Because deep down inside I’m almost 100% sure that Joe Liberman is actually this guy.
He’s not even moderate, at least compared to the rest of the senate. This ranking (and most others I’ve seen) puts him more or less in the middle of the Dems as far as a ranking of his “liberalness” goes, and thus more liberal then 75% of the senate, more or less. I can’t find it now, but there was one page that ranked people in the same way, but allowed one to seperate votes by type of issue (economic, social, foreign policy). If you take away his foreign policy votes, he’s even more liberal realative to his peers.
So I don’t think it makes sense to say he’s disliked because of his “conservativeness”. Rather I suspect its a mix of his support for the war, McCain, and his poor performance as a VP candidate.
It is. Keeping your troops all over their country is not. Nor is colonizing it with settlements.
This.
And this.
I find his views on censorship and religion to be morally abhorrent, and, to my mind, thoroughly un-American.
Can’t forget his lies during his Senate campaign. He made it sound like he was almost as much of a war skeptic as Lamont was…until he got elected. Then so much for that.
Also, he was in favor of investigating the Federal response to Katrina - which was in the jurisdiction of the Senate committee he chairs. After the election, he decided there was no point in digging up that ancient history.
FWIW, I too object to the notion that Lieberman was ‘torpedoed’ by his own party. Primary challenges happen all the time, and are part of the process of deciding what the party should be like. The netroots slogan is ‘more, better Democrats,’ and since you’re not going to get too many strong progressives representing conservative states or districts, the best way to get ‘better’ Dems is through primary challenges to conservative Dems who represent liberal states or districts. If you have conservative Democrats representing both conservative and liberal states and districts, you get a party whose representation is more conservative than the people it represents, and as a result, the party is less inclined to oppose the GOP when it needs opposing than might otherwise be the case.
Finally, a major problem with Lieberman specifically was that the networks inordinately loved to book him on their political talk shows. Before the last midterm, he was pretty much the most visible representative of the Democratic Party, yet his positions on many issues - not just on Iraq, but on other foreign policy issues, and domestic security as well - weren’t at all representative of the Democratic Party.
Yes I know…I meant to say ‘To paraphrase, “A pox on both your houses”’, but I was writing that on my phone and didn’t get it all in. Apologies.
Well…yeah, it does if you mean that as a Senator he wanted to reach out to work with them on key issues. After all, if you are refering to the Gang of 14, Republicans embraced Democrats as well…though I’d say ‘embraced’ is putting it a bit strongly.
Or maybe you are refering to his endorsement of John McCain in this race…if you are then all I can do is laugh and point out that the man is no an Independent (though he generally votes with the Democrats). And of course I can point out WHY he’s an Independent now, instead of a Democrat…but you already know that answer.
Could you refresh my memory…what ‘betrayal of Gore’ are you speaking about?
-XT
If your party stabs you in the back and allows/encourages the running of a real viable candidate for a Senate seat THEY ALREADY HAVE, and you are forced to go Independent in order to continue to run…well, at that point you can pretty much campaign for whoever you want, ehe? Also, Lieberman has a rather close relationship with McCain from working with him on the Gang of 14 and other such bipartisan things so it’s not that unusual.
The irony here is that people are throwing this in his face as if it’s a betrayal…after the Dems tried to fuck him over. I just wish I could have seen the looks on the faces of the party big shots that allowed/encourage that situation to happen when Lieberman won anyway. Of course, because Lieberman is pretty much an honorable man I suppose the Dems are getting their cake and eat it to, so to speak, as they can disavow him, revile him and say he’s not a real Democrat (that part is certainly true…now), while counting on him to usually vote right along with them, epecially when it counts.
It really bugs me to that people are SO naive as to not realize that the party has heavy influence over such things. One of the reasons why incumbents don’t generally face really stiff competition when running to the nomination of their party in a re-election bid is that the party manipulates such things so it doesn’t happen…or encourages it TO happen if they don’t happen to like the incumbent in question (like in the case of Lieberman). The fix was definitely in on this one…the funny part is that it backfired on the Dems.
BTW, he didn’t lose the election…that’s the best part. His party TRIED to torpedo him, they put Ned Lamont up as their candidate…and then lost to Lieberman running as an Independent. SO, it seems that ‘the people of Conneticut’ in fact DID want Lieberman as their representative over the choice of the Democrats (and Republicans for that matter).
-XT
Just to be clear, all the party big wigs supported him in the primary. They switched over to Lamont only after Lamont won the nomination-- as well they should have.
Lieberman gets a lot of undeserved grief from the left, IMO. He’s a pretty solid Dem, except on the Iraq war. But when he endorsed McCain, he pretty much shut himself out of the Democratic party. That was stepping over the line, if he wants to actually be a Democrat.
This. He does not know what is best for me, he has no right to decide what is best for me, how dare he even think it.
Then there are the other things, but this is the big one. Who the hell does he think he is?
Not that I’m doubting you here John, but I don’t believe that a serious contender to an incumbent during the primaries without the tacit approval of the party…that way the party usually avoids knock down drag out fights when they already have the seat. While I have no doubt that some (or even most) ‘party big wigs’ mouthed support for Lieberman, I also have no doubt that there was plenty of back room schnanagans going on in Lieberman’s case.
No, I have no real proof…just know how the party(s) generally operate wrt their incumbants and feel it’s pretty obvious that someone in the party structure wanted him gone and allowed this to happen. 'Course, many CTists probably equally feel their pet theories are correct, so I condede that I could be wrong. The facts though are that for whatever reasons the Dems chose not to re-nominate a sitting Senator…and said Senator ended up winning anyway, kind of proving that it was a fuck up on the Dems part.
I’m unsure here…did he endorse McCain before or after he became an Independent?
-XT
Actually, as a Jew, that’s one thing I do agree with him about.
Ed
A number of Democratic Senator sactively campaigned for Lieberman during the primary. Lamont got the support of Maxine Waters and Danny Glover.
He calls himself an Independent Democrat. He endorsed McCain afterwards, of course. McCain wasn’t even running when he became an I-D.
This is my feeling as well. I used to feel he was a perfectly fine Democrat – sure I disagreed with him on some issues, but I agreed with him on a lot as well. And to be perfectly blunt, I kind of liked the idea of having an orthodox Jew in the Senate. Sort of made me proud. A little push-back against those Christian fundamatalists, I thought.
But endorsing McCain is stepping over the line. He’s gone too far now.
Ed
John is right. The party establishment supported Lieberman until Lamont won. Lamont’s run was an unsanctioned insurgent action – not some stealth effort by the establishment to force Lieberman out.
It’s a matter of record that the party didn’t support his re-election. To characterize this as “torpedoing” makes it seem as if this came out of nowhere. Connecticut democrats thought that Lieberman’s very public support for positions with which they strongly disagreed made him an unsuitable representative. In general, Dems didn’t dispute his right to hold such positions, but less than half of primary voters felt obligated to continue to support him in spite of them.
Yes, he ran as an Independent and won, in part because the Republican Party essentially disavowed their own candidate, and encouraged its members to vote for him. 33% of Connecticut Democrats voted for Lieberman; 70% of Connecticut Republicans voted for Lieberman. Alan Schlesinger got torpedoed by his party; Joe, not so much.
Does it really come as a surprise that there is some ill-will from Democrats toward a former Democrat that overcame their opposition, and won in large part because he was the de facto candidate of their opponents?
Lamont wasn’t considered a “serious contender.” He’d never held elective office, he didn’t have any connections to any Dem bigwigs. He was a self-financed candidate, and he only got into the race because no CT Dem elected politician was willing to challenge Lieberman.
Sorry…I know it was a leading question. Being an Independent however frees him from having to march in lock step with the rest of the Dems though…and allows him to endorse whoever he chooses, in either party. Lieberman and McCain have quite a bit of history (and they are both old and craggy which probably gives them even more in common), so it’s unsurprising that he would support McCain in his presidential bid.
It’s kind of funny that this ‘betrayal’ is put at Lieberman’s feet though, don’t you think…considering what has happened to the man from his own party? Even if I concede that the party had nothing to do with it (which I don’t but will accept for the sake of argument), to expect him to STILL be in lock step with the party and only support Democrat candidates now is pretty foolish. The man has been forced to become and Independent against his will…so, why shouldn’t he act like an Independent now?
Perhaps. Perhaps the party really doesn’t have a way to quietly get someone like Lamont to back out of such a campaign ‘for the good of the party’, and that they really did try everything they could to help Lieberman get the nomination that should have been his pretty much automatically. I don’t believe it, though I have to admit looking at Hillary’s run I’m more apt to accept it provisionally than I was.
-XT
You are confusing the Democratic voters in CT with the Democratic party. And you are absolutely wrong about how the nomination process played out-- it was the netRoots activists that organized against Lieberman, not the DNC. I paid a great deal of attention to that whole race and who was supporting whom. Frankly, his fellow party members in the Senate have been quite good to him since he got re-elected.
And the nomination should not have been his automatically-- the voters of the state decide that.
My impression from the reporting & posturing at the time was that the national Democratic Party was not in favor of opposing Lieberman, but that the Connecticut Democratic State Party was.
And, my personal impression at the time was that a lot of the opposition stemmed from exactly the sentiment you expressed – Lieberman seemed to think that he should automatically get the nod, regardless of how he chose to represent us. And I think it’s informative that he chose to name his newly created party “Connecticut for Lieberman” rather than “Lieberman for Connecticut.”
Hereis a list of endorsements for Lieberman in the primary
Note that all of the Democratic state legislators backed him.