Anyone recall the New York Times' hit piece against Howard Dean's wife?

Contrast that with yesterday's puff piece about Ned Lamont's wife. She's modest, petite, and just wants to help:

Ms. Lamont, one of the most successful women ever in the lofty realm of venture capital, is the not-so-hidden hand behind her husband, Ned, the political novice who managed to topple a three-term incumbent in the Democratic primary.

He counts on her for money -- the couple has contributed $8.7 million to the campaign -- and for message, and even sometimes to manipulate his schedule. If he beats Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, now running as an independent, again in the general election, Ms. Lamont may have to adjust her high-powered career to avoid conflicts of interest and accommodate his commuting to Washington. But in mailings to voters and televised appearances, she is the petite, well-dressed blonde at the rim of the frame.

"I don't have any desire to be public or famous," said Ms. Lamont, whom friends nicknamed "the bashful nobody" growing up in Whitefish Bay, Wis. "We're not in this to lose," she added. "We're all very invested in it."

Financial disclosure forms filed with the Senate show that Ms. Lamont, who turns 50 this month and is called Annie, has contributed far more than her husband has to the family's net worth, pegged in the documents as $90 million to $332 million.

And as a public service, the Times is even providing their readers with touching details that the Lamont campaign left out about the world's most frugal millionaire wife:

Campaign literature does not even mention that Ms. Lamont works for a living, let alone how successful she is. One brochure features a casually dressed Ms. Lamont in the kitchen helping her husband, as he uses a mixing bowl, under the heading, "For as long as I've known him, Ned has been stirring things up." Inside, the mailing shows a beaming bride being dipped by her husband at their 1983 wedding.

The text's description of how Ms. Lamont "grew up in a big family with a small budget -- and one Coke a week" was her idea. "There was so much talk about the Greenwich millionaire at the time, and I said, 'People don't understand my upbringing,' " she explained in an interview.

Ms. Lamont was the youngest of six children in a family where, she recalled, everyone was expected to "wash Glad bags 10 times" and "carefully unwrap presents" so the paper could be reused. Her father, Carroll B. Huntress, a real estate agent who earned $25,000 in his best year selling homes, struggled to send her to Stanford University, which cost about $6,000 a year at the time.

I'd almost swear it was because the NYT wanted Dean to lose against Kerry, but wants Lamont to beat Lieberman.

How quickly people forget that Lieberman was once a standard bearer for the Democratic Party. Why, I can remember that way back in 2000, he ran for Vice President. Now they won't even allow him to be a DINO....

(The Times doesn't seem to have written up Hadassah Lieberman, who dares to be the wife of Lamont's disgraceful opponent. It's too early for a last minute hit piece, but they still have time to reheat and serve up Salon's hit piece accusing her of being "in bed" with big companies.....)

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds provides strong evidence that Lamont might be betraying his "netroots base" by moving to the center.

I can certainly understand the abandonment of a losing candidate. But what's with the apparently urgent need to sanitize a losing leftist into a moderate? Might it be that certain powerful figures don't want to be seen as having supported the losing left? Could this be called damage control?