A Aug. 22-24 survey of registered voters conducted for NPR by Greenberg, Quinlan,Rosen and Public Opinion Strategies found John Kerry Leading George W. Bush 50% to 45% in a two man race and Kerry 47%, Bush 43% and Nader 3% in a three way match-up.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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March 28: RIP Joe Lieberman, a Democrat Who Lost His Way
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.
Did the NPR survey include only NPR listeners? If so, it is perfectly irrelevant since these people are much more intelligent than average Americans.
I would love to get more feedback on ED’s question. Do any of you personally know of anyone who voted for Gore in 2000 and who will be voting for Bush in 2004? I do not know anyone. In addition, with all of the stories I have read over the past year, I have only heard of one person who voted for Gore and who will vote for Bush — with literally dozens who voted for Bush who are undecided or who will definately vote for Kerry. Since this is a very unscientific sample, can anyone provide more data points?
Thanks,
Paul
It’s easy for some of the Blitzer/Dobbs polls to be manipulated. Atrios is famous for “torturing” them by sending literally thousands of hits to their polls. However the polls on the main page draw a much larger audience, and I would think it’s hard to ‘freep’ a poll with half a million responses. I still think it is likely that they simply reflect the blue state views. But the blue states probably account for more than 60% of the population. So that begs the question, how does a Gallup poll of 800 people break down demographically?
Kaus, I didn’t mean those turncoat politicians. I was talking about the average electorate. Ed.
Ron Silver a dem? Are you kidding. He’s been a right-winger for yhears.
I vote in some of those on-line polls on CNN Wolf Blitzer and Lou Dobbs has one every day. They are always like 90% for the Liberal view. Cnn is not so Liberal but not as far to the Right as FOX. So it’s hard to tell how true these polls are.
I happened by an online poll on the CNN website which had almost 500,000 responses! And the results were 58% Kerry, 40% Bush. At the very least this says that people who use the web regularly are overwhelmingly for Kerry. This also jibes with Kerry’s margins on the East and West coasts. And it suggests that these national polls are heavily skewed to midwest states. Is that possible?
All Kerry needs to say regarding the war on terror now that Bush says it cannot be won — Bush is wrong! We not only can win the war on terror we WILL win the war on terror! I’m sorry the President feels we do not have the capacity to win this war, for the American people expect victory.
Ed, there are some Dems supporting Bush. Zell Miller, Ed Koch, Ron Silver come to mind. All together there’s probably several dozen of them in the nation, and they’ve all been recruited to appear at the RNC.
Scott.. this is a great moment for Kerry to talk on foreign policy.. great moment for him to talk about alliances to win this war on terror… its a beaming opportunity… I just hope these folks can ride this wave to the shore..
cheers
he said the war on terror can’t be won? I missed that – we need to go after that bigtime – don’t remember any Democrats saying the war on terror can’t be won – we just said invading Iraq wouldn’t contribute to it . . .
I wonder why I don’t see or hear of any Demorcrats for Bush? But, I know of a whole bunch of Republicans for Kerry? I bet there are very few if any one that voted for Gore who are going to vote for Bush. The numbers are many who voted for Bush in 2000 and now are voteing for Kerry.
It looks like Bush is softening his stance on everything… he agrees that he was involved in that smear campaign, he agrees that Kerry is a hero and served honorably, he says that the war on terror cant be won anymore.
Are we talking a flip-flopper here? Are we seeing a president who has become soft on the under belly? Are we looking at someone who has shifted position on his base and expects them to follow? Is he now appealing to a different type of voter, moderates maybe? Where is he going with this softer Bush approach?
Are we now being shown a compassionate Bush? No staying the course anymore? Maybe he turned the corner himself and left the economy behind.
I hope the DEMS realise that he is providing added fodder and fuel for direct attacks on his policies. He has literally opened a gaping hole on his presidency and left it there for issues to be put on the table and debated. There is even room to classify him as a flip-flopper because this new approach goes contrary to everything he has been preaching for the past four years.
Rise up Kerry supporter and DEMS… another golden opportunity is here.
Cheers
John Kerry said the same thing on Chris Matthews show a while back. He said “Chris, I am going to win this thing”!
It means that when you overcount Republicans and undercount Democrats, Republican candidates usually come out ahead.
Call me crazy, but we’re going to win this thing.
So you can choose your poll: Gallup and others have Bush ahead, Zogby and NPR have Kerry ahead. Who knows what it all means, except that we (Dems) have to keep working and donating money to the cause right up to election day.