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.
Alan Snipes: You are not grasping at straws. A few weeks ago, I checked some old poll figures on Gallup’s Web site and was surprised to see that Reagan did trail Carter for most of 1980. In fact, the race was very close until the end, when undecideds swung heavily toward Reagan, giving him his landslide victory. I’m not saying 2004 is 1980 all over again, but I believe Kerry is in very good shape if you look at it from a historical perspective.
In response to David de la Fuente, my recollection (without going back to check for sure) was that Ruy was arguing that without Green Party backing, Nader will have serious trouble getting his name on the ballot in any more than a couple states. Oregon (my home state) has historically given Nader a significant percentage of the vote, but last I heard he was nowhere close to getting enough signatures to make the ballot. Without his name listed, he’s reduced to a write-in candidate, which will result in a tiny fraction of whatever he’s polling. That said, you’re absolutely correct that he won’t be polling more than 2% by November.
In response to reignman, you may be right about people who aren’t comfortable with Bush voting for him anyway. By my thinking, though, a challenger needs two things to happen. 1) people need to be dissatisfied with the incumbent (or else nobody even thinks twice about replacing him), and 2) people need to prefer the challenger. My point was simply that cognitive dissonance might mean there’s a larger dissatisfaction with Bush than the polls sometimes indicate. Which means that if Kerry presents a favorable alternative, the polls will begin reflecting a significant movement of voters to the Kerry camp. Then again, it could just be my wishful thinking!
May I ask why it’s better to discount the Nader effect in those polls? Is it the assumption that his support will wane as time goes by and the election nears? Thanks.
Oops. Reignman, I am guessing, perhaps incorrectly, that the questions you posed to “rt” in the previous post in this thread are intended for Ruy, whose initials are the same as mine. When I first chose my handle for this site it did not occur to me that the choice of “rt” might generate confusion on this point. Not long after I began posting here I “introduced” myself to Ruy via email–we had met FTF a couple of months before. Part of his friendly reply was words to the effect of “Oh, so *you’re* rt.” I guess if I’d been more alert it might have occurred to me to change my handle then. But I wasn’t.
I apologize for any confusion this might have caused–and especially if anyone thinking “rt” was Ruy formed a lesser opinion about his work as a result of reading my (decidedly less data-driven!)posts. Beginning with my next post I will use the handle “bt” instead.
Again, my sincere apologies to you, Ruy, and any of you other good people who come to this site to get the benefit of Ruy’s terrific analyses who were confused as a result of my actions.
Probably. I’m not sure…rt?
In response to BKW, it sounds sound, but in the 1984 election, a lot of people voted for Reagan who didn’t really like him, but they assumed nobody else didn’t like him, and that they were weird, so they either stayed at home or DID vote for him, just as in the ’80 election where a considerable number of people who voted for Reagan didn’t agree w/ him, they just wanted Carter out, which may do wonders for Kerry. Right? Somebody help me out here….rt?
I may be speculating here but while Bush’s poll numbers have only dropped by a point or two while support for his Iraq Policy has dropped more considerably, the drop in support for his Iraq Policy may-just may, foreshadow a big drop ( maybe 5 points) in his head to head poll numbers against Kerry. I remember in 1980 that Carter was running ahead or even with Reagan most of the year when I believe failure after failure with the hostage drama finally caused the bottom to drop out of his support during the last week of the campaign. Am I grasping for straws or is this a reasonable take on current poll numders? Help me out here.
Never in our life time has this country had such a horrible president as bush. Every corner he has turned comes more harm to the citizens of this country and the world. We must do everything in our being to remove this person from office. Our country cannot survive as we know it if bush remains in office another 4 years.
Get active with everyone you know and get the word out and convince everyone that this must be done now. Ignore the nay sayers and march ahead with the message. It is up to all of us to save our country. Yes it is that serious.
The poles are just beginning to show what will turn into the largest victory for the democrats in the history of this country. Keep pounding and don’t give up. I have faith in my fellow Americans to do the right thing. Even republicans know that this man is bad and that he must go. A surprising number of them will overwhelmingly vote for Mr. Kerry in this election. Tell every republican you know that it’s OK to vote for Mr. Kerry and they are doing what is best for our country. bush has bertayed everyone. For every reason that a republican can give you for why they are going to vote for bush you can give them 10 reasons not to vote for him. Your reasons are based in facts theirs are based in lies and deceptions and false faith.
Lets just hope and pray that between now and election day bush doesn’t do something else that will not be reversible for our country and the world.
Don’t focus on the poles just get out there and do what it takes to turn every vote in for our next President, John Kerry.
On this question of why Bush’s approval ratings haven’t gotten as low as the public’s assessment of many of his actions might suggest…
Bush has gotten consistently among his highest marks for being a strong, decisive leader. A portion of the survey respondents appear willing to give credit to, and possibly stick by for a long time, a President who they think is making some bad decisions. Not sure how to interpret this. Is it a grudging sort of respect that, verbalized, might be expressed in something like the following?: “Sure, he’s made some decisions that haven’t worked out well. That’s true of anyone at the top. But at least he’s firm, he knows his own mind, and he seems determined to stick to his guns.”
(To my way of thinking if a President wants to lead us off a cliff I want him to be an ineffective leader although not a complete, ahem, idiot lest our adversaries exploit the situation. “Strong leader” and “making all the wrong decisions” just don’t square in my view of the world. But that’s just me. I’m not a Republican.)
Another interpretation may result from surmise–and that’s all it is–that Republicans tend to stick up for, and stick with, someone they see as one of “their own” (maybe Bush I didn’t fall into that category) under more dire circumstances than a large share of Democrats do. Arguably this is consistent with B Clinton’s take that Democrats want to fall in love with their candidate while Republicans want to fall in line behind their candidate. Could it be that the Republican mindset is less questioning of authority and more tolerant of hierarchy and hierarchical thinking? I wonder if anyone has done a Ph.D. thesis on this subject? The old joke “I’m not a member of any organized political party; I’m a Democrat” comes to mind in this context.
In response to frankly0’s comment about Bush’s approval ratings not budging much even when his other numbers seem to be steadily dropping, I wonder about the role of cognitive dissonance.
I’ve been noticing (along with Ruy and others) that the polls have been reporting general approval of the U.S. war in Iraq for some time now, with around 60% of the people responding that it was “the right thing to do” to invade Iraq. Meanwhile, the question, “are things going well for the U.S. in Iraq” has seen erosion of approval from around 60% down to around 40% now. Cognitive dissonace would explain this — people realize at one level that invading Iraq was a mistake, but to say so out loud implies that all the American blood that has been shed in Iraq was a waste. People aren’t comfortable admiting that, so they report to pollsters that they agree with the U.S. decision to invade Iraq, but also must accept that the invasion isn’t going very well.
I wonder if something similar isn’t happening with the president’s approval. People are beginning to recognize he’s not competent in the job (which shows up in the specific questions about his job performance), but people aren’t willing to admit they disapprove of the Commander in Chief during a time of war — because disapproval sounds too much like not supporting the troops or being unpatriotic or whatever the reason. Even if cognitive dissonance prevents them from answering a pollster by saying they disapprove of the president, it won’t take much to tip them to pulling the lever for Kerry in November either.
I’m pretty sure there’s never been a president re-elected during a recession, or when his approval ratings were below 50%. Economic indicators still look pretty mediocre.
frankly0, I presume you’re referring to Bush’s propensity for holding onto 48-49% approval in most polls (Zogby/Pew excluded) — a number which would suggest a narrow loss, at worst. I, too, have found this puzzling, given that 1) his internals in many areas are well below that — as are the right track-wrong track numbers — and 2) his share in trial match-ups with Kerry never go above 45-47.
I wonder if this continues to reflect a waning halo effect from September 11th. Bush got a huge jolt in approval from that, a jolt that has since faded steadily but quite slowly. It may be that we just have to be patient, that the internal and re-elect numbers are Bush’s true “approval”, but the main poll number still has a bit of fog attached to it that will burn off at its own pace.
Numbers are obviously helpful in determining electoral outcome, and we should be rigorous about viewing them realistically. However, if I can be permitted an emotional evaluation: I have over 30 years experience watching political races, and have found some presidential years clearly giving off a re-election vibe (’84 and ”96), and others (’80 and ’92) clearly not. This one isn’t quite in the latter category yet, but it’s miles away from the former — and, in fact, feels less favorable than ’76, when Ford lost by only a 3% margin.
I guess what I’m saying is, the way things feel out there, it’s hard to foresee re-election, and my bet would be on that approval rate dropping rather than rising.
Rasmussen uses “automated polling technology”. Is there any evidence that this produces a systematic bias of any sort? For example, I instantly hang up on any computerized voice I hear. Also, I never cooperate with market researchers. But I might answer questions from a live pollster who identifies themselves as being from a major polling or news organization and is interested in political opinions.
frankly0, I think you make some very good points. Bush is getting around 43 percent now in two-way matchups with Kerry, which is probably getting close to his core support. But I agree the Plame affair could drop him further and be a major blow. Does anyone know when indictments might be forthcoming?
One thing that’s remarkable to me is the stability of Bush’s approval numbers in the face of some very negative news, both on his handling of 9/11 beforehand, and the situation in Iraq. While it’s true that he got some counterbalancing good news on jobs, it WAS just one month’s numbers, and it certainly didn’t affect his numbers on handling the economy in any case (so far as I know).
It seems pretty obvious that the low hanging fruit in pulling down Bush’s numbers have already been picked, and that turning even another 5% away from Bush — enough likely to put the election completely out of his grasp — is going to be a major undertaking. On the other hand, it may also be that the final dip in Bush’s numbers is now being prepared, and it may take just one final episode of bad news to turn a substantial number of voters against him.
The Plame affair looks to me like it could be that event. Would it be wrong of me to pray to God that Bush might be so disgraced?
Excellent analysis of the wisdom of surveying RVs v. LVs this far from the election.
You might want to go back and examine Gallup’s surveys of LVs in the 2000 election for a casebook example of the foolishness of polling LVs months before the election.
Back in 2000 Gallup’s surveys of likely voters in September and October had huge swings from Gore to Bush and back to Gore. I believe these swings represented the different interest levels (one of the factors used to identify LVs) of Democrats and Republicans to events in the campaign — and not massive swings of voters from one candidate to the other.
Since the final weeks of the campaign will have a big effect on which likely voters become actual voters, polls of LVs at this point are bound to be less reliable than polls of RVs.
I’m no expert, but only six months ago new Iraq trouble would probably have gotten Bush a 15 point bounce, what with continuous “support the president” and “we must win” from the media. To get only this much (if even this) means that Bush has permanently lost a lot of people.
Thank you. You answered a lot of questions and sustained your robust credibility.