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.
As near as I’ve been able to see so far, Kerry’s stand on the issues is exactly like Bush’s except that he thinks we ought to have some sort of health policy, and he isn’t ready to ban abortions or utterly ban gay marriages.
I don’t think we have that much of a consensus in the voting public. If Bush and Kerry split the Bush vote, that leaves a whole lot of people to vote for someone else if someone else can get funding and organization.
So people can pick Kerry or Bush depending on party loyalty, or whose eyebrows they like better. But it’s a sad state of affairs when that’s what we’re stuck with.
I don’t think working for Nader is going to be a trendy thing to do this year. In fact, I think you would put yourself in serious danger of getting a face full of rotten tomatoes. This might cut down on the effectiveness of Nader’s campaign organization.
Unfortunately, the Republican controlled media will probably give him as much media exposure as they can possibly get away with.
I have to disagree with my Good Friend Charlie Cook whose OP ED appears in today’s NyT….he ought to get out more often..,,,,
If he’d come to visit us in San Francisco, specifically if he were here today, he could see Ralph Nader speak at SFSU.
He and probably not too many others for I saw exactly two, Xerox’ed flyers…
No enthusiasm at a place like State means Ralph is going to have a real hard time breaking 1%…Of course the poll that Charlie easily demolished showed him at 6%..and the Post Poll at 3%
And read Ruy more often Chuck
It’s a long, long time until November, guys. A little too early to be engaged in the practice of chicken counting. I think that these poll numbers are about as good as its going to get for Kerry. Once job numbers begin to improve, which they will, Kerry will go down in the polls. When Osama is caught, which he will, Bush’s numbers will rise.
I feel for you, though. It’s not any fun to root for the stagnation of job creation or to tout the military endeavours of the current administration as failures.
The more Nader is on TV the less impact he has is my observation.
Plus, you need funding to pay for enough “volunteers” to collect all those signatures to gain ballot eligability. Good luck on that.
Campaign finance laws will probably provide enough transparency that the republicans will be exposed if they try too hard to prop up Nader.
No offense Ricky Vandal you may donate your time but the numbers Nader needs to be a player/spoiler won’t come without some cash to get the organization in the states that matter.
Rick, The people who are willing to subjet themselves and their families to the insults, privacy invasion and criticisms of politics seldom have the resume of Mother Theresa. Partly it is the reality of ambitious persons, partly it is what we get for allowing negative campaigning to work. Unfortunately, we have to treat it like sausage making. Enjoy the end product of environmental protection, human rights, more economic democracy etc. and don’t judge the politician by an unrealistic standard of purity. It really, really, really does matter who is in the White House, even if they have the blemishes of major personal ambition.
A lame deduction. A majority of the eligble voters do not vote. That is where Democrats should find voters. Trying to take Naders voters is nonsense. If they liked Cut and Run Kerry they’d vote for the backstabber.
Following up on the Miami Herald poll, it shows Kerry leading Bush 49-43. Amiong Independents, Kerry gets 57% and Bush “a little over a third”. It’s a terribly-written story at http://www.miamiherald.com. Also shows that Graham or Nelson add nothing to the ticket, but that Bush is doing better than in 2000 among Hispanics, carrying them 56-40 (they broke about evenly in 2000, with Bush having a one-point avantage) So maybe Bill Richardson would be the best choice for Florida.
If I understand Florida law correctly, Nader needs 93,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot, and he’ll have to have help from the Republicans for that, since he won’t have the Greens.
Nader will only make it onto the ballot in a relative handful of states. So, I don’t care if he’s polling 6 percent, because it won’t impact the race all that much.
“Florida is lost to Kerry.”
Not so fast. This from today’s Miami Herald:
Increasingly critical of President Bush on his handling of the economy and the war in Iraq, more Florida voters now say they plan to support Democrat John Kerry than to help reelect the president, according to a new poll.
The Herald/St. Petersburg Times survey reveals striking vulnerabilities for Bush among key independent voters in the state that narrowly put him into the White House four years ago.
More Florida voters disapprove of his job performance than approve, another sign of the president’s lagging popularity since the 2001 terrorist attacks transformed Bush from a polarizing figure into a popular wartime president.
A majority of voters believe that the United States is ”moving in the wrong direction” under Bush — a marked reversal from two years ago, when 7 in 10 voters, including half of Democrats, approved of Bush’s job performance.
(Unfortunately Nader is still polling 3% in the Sunshine State. Let’s just hope Ruy is right about that fading by election day.)
Thank you!
I have no idea if you are right (though my lone brain cell and my gut tell me you are), but I’ll be able to sleep now.
I don’t see FL as remotely out of play in 2004, though I’d like to hear Ruy speak to that state. Interestingly, The Decembrist makes a decent case for Senator Bill Nelson of FL as VP.
AB
21,000 GOVERNMENT jobs, by the way!
Buchanan is my guess. It was Florida that Nader cost Gore. Florida is lost to Kerry. What he will pick up in 04 will be Ohio and NH, in neither of which will Nader be a factor. The very type of state that will be closer for Kerry will be a type that will not have much of a Nader factor.
Kerry is going to sweep the old North, save Indiana, which was sometimes referred to as Klandiana. The political forces are pushing the Dems in the direction of being the Party of the North, the modern day heir of the Party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. It is a unified base that can be held together. This in-between is what is killing them at times. Resistence is futile. They should accept their destiny as such a party.
The Dems can hold onto the Louisiana seat with Chris John. What they need is more Northern seats so that they do not have to rely on the Southern states, forcing the GOP to rely on them more heavily. Once the parties again become one for the liberal, individualistic North and one for the conservative statist South, although the reverse of 1860, politics will become more civil and more will become involved in elections and party activities.
We need to defeat them one more time. Show them that Lee’s surrender cannot be undone!