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 have nothing important to add except this:
In January 1942, Winston Churchill met with Franklin D. Roosevelt aboard an American battleship in the Atlantic. The topic was allied unity. Churchill agreed to expand Britain’s war against Japan if Roosevelt agreed that the defeat of Germany would be first. Both men agreed that, even though each side had to make some sacrifices, it served both their interests to work together. Therefore, each agreed to the others demands.
Later when a reporter asked Churchill how the meeting with Roosevelt went, he held up the V sign with his fingers.
“What does that mean?” The reporter asked.
“Victory,” Churchill replied.
Apparently, Kerry has settled on a campaign theme: ‘Let America be America again’.
What’s really interesting about the theme is that it is conservative in the true sense of the word. And it so aptly fits our current circumstance, in which a radical administration has taken a dull chainsaw to the carefully built edifice of American institutions and values.
on a topic closely related to ideological coherence and democratic party commonality, check out Mark Schmitt’s article from the American Prospect:
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=7765
The best quote of which:
“Liberalism is different from conservatism, not its mirror. Liberalism thrives when it has an opportunity to experiment, to debate, to test ideas. And when, in a time of futility, we also cut ourselves off from the historical roots of our ideas, we lose the benefit of the experience and experimentation that has gone before.”
I’m w/ paleo on this. bush has got to go and I’m willing to strike almost any bargain w/i the democratic party to ensure that.
but I wonder if what divides dyed-in-the-wool liberals from the DLC is the very reason dems have been on the shit end of the electoral stick for the last 15 years: namely, an utter absence of ideological cohesion.
true, dems need to entertain differing viewpoints but I think there’s ample evidence that the democratic party is more accurately described as a coalition of interests; the existence of southern democrats argues for that nomenclature.
I’m not convinced the party can ever meaningfully bridge its own internecine gulf. and maybe for the next 6 months we don’t need to. but after november, particularly if kerry loses, this divide—-however paper-overed it may have temporarily been—will need to be acknowledged, addressed, and redressed in some lasting way. otherwise, it’s deja vu all over again for the often hapless democratic party.
I’ve got great respect for Dionne, so I’m anxious to read his suggestions.
Coincidentally to the subject of this thread, Bob Novak has published the following article on Republican DIS-unity:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/printrn20040520.shtml
As to our democratic discussion, I will just say (after Lincoln):
“If we do not hang together, we will all hang, seperately.”
Whatever the divide is and which wing wins is irrrelvant. Let’s have the debate from the cat-bird seat. Let’s have some accomplishments without ideal goals rather than no accomplishments with ideal goals. Let us make it our agenda which will be implemented and we can debate which aspect to focus when in the process of implementing. Ariana Huffington says it well, “when you house is on fire, now is not the time to discuss remodeling.”
Coach, I don’t agree. I think the Republican party is far more united. When it comes to foreign policy and economic policy, little division. Only when it comes to the social issues is there a split, but they’ve managed to (1) reduce the emphasis of those issues within the party and (2) social liberals represented a smaller and smaller slice of the party.
While Democrats have general agreement on the social issues, they are far more split on the other two. When it comes to foreign policy, they are split over Iraq and interventionism in general. And a new split is emerging under the surface over the party’s continuing lockstep march with Israel. When it comes to economic policy, the division between the balanced budget/”free trade” wing and the greater spending/fair trade wing is more like a chasm. Should the Democrats get back in power, those divisions will reassert themselves with a vengeance.
There are serious differences in emphasis between the two wings, and these can lead to serious confilt, because one group might get their way while another does not.
For instance, the DLC is serious about courting investors and the business community. For them, Fiscal sanity is much more important than tax reform that denefits the middle class and working class. For Liberals, who are primarily interested in social justice for the working class and middle class, tax reform that benefits these groups is more important than a return to fiscal sanity.
Now both groups can agree they want both these things, but they actually are somewhat contradictory (not necessarily, but it would be easier to achieve either one if you didn’t achieve the other). Now, the Liberals have to worry that, because of a Republican House (and probable Republican Senate), the DLC will get what it wants most, a return to fiscal sanity, but the Liberals won’t get what they want most, tax reform benefiting the middle class and working class.
IF we actually realize the agenda in the article, it would be a huge success, in light of the Republicans desire to stop us from achieving any of it. My fear is that we will have a return of the Clinton years, where the centrists and DLC achieved so many more of their goals than the Liberals. While Clinton was much better than Bush, he was in many ways NOT ideal, and I think in some ways helped laid the groundwork for 2000.
But paleo, the fundamental differences are strategic or can be resolved empirically. These kinds of debates are healthy in general, if they are thought of that way, and both sides look for ways to productively make their case.
The goals, though, are very much the same.
I do not think the same can be said for the splits in the Republican party ( more of a theocracy, more of a libertarian govt.)
Party unity is always a good thing. I think it will be vital to the presidential election. Now we need to get the Nadar people on board.
But the “papering over” is the whole point of the piece. If Dems can make nice and stop quarreling long enough to regain the White House (and maybe the Senate), they can resume their internecine quibbles AFTERWARDS. The problem now is: What to do about Ralph Nader, with his long history of undercutting Democratic presidential candidates and a proven (2000) ability to pull aways crucial votes from the party?
Sorry. But there are fundamental differences between Progressive and DLC Democrats. They might be papered over in an election year. But afterwards, win or lose, they will reemerge. Kuttner’s and Marshall’s fuzzy and lowest common denominator article notwithstanding.