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.
Yes, there may be something Kerry can say before the Election to help himself even more on national security–give either a major address as a couple of others have suggested, or insert as a lead for his stump speech every day until it gets reported, Bush’s debate 3 bin laden screwup, and hammer him on it.
They might want to keep that one in their back pocket to save for the day when we get the next terrorist attack alert. One line of attack could be along the lines of “The President can’t make up his mind. He says he’s not worried about bin laden, and he outsourced the job of capturing bin laden when our troops had him cornered in Afghanistan. But then the Administration issues terror attack alerts whenever it most wants to change the subject. The President seems confused. He seems to think issuing terror attack alerts, instead of isolating and destroying those who have attacked us, is the way to make us safer. Meanwhile, aided by this Administration’s inept foreign policy, al qaeda has many more members now than before 9/11. My Administration will never take its eye off the national security ball.”
I’ve seen a number of posters lament how the B/C spin machine has managed to deflect a fair amount of media attention after the third debate from Bush’s loss to the flap about Cheney’s daughter.
Just where is it written that if our side is unable to whack them hard in the first day or two of coverage after a major event that we have lost our one and only chance? The closer to the election we hammer Bush on his bin laden misstatement the better. There’s no statute of limitations on when we can use an opponent’s most eggregious mistakes against him. The same comment applies to Bush’s remarks several weeks ago saying we cannot win the war on terror. That gives K/E and the rest of us another fat target to shoot at.
Another “theme for the day” K/E might use is stem cell research. I thought the stances of the candidates came out fuzzy in the second debate, which might explain why a far smaller percentage of voters say Kerry’s position is closer to their own than is actually the case. K/E could clarify what the difference in the positions of the candidates is on this issue and what the consequences are for the possibilities of curing many serious diseases, as well as generating good jobs in an emerging market. This issue from what I’ve seen plays extremely well for us with independents the more people get to know about it. And it can split off or help neutralize that portion of the business community which understands and covets the potential that stem cell research represents.
Of late it looks as though K/E’s strategy is to slam Bush hard on a different, politically sensitive issue each day, to keep them on the defensive and nip in the bud their efforts to frame the story line of the day. Obviously it is not wholly succeeding but K/E clearly are on the offensive.
By all means take up Michael Kazin’s suggestion to give us as much state-by-state data as possible. That’s what counts now.
JY
the new cnn/usat/gallup has bush up 52 to 44. i have to wonder if thats with a rupublican slant in the percentages taken. seems like in the past couple of polls that they put out, they had more or less equaled to numbers of dems and repubs. a few weeks ago when they were taking samples with large repubs slants they were giving bush double diget leads.
sorry about the grammatical errors in my last comment — was very tired when I typed it.
The polls at RealClear politics, not just the NEWSWEEK poll but the Gallup also, and others, show Kerry tanking badly over the past few days.
I am certain that this is due to the much exploited Bai article and its fallout NOT Mary Cheney. There have been columns throughout the press about how Kerry is soft on terror, and Kerry has failed to respond just like his campaign did for the longest time to the flipflop spin. Then everyone else goes around pretending that there’s nothing odd going on and just justifying the lying.
Drudge is trumpeting the latest Gallup farce that shows Bush leading by 8% in LV and 3-4% in RV.
Ruy,
As we wind down to Nov 2, if you can get us some respectable state polls — FL, PA, OH, NM, NV —
it would be appreciated.
As a campaign nears its end, I always look at crowd size and enthusiasm as an awfully good indicator of how the race is going. Not prescreeened crowds, that is.
Does anyone have some descriptions of the relative size and nature of recent campaign events?
A.
Very good news. But I’m looking forward to your analysis of the new CNN/USA TODAY/GALLUP POLL that has Bush ahead with likely voters by 8 points, 52 to 44. I sure hope they oversampled Republicans.
Oops… I meant “extremely unlikely”, not “extremely likely”.
The sort of mistake that happens when you are in a hurry… as pollsters are these days.
They favor stricter control laws by 49 to 8? Is that a typo?
More of a question than a comment. Any recent polling on environmental isues? This was not touched at all at the last debates, and only casually discussed at the first two debates. But it is a critical issue for many voters, particularly voters in some swing areas, e.g. Colorado. I know this issue is defining for me. I’m a one-issue voter on this issue, and you know who I’ll be voting for (and against).
Thanks,
Barry
Ruy- Good news about the Time poll, of course. But then there’s the Newsweek poll– and the continuing gap in the tracking polls.
I think it’s about time to do a state-by-state analysis rather than taking comfort in the issue breakdown, no? After all, Americans agreed with Dukakis on most of the issues as well– but that didn’t help him at all!
Michael Kazin
There are some strange things in this poll.
For one thing, there are errors in the tables. The number of LVs in the most recent poll exceeds the number of RVs; the numbers seem to be transposed. And in the income breakdown (and much credit to Time for giving us these numbers!) the total for the most recent poll adds up to only 92%.
The horse race numbers for likely voters with Nader are also strange. The result is given as 45-45-3 with 1% for others, 3% undecided, and 3% refused. But the same result, with refuseds taken out, are 48 Bush, 46 Kerry, 3 Nader, with 0% others and 3% undecided. Some changes can occur as a result of rounding when you take out the refuseds, but not these. A change from 0% difference to 2% difference is extremely likely. (It should not occur unless before removing the refuseds the unrounded difference was between 0.97% and 1.0% AND the exact Kerry percentage was between 44.50% and 44.53%.) And I don’t see at all how the “others” could go from 1% to 0% as when the refuseds are removed.
Another discrepancy is not an obvious error, but cast doubt on the results. There is a 5% Dem advantage in party identification among RVs, but only 1% among LVs. Yet the Bush-Kerry result is essentially the same among both populations.
Here’s another way to look at it. Assume the RV/LV numbers were simply transposed and the poll had 131 “unlikely voters”. We can compute approximately that the unlikely voters consisted of 9 Republicans, 47 Democrats, and 75 independent/refused/other. (This is a pretty rough calculation because rounding errors are significant, but it should not be not wildly off.)This distribution seems unlikely. And it seems even more unlikely that such a group of voters would break evenly in the presidential race, or only slightly for Kerry, which is what the comparison of poll numbers between likely and registered voters seems to say.
Several possible explanations occur to me. First, more errors in the tables. Second, the registered and likely voter numbers are separately weighted, and the changes are artifacts of the weighting process. (The weighting coefficients will have random fluctuations caused both by statistical fluctuations in the sample and numerical errors in the estimation process.) Third, but unlikely, the “unlikely voter” sample is a statistical outlier.
I would like to know more.
I continue to be amazed by the “Commander and Chief” and “War on Terror” numbers. A majority of the public finally sees that Iraq had no connection to 9/11 and sees the invasion and occupation as a mistake, but many are still more comfortable with Bush. At this late date, is Kerry better off changing the subject to domestic issues, or is their anything he can say that will drive down Bush’s advantage on the security issues?
On another issue: the most recent Newsweek poll shows a reverse gender gap (more men for Kerry, more women for Bush). Is this an anomoly? If not, what gives? Has anyone seen any good explanations?
Isn’t it likely that the two day blip Zogby saw was just reflecting the Lesbian flap that was boosted by CNN, et. al.? Claire Shipman argued on ABC that it meant Bush had “won” the third debate, despite all polls to contrary.
This Time poll is good news. But on ABC “This Week” W/George S they (George will, Ron Suskind Bill Kaschich (Fox News) and Claire Shipman) paint a different picture Ms. Shipman said “Contrary tp the snap polls after the last debate” she thinks more Americans thought George Bush won. Because he had more clear answers to the questions??????!!!!! Its a GOP “LoveFest”. How can Kerrry win when corporate media is so increasingly biased. I could not believe it!!!!!
One set of numbers is wrong (“leadership in difficult times”): 52 – 40 isn’t an 8-point spread.
“By 69-22 voter favor using discarded embryos to conduct stem cell research; by 49-34 they say Kerry is closer to their position on this issue than Bush.”
So, this discrepancy means that either 1. people are stupid and can’t connect the dots or 2. some hate Kerry so much that they can’t say anything positive about him even when he share their positions.
That poll is indeed very good news.
It suggests that Kerry needs to act both defensively and offensively. Since terrorism is his weak point — he MUST act quickly in the ways described in other posts with an NYU length speech etc. to counter the Bai spin, and slam into Bush on the Osama lie and his failure on terrorism policy. Silence will only leave voters with same impression. Although not as slimy as the Swift Boat Veterans for Slime, attacking at strong suit is important to do.
Then there is the issues where Bush is most vulnerable domestically — jobs/economy and the deficit. The way the strategic deficit is designed to be used as a lever against social security Cost of Living Adjustments, “diet COLA” they call it, is good to raise. And Kerry was right to raise the draft and can come back with “they doth protest overmuch”
(a good line to use now in the draft context, given its myriad resonances).
With a big enough GOTV (not simply doing what has been done in the past only bigger but something qualitatively on a whole new scale). If it is possible to confound the agenda in this election by the Democrats really pursuing it, that could make a big difference. Broadside ads against voting Repub for Congress would be good in the final stretch — something Gore never bothered to do.
Two things from looking at poll:
a) they didn’t ask about ‘just says what thinks people want to hear’ or ‘wishywashy’ or other character type issues
b) heavily skewed in favor of Democrats, moreso than previous polls, but with 4-5% edge for Democrats in line with 2000 vote. With all new registrations, might be right
I really appreciate your postings. It helps me to fathom what is happening in the world of polls.