

It had Lamont and Lieberman tied at 40 percent, with Republican placeholder candidate Alan Schlesinger bringing up the rear with a feeble 13 percent. (In the Quinnipiac poll, Schlesinger pulled a meager 9 percent,)

Rasmussen’s sample size was smaller, and some question the methodology of his polls. But there seems little doubt that Lieberman’s support is deteriorating while Lamont’s is growing.

And a Lamont victory in the primary, which now must be the odds-on outcome, could shake up the numbers in unexpected and unpredictable ways. At a minimum, it’s hard to figure how a Lieberman defeat in the primary will make him more popular rather than less.

So what’s happened to Joe Lieberman, one of those fixtures of the Washington political scene like a Joe Biden or an Orrin Hatch who scarcely has to worry about any serious challenge to their decades-long incumbency?

I think people really are going to write about this race after it’s over, but I’m not sure it’ll be for the reasons people think. The blogs have been important. They’ve generated money and press coverage, which are both key. But Lieberman’s in trouble with Connecticut primary voters.

Usually in big elections you’ll have particular races that come completely out of the blue, at least to the established voices, ones that show something big that, in retrospect, was clearly latent in the politics of a state or district but couldn’t become visible without some spark to bring it to the fore.

Clearly, one person who’s been totally caught off guard by this is Joe Lieberman. And that tells me he’s fallen seriously out of touch with his constituents.

“Out of touch” is a phrase that is often tossed around in some characterological or poetic sense. It is perhaps the cliche of contemporary politics. But I mean it in a more concrete sense. Most successful pols, especially those who have to run in competitive or even semicompetitive elections, keep a good read on the pulse of their constituents — through a mix of retail politicking, political machines, polling, whatever.

To use just one example next door to Connecticut, look at Hillary Clinton. She’s been working that state for six years. I have no doubt that she and her inner circle have every county and even decent-size town mapped out in 10 different ways — with pork, cultivating community leaders, keeping an eye on sources of opposition. The particulars aren’t the issue. And you could say the same thing about pols all over the country. My point is that I really doubt much of anything would catch that team seriously by surprise in New York state.

One might say that Lieberman has stuck to his views on Iraq notwithstanding the political perils or the unpopularity of the position in his party. And that’s certainly true in the sense that he had to know he wasn’t winning any points with the broad mass of Dems on this issue. But I don’t think he really understood the peril at home. Because if he had, he would have been more prepared for this. And he wasn’t.

That’s why he’s in a world of trouble today.

Marshall is editor of talkingpointsmemo.com. His column appears in The Hill each week.
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