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.
New ABC/Washington Post poll (june 22):
Kerry 48%
Bush 44%
Again, another poll with Bush at 44%.
If this holds, and Nader’s support softens (which I assume it will). Kerry will win the election by 10%. Since the undecideds always go to the challenger.
I suppose it’s safe to say the “bounce” is over.
Yes, Jeff, I have noticed Bush’s “44% consistency” for quite some time now. It really makes me wonder if that’s his ceiling. I certainly hope so…
Have you guys noticed how Bush’s support seems to have stuck at 44%.
No matter what poll you look at, it’s always at 44%.
The differences always seem to come with Kerry’s numbers – which are as high as 48 or 49% or as low as 41 or 42%. Depending whether you count the “Democratic leaners” or not.
Something I found really interesting about this poll were responses to this question:
” Thinking ahead to the election in November, which TWO of these words best describe how you would feel if (John Kerry were elected / George Bush were re-elected) President? ”
If you group the list of adjectives given as choices into positives and negatives and tally up the totals for each, then…
Among all Respondents:
Net Positive
G.W. Bush: +8%
John Kerry: +24%
G.W. Bush
Most Common Answer: “Worried” (31%)
Total Positive Answers: 76%
Total Negative Answers: 68%
Uncertain: 22%
DK/NA: 2%
John Jerry
Most Common Answer: “Hopeful” (39%)
Total Positive Answers: 79%
Total Negative Answers: 55%
Uncertain: 29%
DK/NA: 3%
In the Swing States:
Net Positive
G.W. Bush: 1%
John Kerry: 34%
G.W. Bush
Most Common Answer: “Worried” (31%)
Total Positive Answers: 75%
Total Negative Answers: 74%
Uncertain: 19%
DK/NA: 2%
John Jerry
Most Common Answer: “Hopeful” (43%)
Total Positive Answers: 84%
Total Negative Answers: 50%
Uncertain: 28%
DK/NA: 3%
Among Independents (Nationwide):
Net Positive
G.W. Bush: -39% (!!!!!)
John Kerry: +37%
G.W. Bush
Most Common Answer: “Worried” (35%)
Total Positive Answers: 52%
Total Negative Answers: 91%
Uncertain: 17%
DK/NA: 4%
John Jerry
Most Common Answer: “Uncertain” (40% — beat “Hopeful” by 1%)
Total Positive Answers: 68%
Total Negative Answers: 31%
Uncertain: 40%
DK/NA: 11%
FYI, I regarded the following choices as positive: “Hopeful,” “Confident,” “Happy,” “Content” and “United.”
These I deemed negative: “Worried,” “Pessimistic,” “Depressed” and “Angry” (with “Uncertain” being regarded as neutral).
As consumers and workers and parents, women are in the same boat as men and children — sinking. But strictly as women, they continue to kick open locked doors and to punch holes in glass ceilings. The proportion of women in college and in white collar jobs continues to rise. This is striking when we compare young black women to young black (and poor white) men. As workers, women are losers; as women, women are winners.
I also noticed that oddity in the data. First, I question the value of asking voters about “winners” and “loser” given the multiple interpretations those terms could have. For instance, respondents could be thinking of the term “winner” as a way to say they like or support that group: i.e. I like women, so I’ll rate them “winners”. Second, we have no older data to compare to, so it’s perfectly possible that women used to be considered “winners” more in the past and less so now. I know I’d personally rank women to be “winners” now, regardless of Bush (I haven’t seen much evidence that he’s been any worse for women than men–he’s equally bad for everyone as far as I’m concerned).
One thing that strikes me as extremely odd in this poll is the winners/losers series and ‘women’ come out at 65% winner and 26% loser. I don’t understand this given the responses to others in this battery. It is right below big corporations (71% winner) and the wealthy (85%) and higher than George W. Bush (55%). Can this be right? Have women benefited tremendously under the Bush Administration and I have completely missed it? And how have women been winners over the past three years and children and the middle class have been net losers?
The Mother Jones site has LOTS of great graphs on this data, including each question broken down by party affiliation, vote in 2000, gender, income, red state/blue state and age. Sifting through all the data, the most striking and consistent information is found under party affiliation and, specifically, independent voters. Ruy’s absolutely correct, independents are much more like Democrats than like Republicans in their opinions on almost every question. In fact, on a couple issues, they’re even more pessimistic and demoralized than Democrats. Pay special attention to independents’ opinions about the last three years regarding, big corporations, the tax burden, personal privacy, average citizen being heard, job security and special interests. Another striking trend: “liberal or moderate Republicans” are strikingly similar to Democrats and Independents on several measures.
It brings to mind again the theory that by election day, “Bush fatique” will have completely set in and a huge rush away from Bush and toward Kerry is going to hit the electorate among Independents and liberal-moderal Republicans (much as what happened to Carter and conservative-moderate Democrats in the Carter-Reagan race of 1980). A year from now we may be discussing “kerry Republicans”. On a similar topic, I encourage you to read Howard Fineman’s article on MSNBC about Kerry “lying low” and staying “invisible” through most of the election cycle. This is one time I happen to agree wholeheardely with Fineman–let Bush stew in his own juices; Kerry will look all the more reasonable and be considered a worthy alternative to Bush by election day.
By the way, the Mother Jones survey was done by Stanley Greenburg’s polling outfit. Greenburg wrote “The Two Americas”; if you haven’t read it I strongly recommend you do so!