Somewhere in Connecticut, a young moderate Democrat wakes in a sweat: “Say it ain’t so, Joe. Tell me it was all a bad dream.”

Crawling into his parents’ bed, he recounts, “I was sleeping so peacefully, so moderately, and who appeared in my dream but this French guy, Valmont or Lemont or something, and he ruined the whole thing.

“This guy wasn’t moderate at all; he was downright partisan. And by playing to the left’s anti-war crowd, he won the primary against every Connecticut moderate’s hero, Joe Lieberman. Is that a nightmare or what? It couldn’t come true could it?”

“Don’t worry, honey,” coos his moderately reassuring mom. “All the polls show that even if Ned Lamont beats Lieberman in the primary, then independents and Republicans will come to the rescue of the newly independent Lieberman in the general election. Moderation will prevail.”

But will it? Several weeks ago, I wrote that running as an independent “would likely be disastrous. To win, Lieberman has to win the primary.” That one line prompted a number of readers to write in making the moderate mother’s argument.

The July 20 Quinnipiac poll shows Lamont beating Lieberman 51-47 in the primary but Lieberman taking 51 percent to Lamont’s 27 percent to Republican Alan Schlesinger’s 9 percent in the general election. Lieberman is also quite popular with independents and Republicans, more so than with Democrats, so he might benefit from campaigning before a broader electorate. In that same poll, 70 percent of Republicans approved of the job that Lieberman was doing as senator, as compared to only 47 percent of Democrats and 52  percent of independents.

But here is why I believe that Lieberman would fare far worse running as an independent than polls and common wisdom suggest:

The dynamic of public opinion will change radically if Lieberman loses the primary. Lieberman’s current Democratic support will evaporate, as most will want to support the nominee and will resent his leaving the party.

The Republican numbers will also change. No matter how weak a candidate Schlesinger turns out to be, he will get more than 9 percent of the vote. He is essentially unknown today; in the Quinnipiac poll, 81 percent of respondents had never heard of him.

We have a pretty good sense of how unknown GOP Senate candidates fare in Connecticut. In the past three races, the Republican got 32, 34 and 32 percent of the vote. In a three-way race, it is possible that Schlesinger will get a bit less, but he is almost certain to break 25.

It will be a hard sell for Republicans to vote for Lieberman. Most will vote for their nominee, especially since a vote for Lieberman could end up being a vote for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) as majority leader.

Connecticut does have a large number of independents, as do many Northeast states. But for the most part they are Democratic-leaning independents. Seventy-three percent of independents disapproved of the way that George Bush was handling the war; they will not automatically fall into Lieberman’s camp.

Finally, consider the difficult position of national Democrats, who did not oppose Lieberman but vowed to support the nominee. Will they cut ads for Lamont, raise money for him, appear with him in the state? They will almost have to, to honor their pledge. And what about when Reid is asked if Lieberman would retain his committee seniority if he caucuses with Democrats?

For all of those reasons, it will be difficult for moderate mothers to tell soothing stories to their children. In our world of polarized parties, a moderate may not prevail.

Fortier is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.