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.
In general, it’s folly to compare Bush’s approval number from poll A this week with his number from poll B last week; it has to be apples and apples, or else you’re mostly looking at differences in systematic error. And even in an apples-to-apples comparison, you’re likely to spend a lot of time looking at random sampling error, unless you look at long-term trends and discount one- or two-point blips from week to week. Every time a poll comes out you see people writing elaborate post-hoc analyses of what the last week’s movements mean. This is all garbage, like those articles in the financial section in which somehow people can always justify why the previous day’s movements in the stock market made logical sense, even though they usually can’t predict them in advance.
Fox News had Bush’s approval rating at 50%, so that means it’s really about 45%, which most other pollsters are reporting. Of course, it has gone up a little since the attack ads on Kerry, but since that affect also eliminated Kerry’s lead, Kerry is now back in the lead (“It’s Official, Kerry’s Ahead”).
Steve, Don’t worry about Bush’s approval rating in that Annenberg poll. If you look at http://www.pollingreport.com, the Annenberg approval numbers are always about 5 points higher than everyone else. 53 percent is actually a new low for Bush in that poll.
“The fact that Bush is so down and people have already given Kerry competitive general ratings against Kerry gives Kerry (not Bush) a lot of upside here.”
Oops. I meant to say “The fact that Bush is so down and people have already given Kerry competitive general ratings against Bush gives Kerry (not Bush) a lot of upside here.”
Sorry for the slip.
Actually, I _have_ seen some numbers where Kerry’s approval on terrorism have come up slightly (I can’t remember where just off the top of my head, though).
But I’m not too suprised or worried Bush’s approval numbers aren’t worse. They’re certainly not rising substantially.
I’ve posted a variation on this theme here before, but it bears repeating: almost by definition by the fact we read this Web site and take the time to respond means we are totally “plugged in” on this election already. We are the minority at this point.
For most Americans, the election is this hazy thing still seven months off. They aren’t paying the same attention we are. Kerry acknowledged the other day most people don’t really know him. That will change as Election Day approaches.
The fact that Bush is so down and people have already given Kerry competitive general ratings against Kerry gives Kerry (not Bush) a lot of upside here.
My bottom line: be patient. If we are still in this position after the conventions, *then* start to panic.
just a reminder:
“Beyond the Euphrates began for us the land of mirage and danger, the sands where one helplessly sank, and the roads which ended in nothing. The slightest reversal would have resulted in a jolt to our prestige giving rise to all kinds of catastrophe; the problem was not only to conquer but to conquer again and again, perpetually; our forces would be drained off in the attempt.”
Emperor Hadrian AD 117-138
It’s true that by himself, Bush’s approval ratings on specific war & terrorism issues is dropping. But when compared to Kerry (i.e. the question, “Who would do a better job defending the U.S. against terrorism” and the like), Bush still maintains a very comfortable lead. At least according to the last numbers I saw on tarrance.com. When asked about Bush’s performance by itself, it may be only a 51% approval of his actions regarding Iraq, but head to head against Kerry, they’re much higher.
Why is this? People think Bush is bad, but Kerry is worse? People figure Bush has been at it long enough, he’s bound to figure it out eventually? People know what they’re getting with Bush, but Kerry is an unknown? I’d be curious about the reasons. It would seem to me that if you’re not satisfied with the way Bush is handling things, you’d want to hand the job over to someone else, but people seem to be indicating the opposite.
Other question worth asking is whether the spread between Bush and Kerry on Iraq & terrorism issues is shrinking any in recent weeks / months.
If Bush’s speech/press conference doesn’t result in a drop in the polls for him, much less a bounce, we’re all screwed.
I mean if that pathetic performance makes his numbers go up, what kind of performance makes them go down?
uh…but he’s strong leader….
buhlahbuhlahbuhlah.
I doubt that “conference” will create any sort of rally. Here’s a great dissection of it:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/041504A.shtml
DonkeyRising says “By about 2:1 (57-29), the public says the Iraq war has increased the risk of terrorism against the US. Wow.”
The scary thing is that the same Annenberg poll shows Bush with an approval rating of 53%–and increasing! That’s “Wow”. Does this mean that the majority of Americans like Bush so much, it doesn’t matter what he does?
As a resident of Minnesota I really wish the LA Times let me read the article.
Oh well, Bush sucks and sentiment here in MN is starting to reflect that. We’ll deliver these 10 electoral votes to Kerry, fear not.