Jennifer Rubin: Going After Joe Lieberman
[Jennifer Rubin is COMMENTARY’s contributing editor. Her last article for the magazine was “Why Jews Hate Palin” (January). She blogs daily on our website at www.commentarymagazine.com.]
Both political parties wrestle with an inherent tension: balancing the desire for ideological coherence with the need to build a broad-based coalition that can win elections and form a governing majority. Although the mainstream media focus almost obsessively in this regard on the Republican party—dwelling on one stray conservative activist’s 10-point “purity test” (which was roundly rejected by nearly every elected official) and fixating on daily spats between radio talk-show hosts and elected Republicans who must cater to less-conservative constituents—the most vivid example of this phenomenon in recent political history comes from the Democratic party.
It was the Democratic Left that sought to drive Joseph I. Lieberman, a sitting senator and former vice-presidential candidate, from the party and from office because of his ideological heresy. In doing so—and in continuing its assault against him even after his successful re-election to the Senate in 2006—the Left helped highlight, if not hasten, the demise of its most ardently desired domestic policy goal: government-administered universal health care (the so-called public option). And in its ideological fervor to ostracize Lieberman, the Left exposed and widened fault lines in the Democratic party just in time for a critical Senate election that went disastrously for it.
Lieberman is an odd target for the Left. Pro-choice and politically liberal on an array of domestic issues, he has been a fixture in the Democratic party for four decades. There are Democratic politicians more conservative than Lieberman on contentious issues such as abortion, as well as some who have less distinguished records in pursuing their party’s domestic policy goals. He has, however, ever since his first Senate race in 1988, raised the ire of liberal purists. In that year, from his elected perch as Connecticut’s attorney general, Lieberman ran to the right of the liberal Republican Lowell Weicker Jr., with visible backing from conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr.
He was thereafter viewed with some suspicion as a political chameleon with friends on the “other side,” politicians and public figures who were anathema to his party’s base. If politicians, as the adage goes, are defined by their enemies, Democratic purists were chagrined to find out that they did not share a common roster of foes with Lieberman. And that would become increasingly problematic when ideological battle lines hardened during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama presidencies.
Lieberman’s advisers describe him as a representative of a political tradition that is largely extinct. He is an ideologically heterodox Democrat from the Northeast—liberal on social issues, moderate on economics, and hawkish on defense. He has favored enterprise zones (a zero-tax development policy that was a project of the late Republican Representative Jack Kemp), joined with the conservative William J. Bennett to combat the cultural sway of sex and violence in Hollywood entertainment, and is a supporter of school choice.
Yet he is expected to be an ally with the gay community on repealing “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and is among those Senate Democrats leading efforts to pass far-reaching climate-control legislation. As the ranks of Northeastern liberals have thinned on the Republican side, he remains an anomaly: a politician whose vote is not predictable. He is, in essence, the Justice Anthony Kennedy of the Senate, the vote that is not “in the bag” and on whom the institution may often pivot, to the chagrin of both more ideologically consistent sides.
Nevertheless, Lieberman still was considered by most party insiders to be a safe and reliable vice-presidential pick for Al Gore in 2000. Showing his political adeptness and deeply disappointing conservatives who had come to rely on him as their token friend in the Democratic party, he smoothed over differences with liberal constituency groups on issues like affirmative action and school choice. In an appearance on PBS just before the convention that nominated him, he gracefully minimized his differences with Al Gore:
In the case of vouchers, for instance, yes, because of my concern about poor children being trapped in failing schools, I’ve supported demonstration test programs on vouchers, which would only be available to kids below a certain income level. But, you know, on a whole host of other areas, that have to do with education, I agree totally with Al—on needing to invest more in education, to focus in on the results of the system, have standards of accountability...
Arriving at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, he was even more solicitous of African-American Democrats, meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus and assuring them of his support for affirmative action and opposition to California’s anti-racial-preference measure, Proposition 209, about which he had previously spoken positively. The Washington Post reported on the August 16, 2000, meeting:
Lieberman said “there’s been misunderstanding” of his view of affirmative action, and said he had expressed support for California’s Proposition 209 based only on its language and not based on details of its implications. He said he later refused to sign a letter of endorsement. “I have supported affirmative action, I do support affirmative action and I will support affirmative action,” he said, to applause. But he acknowledged differences with running mate Al Gore on the question of whether to use public money to help pupils attend private schools.
Following the ticket’s agonizing 2000 defeat, Lieberman returned to the Senate and fell comfortably back into the Democratic caucus for a time. Over the next few years, he would vote against the Bush tax cuts and oppose Bush Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. He championed environmental legislation, favored gay rights, and was strongly pro-choice. He also made a short-lived, unsuccessful run for the presidency in 2004, signaling rather definitively that there was only so far he could go within a party that was wary of ideological nonconformity.
He was, up until 2006, in all but one respect within the mainstream of the Democratic Senate caucus. By 2006, however, that one issue had come to dominate the Democratic party: the war in Iraq...
Read entire article at Commentary
Both political parties wrestle with an inherent tension: balancing the desire for ideological coherence with the need to build a broad-based coalition that can win elections and form a governing majority. Although the mainstream media focus almost obsessively in this regard on the Republican party—dwelling on one stray conservative activist’s 10-point “purity test” (which was roundly rejected by nearly every elected official) and fixating on daily spats between radio talk-show hosts and elected Republicans who must cater to less-conservative constituents—the most vivid example of this phenomenon in recent political history comes from the Democratic party.
It was the Democratic Left that sought to drive Joseph I. Lieberman, a sitting senator and former vice-presidential candidate, from the party and from office because of his ideological heresy. In doing so—and in continuing its assault against him even after his successful re-election to the Senate in 2006—the Left helped highlight, if not hasten, the demise of its most ardently desired domestic policy goal: government-administered universal health care (the so-called public option). And in its ideological fervor to ostracize Lieberman, the Left exposed and widened fault lines in the Democratic party just in time for a critical Senate election that went disastrously for it.
Lieberman is an odd target for the Left. Pro-choice and politically liberal on an array of domestic issues, he has been a fixture in the Democratic party for four decades. There are Democratic politicians more conservative than Lieberman on contentious issues such as abortion, as well as some who have less distinguished records in pursuing their party’s domestic policy goals. He has, however, ever since his first Senate race in 1988, raised the ire of liberal purists. In that year, from his elected perch as Connecticut’s attorney general, Lieberman ran to the right of the liberal Republican Lowell Weicker Jr., with visible backing from conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr.
He was thereafter viewed with some suspicion as a political chameleon with friends on the “other side,” politicians and public figures who were anathema to his party’s base. If politicians, as the adage goes, are defined by their enemies, Democratic purists were chagrined to find out that they did not share a common roster of foes with Lieberman. And that would become increasingly problematic when ideological battle lines hardened during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama presidencies.
Lieberman’s advisers describe him as a representative of a political tradition that is largely extinct. He is an ideologically heterodox Democrat from the Northeast—liberal on social issues, moderate on economics, and hawkish on defense. He has favored enterprise zones (a zero-tax development policy that was a project of the late Republican Representative Jack Kemp), joined with the conservative William J. Bennett to combat the cultural sway of sex and violence in Hollywood entertainment, and is a supporter of school choice.
Yet he is expected to be an ally with the gay community on repealing “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and is among those Senate Democrats leading efforts to pass far-reaching climate-control legislation. As the ranks of Northeastern liberals have thinned on the Republican side, he remains an anomaly: a politician whose vote is not predictable. He is, in essence, the Justice Anthony Kennedy of the Senate, the vote that is not “in the bag” and on whom the institution may often pivot, to the chagrin of both more ideologically consistent sides.
Nevertheless, Lieberman still was considered by most party insiders to be a safe and reliable vice-presidential pick for Al Gore in 2000. Showing his political adeptness and deeply disappointing conservatives who had come to rely on him as their token friend in the Democratic party, he smoothed over differences with liberal constituency groups on issues like affirmative action and school choice. In an appearance on PBS just before the convention that nominated him, he gracefully minimized his differences with Al Gore:
In the case of vouchers, for instance, yes, because of my concern about poor children being trapped in failing schools, I’ve supported demonstration test programs on vouchers, which would only be available to kids below a certain income level. But, you know, on a whole host of other areas, that have to do with education, I agree totally with Al—on needing to invest more in education, to focus in on the results of the system, have standards of accountability...
Arriving at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, he was even more solicitous of African-American Democrats, meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus and assuring them of his support for affirmative action and opposition to California’s anti-racial-preference measure, Proposition 209, about which he had previously spoken positively. The Washington Post reported on the August 16, 2000, meeting:
Lieberman said “there’s been misunderstanding” of his view of affirmative action, and said he had expressed support for California’s Proposition 209 based only on its language and not based on details of its implications. He said he later refused to sign a letter of endorsement. “I have supported affirmative action, I do support affirmative action and I will support affirmative action,” he said, to applause. But he acknowledged differences with running mate Al Gore on the question of whether to use public money to help pupils attend private schools.
Following the ticket’s agonizing 2000 defeat, Lieberman returned to the Senate and fell comfortably back into the Democratic caucus for a time. Over the next few years, he would vote against the Bush tax cuts and oppose Bush Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. He championed environmental legislation, favored gay rights, and was strongly pro-choice. He also made a short-lived, unsuccessful run for the presidency in 2004, signaling rather definitively that there was only so far he could go within a party that was wary of ideological nonconformity.
He was, up until 2006, in all but one respect within the mainstream of the Democratic Senate caucus. By 2006, however, that one issue had come to dominate the Democratic party: the war in Iraq...