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.
The “parental choice” argument (i.e. CRT) is bogus but Texeira made it any way. Schools are not under threat of “left wing indoctrination” and this is just fear mongering. Climate change and democracy are also issues that get sneered at by him when they actually scare me and a lot of other people (and not just on an intellectual level). I am not the only one commenting about the relentless negativity from this site in case you haven’t noticed.
As I have stated before, Ruy offers no real solutions EXCEPT intraparty warfare over cultural issues. How is that not divisive?
Lacking examples of specific language.
What your comments and others’ read like is a concerted defamation and bullying campaign against someone who dares bring up criticism at a strategy that has brought the Democratic party into a stalemate.
Why not criticize Greenberg too?
https://thedemocraticstrategist.org/2022/12/greenberg-why-dems-dont-have-too-settle-for-battling-to-a-draw/
Or Matthew Iglesias?
https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-midterms-should-be-a-stake-through
Or this guy?
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/democrats-midterms-culture-majority/
Or any of the other dozens of analysts essentially making the same point?
Bluestein notes, “To overcome the staunch support for his rival, Warnock had to motivate both liberal voters who form the Democratic Party’s base and middle-of-the-road Georgians who harbored concerns about both candidates.”
This makes sense. Note that Warnock did not go around trashing “the cultural left” and somehow still managed to win in traditional Georgia.
[2nd time attempting to post]
A very strong incumbent against a very weak candidate in a scenario where Trump is still a very big figure. In a state that has a huge Black population.
Still lost the national popular vote.
Your recipe for Democrats is one where the party barely wins the Electoral College, Senate and House of Representatives because it keeps the electorate significantly polarized.
Fascism will ascend because liberalism overreaches and doesn’t deliver on fundamentals.
Victor, I never thought of it that way but I know you are correct. Failure to deliver on fundamentals is the reason the term “liberal” became pejorative. It is the reason “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you” is a bitter joke. It is the reason so many Americans suspect their elections are corrupt. When the people in government fail in so many ways, either through incompetence or deliberate dereliction of duty, why trust them to run honest elections?
You and TeixAEIra seem to think that creating huge splits within the Democratic Party based on culture wars is the key to victory (to be fair, you at least acknowledge economic issues which Ruy seems incapable of). I am skeptical to say the least.
Triangulation on the part of the Dems in the past did nothing to end this polarization which you refer to and any majorities based on them proved fragile. I agree there are a few things like “Defund the Police” and “Open Borders” (which Ruy acknowledges only a tiny fraction of the party espouses) are damaging but the GOP will always, always, always fish around for potentially divisive issues. Do we play wack-a-mole for eternity in response?
Finally, CRT IS NOT TAUGHT in primary or secondary schools but Ruy keeps bringing the issue up. He was also dead wrong about the importance of emphasizing democracy because that actually averted a red wave this time.
I am all for winning but ya gotta make arguments that make sense and don’t make potential supporters want to vomit in response.
I should also mention that the Democratic Party of Georgia had several decades of running conservative candidates…and still losing.
Finally, Warnock win as a non-incumbent against the far better candidacy of Kelly Loeffler in 2020. Again, there was no jihad waged in his part against “cultural liberalism”.
I just wonder why you need to make straw man arguments around Texeira.
Can you cite examples of how he proposes to “trash” the cultural left?
Um, his previous columns including the last one? His suggest of a “Sista Soulja” strategy?
Yes, give me the specific language that would be so offensive to others in the Democratic coalition.
You yourself have agreed about the problems with defund and open borders. Your argument about CRT is intellectually dishonest. It may not be formally taught, but it underlies a lot of leftwing discourse about the nature of racism and imperialism in the US.