I was sorry to learn of the sudden death of 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman. But his long and stormy career did offer some important lessons about party loyalty, which I wrote about at New York:
Joe Lieberman was active in politics right up to the end. The former senator was the founding co-chair of the nonpartisan group No Labels, which is laying the groundwork for a presidential campaign on behalf of a yet-to-be-identified bipartisan “unity ticket.” Lieberman did not live to see whether No Labels will run a candidate. He died on Wednesday at 82 due to complications from a fall. But this last political venture was entirely in keeping with his long career as a self-styled politician of the pragmatic center, which often took him across party boundaries.
Lieberman’s first years in Connecticut Democratic politics as a state legislator and then state attorney general were reasonably conventional. He was known for a particular interest in civil rights and environmental protection, and his identity as an observant Orthodox Jew also drew attention. But in 1988, the Democrat used unconventional tactics in his challenge to Republican U.S. senator Lowell Weicker. Lieberman positioned himself to the incumbent’s right on selected issues, like Ronald Reagan’s military operations against Libya and Grenada. He also capitalized on longtime conservative resentment of his moderate opponent, winning prized endorsements from William F. and James Buckley, icons of the right. Lieberman won the race narrowly in an upset.
Almost immediately, Senator Lieberman became closely associated with the Democratic Leadership Council. The group of mostly moderate elected officials focused on restoring the national political viability of a party that had lost five of the six previous presidential elections; it soon produced a president in Bill Clinton. Lieberman became probably the most systematically pro-Clinton (or in the parlance of the time, “New Democrat”) member of Congress. This gave his 1998 Senate speech condemning the then-president’s behavior in the Monica Lewinsky scandal as “immoral” and “harmful” a special bite. He probably did Clinton a favor by setting the table for a reprimand that fell short of impeachment and removal, but without question, the narrative was born of Lieberman being disloyal to his party.
Perhaps it was his public scolding of Clinton that convinced Al Gore, who was struggling to separate himself from his boss’s misconduct, to lift Lieberman to the summit of his career. Gore tapped the senator to be his running mate in the 2000 election, making him the first Jewish vice-presidential candidate of a major party. He was by all accounts a disciplined and loyal running mate, at least until that moment during the Florida recount saga when he publicly disclaimed interest in challenging late-arriving overseas military ballots against the advice of the Gore campaign. You could argue plausibly that the ticket would have never been in a position to potentially win the state without Lieberman’s appeal in South Florida to Jewish voters thrilled by his nomination to become vice-president. But many Democrats bitter about the loss blamed Lieberman.
As one of the leaders of the “Clintonian” wing of his party, Lieberman was an early front-runner for the 2004 presidential nomination. A longtime supporter of efforts to topple Saddam Hussein, Lieberman had voted to authorize the 2003 invasion of Iraq, like his campaign rivals John Kerry and John Edwards and other notable senators including Hillary Clinton. Unlike most other Democrats, though, Lieberman did not back off this position when the Iraq War became a deadly quagmire. Ill-aligned with his party to an extent he did not seem to perceive, his presidential campaign quickly flamed out, but not before he gained enduring mockery for claiming “Joe-mentum” from a fifth-place finish in New Hampshire.
Returning to the Senate, Lieberman continued his increasingly lonely support for the Iraq War (alongside other heresies to liberalism, such as his support for private-school education vouchers in the District of Columbia). In 2006, Lieberman drew a wealthy primary challenger, Ned Lamont, who soon had a large antiwar following in Connecticut and nationally. As the campaign grew heated, President George W. Bush gave his Democratic war ally a deadly gift by embracing him and kissing his cheek after the State of the Union Address. This moment, memorialized as “The Kiss,” became central to the Lamont campaign’s claim that Lieberman had left his party behind, and the challenger narrowly won the primary. However, Lieberman ran against him in the general election as an independent, with significant back-channel encouragement from the Bush White House (which helped prevent any strong Republican candidacy). Lieberman won a fourth and final term in the Senate with mostly GOP and independent votes. He was publicly endorsed by Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani, among others from what had been the enemy camp.
The 2006 repudiation by his party appeared to break something in Lieberman. This once-happiest of happy political warriors, incapable of holding a grudge, seemed bitter, or at the very least gravely offended, even as he remained in the Senate Democratic Caucus (albeit as formally independent). When his old friend and Iraq War ally John McCain ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, Lieberman committed a partisan sin by endorsing him. His positioning between the two parties, however, still cost him dearly: McCain wanted to choose him as his running mate, before the Arizonan’s staff convinced him that Lieberman’s longtime pro-choice views and support for LGBTQ rights would lead to a convention revolt. The GOP nominee instead went with a different “high-risk, high-reward” choice: Sarah Palin.
After Barack Obama’s victory over Lieberman’s candidate, the new Democratic president needed every Democratic senator to enact the centerpiece of his agenda, the Affordable Care Act. He got Lieberman’s vote — but only after the senator, who represented many of the country’s major private-insurance companies, forced the elimination of the “public option” in the new system. It was a bitter pill for many progressives, who favored a more robust government role in health insurance than Obama had proposed.
By the time Lieberman chose to retire from the Senate in 2012, he was very near to being a man without a party, and he reflected that status by refusing to endorse either Obama or Mitt Romney that year. By then, he was already involved in the last great project of his political career, No Labels. He did, with some hesitation, endorse Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in 2016. But his long odyssey away from the yoke of the Democratic Party had largely landed him in a nonpartisan limbo. Right up until his death, he was often the public face of No Labels, particularly after the group’s decision to sponsor a presidential ticket alienated many early supporters of its more quotidian efforts to encourage bipartisan “problem-solving” in Congress.
Some will view Lieberman as a victim of partisan polarization, and others as an anachronistic member of a pro-corporate, pro-war bipartisan elite who made polarization necessary. Personally, I will remember him as a politician who followed — sometimes courageously, sometimes foolishly — a path that made him blind to the singular extremism that one party has exhibited throughout the 21st century, a development he tried to ignore to his eventual marginalization. But for all his flaws, I have no doubt Joe Lieberman remained until his last breath committed to the task he often cited via the Hebrew term tikkun olam: repairing a broken world.
My Former spouse told me “The State is supposed to pay for the boys support and needs- don’t bug me about it!”
As the mother of two, now grown sons, who had a former spouse become incarcerated immediately following our divorce, his then Temporary Child Support Order was put on hold, NOT ACCRUING interest or anything while he went to prison for 8 years. He had his medical, dental, 3 hots and a cot, recreation access sufficient to build things to sell to other inmates, their families and friends, and had to send NO MONEY to support his children. I was toughing it, working a clerical job, Medicaid, Foodstamps for the boys, yard sales and hand me downs mostly for their church and school clothes. I Pro Se attempted to get an order for Child Support for during those eight years, after I barely (he went for a minimum wage job so as not to pay what was appropriate- $10 job before he went in. Kept getting a crotchety, old goat of a judge, rudely barking, “Ya can’t get money out of someone in jail.” I wanted to see the statute, but nobody would tell me, so when his new bride (married after out 3 months) cried “Abuse”” he was violated on his Probation and messed my upkeep of our sons up, me stressed already, I had to drop out of my Paralegal course at Valencia (started when I was 40, realizing the boys weren’t going to get anything decent with me working clerically) and was hospitalized for Major Depression Recurrent.
No these guys/gals have not
PAID THEIR DEBT TO SOCIETY”, not as long as their children have not received their 8 years worth of support, loss of a positive male role model (which he wasn’t anyway!).
They should assess and Order Child Support in the beginning according to the rate of pay then, let it accrue while they are in, and upon release, give them a fraction of the Child Support Arrearage so as not to “frighten” them, debying freedom in order to avoid their responsibilities returning to jail. The after a year or so of the small percentage, they will mostlikely have accepted a raise, promotion, and they’ve becom aclimated to being FREE & OUTSIDE, their percentage can be increased, they’ll be more likely to pay it than return as before. Shoulf they get their DEBT TO THEIR CHILDREN/Society caught up, paid off, THEN THEY SHOULD RECEIVE SOME RIGHTS, BUT ONLY ON THE CONDITION THEY CONTINUE OR COMPLETE THEIR CHILD SUPPPORT PAYMENTS IN THEIR ENTIRETY. CHILDREN FIRST
Felon disenfranchisement and DREs are the major reasons why the Republican party maintains so many seats in congress. If ex-felons could have voted on hand counted paper ballots in the 2000 elections, Al Gore would be President and 3100+ dead American soldiers would now be alive. Paper Ballots are needed to break the current minority control of the United States.
The problem with restoring voter rights for ex-felons is that if Democrats advocate it, then we’re tagged with caring more about criminals than “decent, honest folks” (as the term goes). Because of that, I think Dems should focus only on an automatic restoration of voting rights once someone is completely free of the jucidial system, i.e., they are out of prison and not on parole or probation. The argument for this is much simpler and less politically controversial to make. Sadly, I think it’s the best we can do.
Hello, I have friend whose son served time and was paroled. She claims he is inelgible to vote. I say there must be a way. Does someone have some advice??
I do not understand why a person that has served his time and has been reintroduced to society must be held accountable for a crime paid for. While in jail I can see but once released to society ALL RIGHTS and PRIVLEDGES should be restored.
That will probably happen now since so many from the bush Crime Family are going to be going to jail and they need these thieves and Liars to operate.
Just and repukulan move to strip a Real American of participation in the government.