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.
Badger:
Thanks for the catch on Teddy’s middle initial. And you’re right, Jimmy’s religiosity was very off-putting to some Democrats. I remember reading a zillion years ago that there were some very non-born-again counties around the country where in 1976 Carter ran behind McGovern’s 1972 numbers, mainly because of his religion (which, of course, helped him a lot more in the South and in Southern-inflected areas of the Midwest).
ducdebrabant:
I dunno what’s in Edwards’ head, but I’ve suggested here on more than one occasion that he seems to be running a campaign aimed at the netroots and at more conventional Democrats who never much liked Bill Clinton. The almost slavish consistency of Edwards’ rhetoric of late with well-worn netroots themes is getting eery. There’s a dog whistle in every line. You’d have to guess this is Joe Trippi’s influence. Like most consultants who’ve blown an opportunity to win The Big One, he’s replaying the tapes and trying to get it right this time.
Ed Kilgore
Kennedy’s refusal to heal the rift hurt Carter in the general election, but at least he endorsed Carter. I tried and couldn’t think of a single instance when a Democrat left any doubt that he would endorse the nomineee. The only time I think it might have happened is when George Wallace was running, and Hillary is no George Corley Wallace. I know Edwards is going for slash and burn these days (and I worry about that, if Hillary is nominated), but is it really only a strategy? There must be something personal, because this is not the Edwards I remember — touchy, cantankerous, hyperbolic, divisive. He was never this hard on the Republicans when he ran with Kerry. If he’d attacked Cheney in these terms, we might have won.
You’re welcome, Ed. By the way, I think Senator Kennedy’s middle initial is “M” for “Moore”.
I didn’t vote in the general election in 1980 – I was away from home and didn’t get an absentee ballot – but I did support Carter in the primaries. I supported Anderson in the general but if the election were close, I’m pretty sure I’d have voted for Carter again.
FWIW, I do remember his religion – not his denomination but the fact that he was a “born-again Christian” – was a particular bone of contention amongst not a few of my liberal friends and acquaintances.
Getting back to the topic, I really don’t see any of the top tier or even the second tier candidates not supporting the nominee whoever it is. I don’t know enough about Gravel to speculate about him one way or another. I’m guessing Kucinich would support the party’s nominee, but he might also decide as a matter of principle that he couldn’t support a candidate who wasn’t sufficiently against the war which might leave Hillary out.
I think it’s possible to draw a parallel, however slight, to Howard Dean’s awkward exit from the 2004 contest. He always said he would support the eventual nominee, but there was a palpable feeling that the support would be reluctant if Kerry was nominated (untrue, as it turned out). Regardless, Dean maintained the clear pretense of independence:
“‘The bottom line is that we must beat George W. Bush in November, whatever it takes,’ [Dean] said.
But, he added, his organization [Democracy for America] will closely monitor the Democratic nominee and, if necessary, will be ‘letting our nominee know that we expect them to adhere to the standards that this organization has set for decency, honesty, integrity and standing up for ordinary American working people.'” (NYT, 2/18/04)
Now Joe Trippi has another candidate who is at least troubled by supporting an eventual nominee with whom he feels he has fundamental differences.
Unlike most Democratic politicians, especially the Clintons, Edwards entered politics relatively late in life and did not rely on the mainstream party apparatus to do so. And his biography is well-suited to his newfound adversarial populism; see Noam Scheiber’s article in The New Republic.
I guess this mini-episode solidifies Edwards’s outsider identity. But there is a thin line between outsider and outcast, and Edwards has branded himself with a sense of anger and disenfranchisement that goes beyond party identification. This has not been a winning Iowa caucus message in recent memory. I wonder if the Edwards campaign has any internal polling to suggest this year is much different.
Badger:
Thanks. I had forgotten about it, but Jimmy’s pursuit of EFK across the stage was indeed sadly hilarious. One of the few good things about today’s tightly stage-managed conventions is that nobody gets on the stage, or gets to speak, unless all the unity gestures are agreed to in advance.
On your broader point, there’s no doubt Jimmy had more detractors on the Left than HRC does today, though Carter’s poor overall political standing had something to do with it. But liberal defections to John Anderson probably cost Carter NY and MA in the general election.
Thanks for the comment!
Ed Kilgore
I immediately thought of Senator Kennedy and the 1980 campaign too.
Hopefully if the Democratic nomination does come down to a choice between Hillary and Edwards and Hillary does win (which is far from a foregone conclusion) we don’t get a repeat of the 1980 convention where Kennedy practically ran away every time Carter tried to get him for the traditional “Democratic unity” photo op.
By the way, Carter was hated by the more leftist faction of the party just as much – maybe even more – as Hillary is now.