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.
Why are Bush’s numbers still high among Republicans? I have two thoughts:
1) After the “Washington 5” were indicted for the Watergate break-ins, Nixon’s approval ratings were still at 60 percent among everyone (I’m not sure what it was among Republicans, but you can bet that it was very high). It wasn’t until it became painfully obvious that the break-in was a straight-line directly connected to Nixon that his numbers began to plummet. Similarly, I think Democrats see a straight-line connecting Bush to the corruption and incompetence of his administration in everything from the war with Iraq, to our struggling economy, to environmental degradation (or at the very least hold him responsible). Centrist Republicans have a clear disconnect.
Why? Well, thought number 2) the right-wing media juggernaut gives them cover. They need not ever confront the realities of their president or what he has done – and neither does the president. Hannity and Limbaugh are more than capable of mounting a straw man defense against the most egregious Bush missteps and malfeasance. Additionally, the Republicans have so vilified Democrats that a core majority of Republicans would rather deal with Satan than that French looking John Kerry who lies about the severity of his combat-wounds …
In “Independent Voters and the Bush Presidency” (June 5, 2004) the question of turnout/participation in November is briefly mentioned:
“Alas for Bush, this may turn out to be the election where everyone shows up. And, if that’s the case, it’ll be the Republican base that gets swamped, not the other way around.”
But what drives turnout? What sorts of issues and poll numbers make people more rather than less likely to vote?
Won’t Kerry have to emphasize economic populism in order to fire up his base? And isn’t his reported reluctance to speak in those terms cost him in November in terms of turnout? This, of course, was the Dukakis experience.
If the author avoids the “Likely Voter” screen, does this mean that he is agnostic at this point about the shape of turnout come November?
doofus,
one thing that has changed is that touch screens with no paper trail have replaced verifiable levers and ballots. What is being done to ensure that voting will be verified and ballot access will be equal for minorities and poor counties?
some important groups working for voting fairness
see
verifiedvoting.org
fairvote.org
naacp.org
aclu.org
To the poster who wondered why it isn’t obvious to a lot of people that Bush is a complete moron and totally unqualified to be President , let alone anything else I give you this: Many people think about life and the world they live in in simplistic terms. Their minds are incapable of thinking anything because that requires a thought process. Allthroughout Right-Wing history their thought process is it’s the Communists fault, its the fault of liberals, its the fault of big government etc. Being a citizen in a democracy REQUIRES that people pay attention. Many people do not WANT to think therefore “ALL POLITICIANS ARE CROOKS” is easier than thinking about the real differences between the two major political parties. That’s why liberals have problems, most of their issues are not easily boiled down to simplistic phrases like everything will be fine if we just get the government off our backs, etc.
Or it may indicate that (3) if you have enough Gallup numbers to look at, you are bound to find some striking but meaningless chance correlations that hold over several elections.
The correlation is interesting, and it could indicate something like a causal relation. But “incumbent job approval among independents in May of an election year with an incumbent running for reelection” does have the air of those surreallistically overspecified stats that baseball announcers like to report: balls thrown against left-handed hitters in the bottom of the eighth, etc.
That’s a very interesting analysis, PhillyGuy. Also very encouraging. I’m wondering, though, if there might be a new independent variable this year in the extent to which Bush/Cheney is spending its massive war chest on overwhelmingly negative ads. An analysis by the Washington Post a week or two ago showed that, while about 25% of the Kerry campaign’s ads so far have been negative, an amazing 75% of Bush/Cheney’s have been. And they are running these ads in the key battleground states where they can do the most harm. (This doesn’t even take into account the Rove-inspired dirty tricks and election fraud that also will undoubtedly be run “below the radar,” a la South Carolina and Florida in 2000.) Bush/Cheney spokesmen have said, off the record, that their objective is to define Kerry and create enough doubts among undecided voters that — come November — they’ll hesitate to pull the lever for Kerry. My point here is simply that the independent-voter paradigm this year may not follow history, because never has so much money been spent to tear down smear an opposing presidential candidate, rather than build up the spending candidate. Let’s hope that this is not the case.
The most intriguing and beautiful aspect of Gallup’s data is the extent to which the incumbent’s May approval rating among independent voters so closely reflects his eventual popular vote in November:
Year, Incumbent, May Independent Approval, Popular Vote
1996, Clinton, 47, 49.23
1992, Bush, 34, 37.45
1984, Reagan, 58, 58.77
1980, Carter, 36, 41.01
1976, Ford, 51, 48.02
1972, Nixon, 63, 60.67
The average differential between the May approval rate among independents and the popular vote share in November is only 2.8%. In other words, if recent electoral history is any indicator, Bush can count on a popular vote share of between 37.2 and 42.8 percent.
Interestingly, the person who did best in the popular vote compared to his May rating among independents was Jimmy Carter, who’s vote total was 5.01% better than his May rating. Even if Bush were to do as well as Carter, he’d still only end up with 45.01% of the vote. Let us pray…
I think the similarity between May independent approval rating and November popular vote tells us two things: 1) attitudes toward the incumbent have largely hardened by May of his election year; and 2) independent voters truly are the critical key to a presidential election since Republicans and Democrats tend to be loyal to their candidate–if independents dislike you, you’re in big trouble. Bush is in big trouble.
2 points:
1) But, among the 55 percent who strongly disapprove of his performance, 41 percent strongly disapprove.
Um. Shouldn’t it read: …among the 55 percent who disapprove of his performance, 41 percent strongly disapprove
2) Re: Republican streadfastness. Let me paraphrase Robert Jordan here: “As a deer will freeze when it sees a boulder rushing down a mountainside…” I think that’s why. Deer in the headlights.
How precisely could the Republicans “paper over” the fact that the very people they need most to win, hate their guts?
What *I’m* confused by is how nearly 90% of Republicans could possibly continue to support this president and his administration. I suspect that they are simply not paying any attention, and won’t until later in the campaign.
Of course, I include “watches nothing but Fox News” as functionally equivalent to “not paying attention”.
The good thing about this is that at about the same time they really start paying attention, so will the vast majority of Democrats and Independents. And there’s a lot more Democrats and Independents than there are Republicans.
And it’s darn nice of us to point out their weaknesses while they still have time to paper them over, isn’t it?