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.
Kerry is going to be in my neck of the woods campaigning over the next couple of days. He begins at noon today in Cloquet Mn, and then takes his bus caravan on to Duluth, Superior Wisconsin, and then south through Western Wisconsin to Iowa, and on Monday he will campaign in Iowa.
What ties these rural areas together. First If you want a name for the tour, and an emotional location, call it the Evict Whistleass Tour — because the lovely lady who put into her obit that her memorials should go toward unseeting “Whistleass” lived along this route. More specifically — this is five congressional districts that since 1980 have shown a decided interest in third party candidates — the Minnesota 8th did well for Anderson in 1980 — turned out a huge vote for Peroit in 92, was almost 20 points for Nader in 2000 and was strong for Jesse Ventura in 1998. Normally it is solidly DFL — Jim Oberstar wins it by 85 points. It is the combination of the lass of the Iron Mining industry and the demise of middle sized dairy and meat products farming operations that screw this part of the world — China just bought the Taconite mines, and the Republicans are promoting the shores of Lake Superior as a grand place to build coal fired generators — with the coal coming from Wyoming and the polution drefting over the great lakes.
Just yesterday Wisconsin heard that the largest farmer owned cheese co-op is going belly up. Apparently it cannot market the classic product. This is yet one more set-back for the middle sized family owned dairy operation.
Do these parts concern themselves with Iraq — sure do, they have a very high rate of losses compared to other parts of the country — their national guard has had multiple call-ups, many seriously wounded, and a very high death rate. Bush wants to close down one regional VA medical center.
The Wisconsin counties were, in 1968 very friendaly to Eugene McCarthy’s campaign pegged as anti-war. (and less interested in Humphrey and Bob Kennedy). It is a strain of old time isolationism that runs through this area — but the area knows full well its Ag industry is dependent on international trade. The only businesses really doing well these days are the Indian Cansinos, as this bus trip will take Kerry through the Chippawa, Winnebago and Sioux nations.
I suggest all these details because it is the local campaigning in places where there are persuadable voters where Kerry wins this campaign — and the details of NE Minnesota, Western Wisconsin, and NE Iowa are what’s in store for the weekend.
In a significant part of this route, Kerry will be going past cafe’s that feature very large pictures of another JFK who campaigned the route in 1960, quite successfully. It is very much where he should be campaigning, and spending his time with the local party leaders — local press and local culture.
Bush’s 2003 tax cuts on capital worked to help the economy, while his 2001 tax cuts did not work. I could see Kerry raising rates on higher incomes, especially if he included tax simplification for those people. The US economy did pretty well in the 60s and 70s with high income tax rates on millionaires.
But the tax cuts on capital have worked to bring the stock market up and so bring investment into the economy. Investment is good not just for the investors, but also for the people with jobs, who get more productive from investment, and so make more money.
Kerry’s repeal of many investment tax cuts, except for complicated exemptions for small business, will hurt the workers who benefitted from the 2003 cuts.
Bush doesn’t know from his tax cuts. He thinks he’s putting money in people’s pockets, or giving the money back to people who earned it etc. He is very vulnerable here.
In my opinion Kerry is being misled by his Rubin-type advisors, who are stupid enough to believe that you just raise taxes and the economy gets better. It makes me literally ill to think of Bush getting re-elected and running over the Ds like he did in 2002. I don’t want to leave this kind of world for my children so I pray that Kerry will change his tax plan.
What is this about the “drawn-out” VP selection making him look like a flip-flopper? Could we have a few MORE RNC talking points?
This is about the same time that Gore picked Loserman, and Bush picked Cheney. Nothing is being dragged out.
The main reason Bush is going back up is because the public has browbeaten the public into thinking the economy is wonderful. This is an endless cycle because even though many are still suffering, they will believe that they are the exception, and everything will get better, because hey, that’s what the news says. We will also start to see social wedge issues playing more of a factor.
I think this election will be decided based on GOTV. If Democrats can do better on this than they did in the horrific 2002 midterms, they may have a shot.
Lawrence, you raise some good points. However, while there were a few middle class familes that met the specific criteria for significant tax relief, most received minor breaks at best. I thought it was a good move by Bush, but not so clever as to be considered an “outflanking” in my mind(polling data that I’ve seen seems to suggest that most share the view that Bush is shifting tax burdens, not cutting them). Given that this, real wages, and inflation are somewhat complicated to convey(compares to the GOP mantra “tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts!”, I’m surprised at how few people are buying the Bush plan, at least this far.
>>On Iraq, you can see this outflanking strategy at work, since he has quietly been doing many of the things Democrats have been suggesting for the past year, like going to NATO for help.
>>
Again, given the data that suggests people are unhappy with Bush’s management of the occupation, I don’t think that the outflanking is working. People seem to realize that his moves are more of a realization that he planned poorly for the after-war. Frankly, I’m surprised that so many people seem to be seeing through the spin at this point.
I think that they are starting to realize that there are only so many times you can try to re-define your policy to look like your opponents’ before people start to question your ability to develop cogent policies on your own. Of course, that could just be wild conjecture on my part…..
Sadly, to reiterate the salient point, second-term defeats rely on two things: 1) significant disatisfaction with the incumbent, and 2) a satisfactory level of confidence in the vision and personality of the challenger. While the first point definitely obtains, the Rove propaganda machine and some gaffes by Kerry himself may keep the second point from enabling the Democrats to retake the White House, in my opinion.
I agree that Kerry’s tax position is a good one: get rid of the tax breaks for families (individuals?) making more that 200k/yr, and open up some tax breaks for small businesses.
But the whole tax debate over the past two is a good example of where the Bush campaign shows its strategic and tactical strengths: about two and a half years ago, after 20+ years of repubs talking about tax breaks and then delivering most of them to rather wealthy people and very large businesses, Kerry came out and said: “I’ll show you what a Democratic tax cut looks like”. Bush’s next round of tax cuts, proposed soon after that remark, had the first significant tax cuts for the middle class in 25 years. Outflanked!
But Bush is still vulnerable on even this last round, since for some unfathomable reason, he highlighted the cuts on taxes from dividends, which he was unable to spin like even the “death taxes”.
On Iraq, you can see this outflanking strategy at work, since he has quietly been doing many of the things Democrats have been suggesting for the past year, like going to NATO for help.
Yet, we don’t really know how well Kerry is doing, since historically, as has been noted, successful challengers have NOT done well in the spring. But the period when we will be able to reliably measure whether Kerry is cutting the mustard is coming up soon…
The MOST reliable poll predictor is this: If any candidate does not have a convincing lead in the week or two after their convention, then they’re toast for sure.
Just remember — the kinds of things being said about Kerry now are pretty much exactly what folks said about him last November vis-a-vis the primaries — two months before he nailed Iowa AND New Hampshire.
I expect he is using the time to raise money, refine his message, and get his ducks in a row for a strong finish — in October.
At the moment there is too much opportunity for Bush to co-opt any of his initiatives, and build their counter-strategy. It’s much to early for him to put his cards on the table. Leave that to the Bush campaign.
wellbasically offers:
“Kerry to me beats Bush because Bush will blow up the world, and then it doesn’t matter how well the economy is doing. But I still think Kerry’s tax plans are inferior and will cost him the election unless he changes them.”
Please do tell how Kerry’s tax plan is inferior to a woefully irresponsible supply-side policy that shifts taxes regressively, shifts them from all income to wages and salaries, is intended to reward the top 1% with the vast majority of the breaks, generates the lowest corporate tax revenues in 100 years, and builds in very dangerous long-term structural deficits that threaten to undermine both our long-term economic growth and popular social programs.
Kerry’s plan will raise taxes on the top marginal rate and deliver more breaks to the working and middle classes. This provides not only greater demand-side stimulus to the economy, but it has the added effect of helping to balance the budget.
That having been said, I am indeed open and curious as to what basis you have for making your comment on Kerry. Perhaps there is something I am missing.
S. Robinson- I don’t care what Matt Drudge says. He is a sleazebag and liar and would no more visit his web site than kill myself.
Alan Snipes,
Drudge has the latest rumor about Kerry’s VP choice:
http://www.drudgereport.com/kerryhrc.htm
I used to worry about Kerry’s poll numbers until I realized it’s early and there are a lot of people still not paying attention.
Bush is the one who should be worried because he is known by eveyone and his approval numbers are in the low to mid 40’s.
Assuming Kerry will get good vibes from his V.P. pick (hopefully its Edwards) and a reasonable bounce from the convention, to me he is in good shape.
The best thing Kerry can do right now is keep his head down. Everytime he pops up and opens his mouth, his numbers go down. He is the only candidate I’ve seen who does better, the less you see of him.
What could Kerry have done in the last month or so that would be considered “strong”?
Bush and Kerry are on a race to the bottom. Bush is flailing on Iraq, but an economy is revving up just enough to give him a breath of life.
But Kerry essentially hasn’t done anything strong since he clinched the nomination. He’s just out-numbered there, kerry alone facing a whole administration. And unfortunately, the drawn out VP process just fits right into the can’t make up his mind, flip-flopper image.
So yes, it’s Bush’s election to lose, but Kerry could blow bigger than the President.
Bush and Kerry are on a race to the bottom. Bush is flailing on Iraq, but an economy is revving up just enough to give him a breath of life.
But Kerry essentially hasn’t done anything strong since he clinched the nomination. He’s just out-numbered there, kerry alone facing a whole administration. And unfortunately, the drawn out VP process just fits right into the can’t make up his mind, flip-flopper image.
So yes, it’s Bush’s election to lose, but Kerry could blow bigger than the President.
Kerry should be spending his time tailoring his message for the US electorate. He is undefined because his economic ideas poll worse than Bush and will cause him to lose the election. So he isn’t saying what he’s going to do on TV.
Bush can go on TV and present Kerry’s tax increases in the worst possible light. Kerry comes back and presents them in the best light, but they factually cannot compete with Bush’s tax plan.
Kerry to me beats Bush because Bush will blow up the world, and then it doesn’t matter how well the economy is doing. But I still think Kerry’s tax plans are inferior and will cost him the election unless he changes them.
Got to agree with mimiru on one thing. If the last year has taught us anything, it’s that poll numbers can swing pretty wildly in a few months.
And there are some unknowns out there that could shake things up profoundly — capture of Osama, trial of Saddam, attack in the US. Things are still very, very unsettled.
On the other hand, it’s not clear whether Kerry can do much about it until the convention.
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This is just as important as electing JK!
The real question is, are these the first stirrings of an upward trend for Bush, which mean Kerry needs to get off his ass and start “closing” in July instead of when, August? Septermber? Is it a small and/or temporary bump.