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.
Ed,
thanks for the response. It appears you posted while I was composing. I appreciate the clarification. It looks like we are more in agreement than I thought.
Tom.
Joe, I take your point and I probably missed that nuance in my pique. Thanks for highlighting that.
What irritated me initially is the implication by Reid et al that we out here in the real world need to just shut up and that our attempts to speak out against these kinds of unprincipled power plays by the Blue Dogs is somehow “unfair.” It isn’t unfair at all, nor is it premature. I have every right, as a lifelong contributing Democrat, to criticize members of my political party when I think they deserve it. And I think the Bayhs and the Liebermans deserve criticism when they team up with Republicans to start wars and to scuttle bankruptcy reform and to throw monkey wrenches in budget legislation to save this economy and to advance the Democratic agenda for which they were elected.
Kilgore doesn’t have to use such loaded, inflammatory mischaracterizations to make his point, i.e. “those who want to lump all Democratic “centrists” into the putative-‘traitor’ camp”. His dismissive tone, it seems to me, is a deliberate attempt to marginalize the views of progressives and centrists. By tossing out these loaded terms the points that you suggested he was making get lost in ever more heat and ever less light.
Thanks for all the comments. I guess I’m a bit taken aback by the idea that I’ve willfully offended any progressives. Joe Corso’s right: the whole point of my post was the Bayh crossed a critical line on a huge vote, and needs to stop putting himself forward as representative of “centrists” or much of anybody else in the Democratic Party.
As for the “S word,” “sincere”: hell, I can’t see into the man’s soul, but neither can anybody else; I find it easier to think he’s drunk his own anti-deficit kool-aid than to think he’s made some shrewd, cynical political calculation. As these comments and many others suggest, he’s terribly damaged his own standing in the Democratic Party, and no, I don’t really buy the idea that he’ll get more attention now than he would have gotten as leader of a 16-member Democratic group in the Senate, so long as he voted for the budget resolution.
So if Evan Bayh was as conniving as so many folks clearly think he is, then he’s a really poor conniver.
On one small note: to those who think Bayh’s vote for the higher exclusion and lower rate on estate taxes proves he doesn’t care about deficits, I would point out that this was the default position of virtually all Democrats until the total repeal enacted in 2001 sunsetted (at least those who didn’t support total repeal, and there were a disturbing number of those, BTW). So maybe Bayh is just trying to be consistent on this one thing. It certainly doesn’t make his opposition to the budget resolution look very brave or noble, does it?
In any event, what’s more interesting than how I or anyone else construes Bayh’s motives is the main question I tried to raise in the post: will anyone follow him now? I doubt it.
I think we’re having a problem with the word “sincere” here. the word has positive connotations that seem quite inappropriate in this context.
Does this help — a craven,amoral, money-sucking hyena can be a sincerely craven, money-sucking hyena.
correction – in the second paragraph I meant to say that Bayh was clearly in the “first” category, not the “second”
Tom:
It seems to me that Ed is making a distinction between two notions of “centrism” – as he says “between “centrists” who do want to stand aside from the Democratic Party and cut deals, and those who don’t.”
He is characterizing Bayh’s behavior as clearly in the second category and calling on him to resign in favor of in favor of “senators whose agreement with and loyalty to the Obama agenda is much less in question” if they want to be “anything other than a crude power bloc looking to shake down the administration and the congressional leadership for personal, ideological, and special-interest favors.”
As a labor-progressive Democrat myself, I don’t see any of this as insulting a progressive perspective. There are some moderate Democrats I disagree with on issues but very much want in the Democratic Party. Then there are guys we’d be better off without. I think Ed’s trying to make that distinction and not trying to put down progressives.
Here’s a little item Ed, that maybe you can address with respect to “sincere” Evan Bayh:
Thanks to the efforts of Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) and others, a bill allowing bankruptcy judges to cram-down mortgage payments for troubled homeowners hasn’t seen the light of day since it passed the House in early March. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is actually thinking of pulling the cram-down provision from the legislation, since it has met such fierce resistance, fueled by a misinformation campaign based on Mortgage Bankers Association talking points.
This is the kind of stuff, anti-constituent and anti- big D Democratic, that people find objectionable. Please explain to me, during these very, very tough times, that Bayh would play this kind of game. What “sincere”, “principled” objections does he have to amending the draconian bankruptcy bill, which he supported? I’ll look forward to your explanation, because I cannot understand it.
Source:
Wonk Room » Mortgage Modifications Hitting Roadblocks, As Cram-Down Bill Languishes In Senate
That’s quite a stretch, Ed. If Bayh is such a sincere “deficit hawk” then please explain his support of reducing the so-called death tax.
I agree with the gentleman above. You are completely misreading the objections to Bayh from progressives and others. It isn’t a “loyalty test” at all, and it isn’t a matter of being a “traitor.” The man is without discernible principles. The man is anti-constituent.
Bayh’s vote on the budget will provide abundant ammunition to those who want to lump all Democratic “centrists” into the putative-“traitor” camp
You know, Ed, I hope that at some point we can have a discussion without you insider strategists going out of your way to insult us with your glib, willingly obtuse “misunderstanding” of online progressives and centrists and what we are trying to do. I guess you gain some cred with your more right-of-center media buddies when you piss off “the libruls” but at some point that isn’t going to work any more.
Will you try to meet us halfway for a more constructive discussion? That would entail you actually listening and trying to understand what the objections to Bayh’s position is.
Nothing is more irritating to this old-time labor Democrat than for my perfectly reasonable positions to be constantly mischaracterized. It isn’t getting us anywhere that we want to be when you keep doing that.
lump all Democratic “centrists” into the putative-“traitor” camp even though 14 members of the “Bayh group” voted with the rest of the Democratic Caucus
Ed, I think you’re misreading the left blogosphere’s perspective. It is precisely this kind of random, ride-the-fence vacillation, untethered to any identifiable principle or fiscal rationale, that raises hackles.
This, however, sums said perspective up perfectly:
a crude power bloc looking to shake down the administration and the congressional leadership for personal, ideological, and special-interest favors
Add “and get their mugs on television” and you’ve got a post fit for the Great Orange Satan.