Yeah, I agree. And one has to start wondering... just who WOULD vote for Schlesinger at this point? I mean maybe the same people that vote third party in normal elections, as a "protest vote"? But I agree, it's stupid when the alternative is possibly letting loony Lamont win.
It's the hard head absolutists who would rather see a rank seditionist and a despicable opportunist like LAMEont take this seat and turn it into George Soros and Cindy Sheehan's megaphone than to have to think a little pragmatically and vote for a guy who yes, may be liberal but he's right on the most important issue of our era: The war on terror. They just don't see beyond the ends of their noses sometimes and realize they're only helping to do harm by the nation by standing so unthinkingly on what they call "principle," but what I call short-sighted stubborness that actually damages the principles they claim to be standing pat for.
People like that are unable to see that there is a time it's safe to stand on principle, and there's a time that to protect those principles you must be pragmatic. And when you have one of those rare political moments that the enemy of your enemy is your friend, that is a time when a clear-eyed view of one's principles would tell them this is not a moment when standing on my supposed principles is going to advance them in any way.