Here’s a couple of interesting results from the Newsweek poll I discussed yesterday. Only 30 percent say the US military action in Iraq has decreased the risk that large numbers of Americans will be killed or injured in a future terrorist attack. That compares to 63 percent who say either the risk has increased (36 percent) or hasn’t changed at all (27 percent).
Yet the same poll finds Bush favored over Kerry (53 percent to 38 percent) on handling the situation in Iraq.
Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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March 28: RIP Joe Lieberman, a Democrat Who Lost His Way
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.
I’m not sure the aim of simply “eroding” Bush’s support on Iraq is a responsible position. Shouldn’t the facts be mroe important. On that question of facts, I will cop to being one of these “nitwits” who do believe in an Iraqi connection to 911. What about Salman Pak? Google that and see what you find. What about the civil verdict that held Iraq liable for 911 damages? Was that a vapor? What about the Iraqi connections to WTC1, which are hardly in dispute to Richard Clarke, to name one. Maybe when the Democrats honestly engage the debate, their stock on national securty issues will rise.
It’s all about “the devil you know.” If Kerry can move past the stigma of “the devil you don’t know,” he’s in. As you have pointed out numerous times, Bush’s support is melting like lake ice on a spring day. A little more heat and, voila’!
Right now, these polls indicate that people will still go with the devil they know over someone they don’t. John Kerry needs to aggressively define himself, before George Bush does that for him.
Did Kerry’s entire campaign decide to go skiing with him in Idaho? The lack of any discernable response to the recent Bush onslaught sure makes one think so.
Hopefully, that’s going to be a one-time anomaly.
Never underestimate the soft bigotry of low expectations coming from the nitwits for W.
A followup thought: Hillary Clinton has quietly given some excellent, constructive speeches on foreign policy in the last few months. She has come off as serious and substantive, and not a cheapshot artist.
The major speech Kerry needs to give in the next day or two should be along the same lines. If he does so in a constructive tone he’ll help establish himself as commanding and reassuring among some of the persuadables who are still preferring Bush on Iraq and national security. He’ll also entitle himself to a few tastefully worded whacks at the Administration in so doing.
Surrogates and pundits will take the harder shots in case the implications of Kerry’s speech aren’t crystal clear to everyone.
Cheney told Limbaugh yesterday that Clarke was out of the loop on anti-terrorism policy. Yet Rice ceded leadership of the response to the crisis on 9/11 to Clarke. If Cheney was being truthful wouldn’t Rice’s decision be a criminally reckless thing to do?
I don’t know if Kerry has offered much of substance about what he would do to combat terrorism or in Iraq but I agree that if he has done so he is not being heard clearly.
He needs to be heard clearly soon. There aren’t going to be lots more Richard Clarkes coming down the pike handing him the national security issue on a silver platter. Kerry I believe is very much up to offering the country the reassurance that he would be a far steadier and more trustworthy Commander in Chief. He needs to step up–now–and do it.
It’s not at all surprising that the public trusts Bush more than Kerry on Iraq. Kerry hasn’t told the American public how he would deal with Iraq. He hasn’t even begun to present himself as the “steady reassuring presence” that he needs to be on Iraq, the military, and terrorism.
When it’s a matter of life and death, the devil you know is better than the one you don’t.
To win this coming election we absolutely have to see “Trust in Bush on Terrorism, etc.) driven down in the polls. I think this is basic — how to do it is the question.
One contradiction jumps out at me after a day of reading and watching the post Clarke commentary, and that is the matter of whether Iraq is part of “war on terrorism” or is it distinct? Apparently at least 50% still hang with the belief in a strong link.
So how to break this link? Clarke offers us the story of Bush trying to bully him on 9/12 into providing intelligence that supports the belief in a link. They tried to dismiss that bullying — but there were witnesses and they had to back down a mite.
But Bully the intelligence gatherers and analyists became the principle mode of operation come Iraq time. Even to the extent of destroying operations and trying to smear Plame and Wilson, because they were in the way of the bully.
Something tells me this is the story that just might work with that 50% who still “Trust” on Nat Security and War on Terrorism matters. The image of Bush as Bully when faced with evidence that disagrees with his pre-determined world view might just knock down some of these approval points.
What’s to wonder about regarding the fact that Bush’s numbers on national security are better than Kerry’s?
The last two Democratic presidents, Carter and Clinton, were loath to use force or even talk about the use of force with respect to the Soviet Union or terrorism. Not surprisingly, the American people have tilted towards the GOP on national security because Republican presidents were not finicky about the use of force or calling for more armaments on a continuous basis.
If we are going to be engaged in a long twilight struggle against the terrorism of radical Islam, and it would appear that we are for the foreseeable future, then the democratic party and its standard bearers are going to have to use a different kind of language and style to persuade the American people that they are up to the job of keeping everyone safe.
BushI ran against Dukakis while the Cold War was still in its last stages. We know the outcome. Bill Clinton ran against BushI at the end of the Cold War and during a weak economy. We know what happened there. Now we have BushII running against Kerry during a weak economy and a nasty struggle against a shadowy terror network.
If Kerry expects to win he’s got to show first that he has the spine to tear into Bush on his national security failures and present, with the help of surrogates, a credible plan of action against terrorism. One more week like the last one and Kerry will be toast.