Joementum

Being from Connecticut, I've been meaning to post on the Lieberman situation for quite some time now. My feelings on Lieberman crystalized many years ago and had nothing to do with Iraq. I think people who have described Lieberman's political problems as stemming solely from his support of Bush's disasterous Iraq policy aren't looking at the whole picture.

I've viewed Lieberman with skepticism for many years, going back to the early nineties. He was viewed, even back then, as a Republican in Democratic clothing. I learned from a Senate staffer in 1993 that supposedly Lieberman had promised Bush Sr. that he would vote for Clarence Thomas if Bush needed his vote to confirm Thomas. Obviously, something like that is pretty hard for a Democrat to forgive.

I think many Democrats also looked at Lieberman's focus in the late nineties, and his alliance with people like Bill Bennett, on the "moral decay" caused by video games and Hollywood violence with skeptcism as well.

However, I was most disappointed with Lieberman during the 2000 campaign. While I thought Gore's pick of Lieberman was shrewd because of the symbolism to voters that Gore was separating himself from Clinton's scandals, I never was excited about Lieberman himself. Lieberman's Don King "Only in America" routine at every public appearance, including his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, got old really fast and didn't advance the campaign, in my view.

But his performance in 2000 against Cheney in the debate was a real touchstone for me. Lieberman let Cheney allow himself to come off as a reasonable, moderate guy (we now know better), playing perfectly into Rove's strategy to falsely paint Bush and Cheney as moderates who wouldn't be like those right-wing nuts controlling Congress (and who would cut your taxes too!). At no point did Lieberman address Cheney's neaderthal voting record while in Congress (voting against Head Start, voting against a resolution supporting the release of Nelson Mandela, voting against MLK Day), leaving that to Edwards in the 2004 Debate after Cheney lied and stated that he had never met Edwards before that night.

Lieberman also let Cheney get away with claiming that the government had "nothing to do" with the enormous wealth he earned at Halliburton, while Halliburton had got fat gorging at the trough of government contracts, etc.

Lieberman was also terrible during the Florida Recount, and his unilateral decision to announce a change in the Gore campaign's position on military absentee ballots was very damaging.

I also thought that Lieberman could have come to the defense of people like Max Cleland in 2002, to defend him against charges that Cleland was against the Homeland Security Bill. Actually, Cleland had supported the bill to create the Homeland Security Department that Lieberman had sponsored and Bush was opposed to (before he was for it). But Lieberman stayed silent as Saxby Chambliss and Bush clobbered and slandered Cleland.

Lieberman's support for the President on Iraq and their "kiss" at the SOTU is simply the last straw, not the first. I think the best way to describe the feeling about Lieberman among political activists on the left is how many political activists on the right felt about McCain before McCain decided to wrap himself around Bush: bipartisanship and attacking your parties' leaders is always going to impress David Broder and Tim Russert, but the die-hard partisans are always going to be turned off by it. And I think that's what's happened with Lieberman.

I think a lot of Lieberman's unqualified support for Bush may come from the fact that his 2004 campaign for President was so unbelievably poorly received by Democrats. I've heard one pundit say that Democrats treated him like a carnival act, and that made Lieberman bitter. All I know is about 4-5 days before the New Hampshire primary, I was watching C-SPAN and they showed Lieberman campaigning at some fair or convention in New Hampshire, and there was no one there, he had no buzz, people were barely stopping to talk to him. Then, suddenly, Lieberman turned a corner and there was a huge crowd. And I'm thinking, wow, this is pretty impressive for Lieberman to turn out all of these people. Only as the cameras moved closer, you saw that the crowd wasn't for Lieberman. They were in front of this big tank of water watching a water-skiing squirrel. The look on Lieberman's face when he realized that a squirrel in a tiny swimsuit was generating infinitely more buzz than his candidacy really said it all.

I personally agree with Ned Lamont's comment after his debate with Lieberman: why is it that Lieberman acts like a lapdog during a debate with a Republican but a bulldog during a debate with a fellow Democrat? That seems like a question that Connecticut Democrats should consider before voting in the primary.
- posted by Joshua @ 6:50 PM (0) comments