Former Sen. Joe Lieberman (CT for Lieberman – Connecticut), the centrist one-time Democrat who as Al Gore’s vice presidential pick in 2000 became the first Jewish American to run on a major party ticket, has died at the age of 82. After that campaign and a failed bid for the presidency in 2004, Lieberman’s politics became increasingly conservative, and he was even under serous consideration as John McCain’s running mate in 2008. Most of us here at Wonkette will remember him as the guy who killed the public option in Obamacare, as well as for his support for George W. Bush’s Iraq War long after most Democrats had rejected it as a pointless slaughter.
Lieberman died in New York City yesterday from complications after a fall at his home, according to a statement from his family.
Politically, Lieberman was an exasperating combination of some solidly liberal positions — abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, environmentalism — but as historian Erik Loomis points out, Lieberman was also a death penalty advocate and the chair of “that most regrettable and annoying of all late 20th century political institutions, the Democratic Leadership Council.” At best, Loomis says, Lieberman was a “moralistic jerk who constantly concern trolled anyone to his left.”
But it was Iraq where Lieberman really started turning rightward. He supported George W. Bush’s invasion enthusiastically, and and continued to insist as late as 2011 that Iraq really was developing weapons of mass destruction. For good measure, when Arianna Huffington pointed out there was no such evidence in a report he’d cited, he told her, “I don’t think you’ve read it, sweetheart.”
In 2015, he said, incredibly, that “not withstanding all the problems in Iraq,” he believed that “the world is better off and the region is better off and the people of Iraq are better off.” Because, sure, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead, a civil war, and regional instability, but Saddam Hussein was gone, so that’s a fair price.
Lieberman’s support of the Iraq War led Connecticut voters to reject him in the 2006 primary for Senate, so he he ran as an independent — in the “CT for Lieberman” party, and not the other way around.
Ignoring calls from party leaders like Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean to just accept the voters’ choice, Lieberman warned that if actual Democratic nominee Ned Lamont were elected, the terrorists would win: “It will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England. It will strengthen them and they will strike again.” With financial support from Republicans, he managed to beat Lamont.
And let’s not forget that in 2010, Lieberman joined the rightwing chorus criticizing Barack Obama for not saying “Islamic extremism” like a real patriot would, effectively saying the president was sympathetic to terrorism.
Not too surprising, given that in 2008 Independent Joe endorsed McCain, spoke on his behalf at the convention, and dismissed his Senate colleague Barack Obama as “a gifted and eloquent young man, who I think can do great things for our country in the years ahead,” but who wasn’t presidential enough yet because he hadn’t “reached across party lines to accomplish anything significant.” He also expressed weird admiration for Sarah Holy Shit Palin, calling her a “reformer who has taken on the special interests and reached across party lines.” He never said when that was, exactly.
Once Obama was elected anyway, Lieberman opposed any inclusion of a government-managed option among the plans that would be offered by private insurers, claiming it would be a drain on taxpayers, and insisting on Fox News that “A public option plan is unnecessary. […] It has been put forward, I’m convinced, by people who really want the government to take over all of health insurance.”
In reality, advocates for single-payer healthcare were already sidelined. Ted Kennedy was dying of cancer, and Senate Dems were clinging to the silly notion that they could persuade a few Republicans to support it in a bipartisan kumbaya. Hell naw: No Republicans would go near it because those not already on the Teabagger Death Panels Train themselves were terrified of their suddenly insane constituents who were calling Obama Hitler, but from Kenya.
By the fall of 2009, then, Lieberman was able to get what he wanted with a filibuster threat. He even abandoned his pledge to allow Americans aged 55 and up to buy into Medicare, a tenth-a-loaf replacement for the public option, and eventually the ACA became law, barely.
After leaving the Senate in 2012, Lieberman went on to co-found the allegedly centrist group No Labels, a dark-money group that pretends it speaks for forgotten Americans in the middle of the political spectrum, like Joe Manchin, the coal guy, Kyrsten Sinema, the defender of Trump’s tax cuts, and very moderate Clarence Thomas pal (and Nazi memorabilia collector) Harlan Crow, who between 2019 and 2021 gave No Labels more than $130,000, as moderate rightwingers will.
With its ridiculous plan to run a candidate this year if it decides that both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are too “extreme,” No Labels remains a threat to draw votes away from Biden, the liberal centrist who also loves bipartisanship, handing the election to Donald Trump, who doesn’t like democracy one bit.
So gosh, we guess even now, Lieberman’s legacy lives on.
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[AP / Lawyers Guns and Money / Center for Public integrity / WaPo / PBS Frontline]
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