Christy Hardin Smith: "I was on a conference call yesterday with Speaker-to-Be Nancy Pelosi ....

These calls are nothing new. Nancy Pelosi has been doing leadership reach-out to bloggers over the last year, and I've been on calls with her and her staffers a lot over the past few months discussing the House leadership's strategies and issues that they felt were important.

... an illustration that some folks in the Democratic leadership — be it Pelosi or Howard Dean or folks in Russ Feingold's office or any number of many, many others — truly understand that having a direct connection to bloggers, who have a direct connection to readers who are real people facing real issues on a daily basis … well, that is an awfully valuable perspective, and one that by-passes the whole KStreet "pay to play" mentality that has dominated the Republican-controlled Congress the last few years. And it gives the politicians a chance to talk to folks who aren't just sucking up to them for power or some other personal gain purpose, but who are honest and "tell it like it is" (sometimes way more than they want to hear!) — which they need and want, frankly, given how much of a bubble they live in inside the Beltway.

There are a lot of issues on which all of us are hoping for accountability. Individually, we probably rank them in differing order, but for me, re-establishing a firm grounding in the rule of law, the Constitution, and the separation of powers between the branches of government so that we are no longer operating as a parliamentary rubber stamp as the Republicans have done the last six years are at the top of my own list.

On the House side, first Pelosi has to get elected Speaker. Although we all expect that to happen, she can't take it for granted. Then, the Democrats have to get legislation passed — and they aren't always going to do it the way we want — but it will be a LOT more in line with our philosophy than what we've been seeing.

I think now is a good time to take a step back and a deep breath and give Pelosi a few days to get things set up the way they need to be done to lay the foundation for a number of things. They have a LOT of things to tackle … but will only be able to do it one step at a time. We need to give her and the rest of the Democratic leadership, including a whole lot of folks who are in line to be very effective committee chairs, a little space to actually govern, while holding them to the principles that we all hold to be important. We don't set accountability aside because we won the election — but we also should not start eating our own right out of the gate.

Entrenched incumbency: Lamont was attempting something no one other than Paul Wellstone has done in the modern political era: defeat a statewide incumbent as a candidate who has never run for major office before. And Lieberman was no regular incumbent—this was a man presenting himself as a hybrid of both parties, and a 36-year political institution in Connecticut —the most careerist of career politicians.

Abandonment of the Democratic nominee by the Democratic Party: The story of the national Democratic Party’s abandonment of Lamont will likely be written more fully in the coming weeks, with explanations of both how this happened and even more importantly, why. But the broad strokes are obvious: Almost every major figure in national Democratic politics save John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Wes Clark and John Edwards refused to seriously help the Lamont campaign. We saw this coming when, right after Lieberman lost the primary, he was welcomed with a standing ovation back to the Senate club by his Democratic colleagues. Subsequently, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid indicated that Lieberman’s seniority would be preserved if he won reelection, despite the fact that he officially abandoned the party. To understand how much this abandonment affected the race, consider that Lieberman bragged in October to the Associated Press that he was actively using Reid’s promise of seniority to promote his key “experience and seniority” argument—and that such an argument was helping him win over voters. On Election Day, Lieberman appeared on Fox News to thank the national Democratic Party for refusing to help Lamont, the Democratic nominee.

Refusal by outside groups or lawmakers to serve as surrogates for Lamont: Lieberman had, among others, right-wing radio, the national Republican Party, and the President and Vice President of the United States repeatedly attacking Lamont on his behalf. He also had various Republican and Democratic senators at his side, lending credibility to all of his negative attacks on Lamont, and more generally to the legitimacy of his general election candidacy that was, at heart, an affront to the democratic primary process.

Lamont, by contrast, had none of that. It wasn’t just that people like Illinois Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and former President Bill Clinton refused to campaign for Lamont even though they had both whispered official endorsements of him. It was that most of those who did nominally help the campaign only agreed to voice positive statements about Lamont, but refused to forcefully take on Lieberman for attacking the Democratic Party or violating campaign finance disclosure laws. Take, for instance, the behavior of the major government watchdog groups. Except for Public Campaign Action Fund, not one of them made a peep after the New Haven Register exposed Lieberman for abusing campaign finance law to create an illegal $380,000 slush fund. Similarly, other than Wes Clark who filmed an ad going after Lieberman by name or Kerry who issued a press release nailing Lieberman for his Iraq position, not one national surrogate really went after the incumbent senator.