I think you have to go way back to find it, but it's there, pre-Senate. Now it's sort of a punchline, the "you have to go back 40 years to see he's a good Democrat," but the Civil Rights-era activism is truly worth our respect. He first got into politics becasue he was on the right side of the 60s, was an effective CT legislator, and a mold-breaking activist attorney general (although the foolish squawking about discriminatory ladies nights was a harbinger of more tomfoolery to come).

Once he hit the national scene, however, he became adept at playing the interest group pandering game. It's abundantly clear that he blows in the wind on most issues, and the ones where he's acting from some personal sense of obligation are the ones he's dead wrong about. (I will say that the Clenis rebuke is being unfairly misrepresented here. It was essentially the founding document of MoveOn--censure and move on--that Lieberman was espousing.)

He's a larger symptom of what's wrong with our political conversation. He's the living exhibition that words 180 degrees from reality commonly come to describe our political landscape. Cowards are called courageous; equivocators are called principled. It's part and parcel of  a narrative which prefers to see the people squeegied out of democracy and the tenders of interest group handouts shrouded in a cloud of dust to conceal their true nature.

I'm much less sanguine than everyone else in these parts that Lamont can change any of this, that he represents anything more than the anti-Lieberman--I'll take even money that he morphs into the next Mark Dayton. The fact though that this is preferable to Lieberman speaks volumes about what Lieberman has allowed himself to become.

Maybe it's because I'm inexperienced in politics

I think that is it. Something happened to Lieberman. It took nerves of steel to travel to the deep South in the early sixties to demonstrate for civil rights. That man was a moral giant. And you still see flashes of the old brilliance, in Lieberman's work to protect the environment. If you read the technology trades you know that no one understands eGovernment, technology and the civil service than Lieberman. But something happened.

I attribute it to years of flattery, especially for be willing to criticize his own party. Moynihan pioneered this and Lieberman just walked in his footsteps. Also, politicians see the press as some sort of proxy for the voters, only recently has that begun to change.

Lieberman really lost it on impeachment, like the rest of the establishment, he really could not get it through his head that it was unpopular. And from there it was downhill.

And maybe, like to many other Americans, he just sort of lost it with 9/11.

That is my theory.

From what I've read in Josh's columns, I think that what's going on is that he has friends on the staff--people he respects who are being damaged by Lieberman self-immolation.

And while I wouldn't say "tragic,"  there has certainly been a train wreck quality to his campaign.  He's been jaw-droppingly incompetent in this campaign.  It's as if he just figured he'd demand the machine deny Lamont a line on the primary  ballot, and then game over. When that didn't happen, he had no other cards to play.

I may be seeing a distorted picture, reading FDL and the local bloggers, but Lieberman does seem poleaxed--unable to engage in any spontaneous interaction with voters for fear of being called out on the war.  That is itself sad to see, a sitting Senator who can't engage in interaction with voters during a reelection campaign.

Perhaps Josh is reacting to seeing a longstanding, hitherto widely respected senator just lose touch with his electorate.

He sold out or lost his way, it doesn't matter which.

It's like Ronald Reagan's transformation from good union man to union buster and Keystone Kop Konservative.  People change, and not surprisingly the change is often in the direction of returning the favors of powerful interests.  They slowly mythologize their past and rationalize their present.

This is why.  Joe Lieberman is the classic "mensch."  Although Matt's post dispels the notion the Joe Lieberman is really a mensch, I think that's how he's always been seen both by constituents and the media, and certainly his behavior illustrates the same.  Below from Wikpedia:

Mensch
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Mensch (Yiddish מענטש; also mentsch, mentsh, mensh, or mench, plural - mentchen) is a German noun meaning a "human".

In Yiddish (from which the word has migrated into American English), mensch roughly means "a good person." A "mensch" is a particularly good person, like "a stand-up guy," a person with the qualities one would hope for in a dear friend or trusted colleague. According to author and Yiddish popularist Leo Rosten,

Did you just say "Never trust anyone over 30"?

Josh is on to something here.  You have to look at Lieberman's experience as Attorney General, his early Senate years and his previous experience in the 1960s and 1970s to get a good feel for what he was once like.  

The comparison of Lieberman with Pat Moynihan by a previous commenter is a good one.  Both were intellectual giants who thought through problems and were not afraid to anger people while discussing them.  Neither were reactionaries which is why people listened to them.  They were like EF Hutton - when they talked people listened because both generally took exhaustive looks at major issues before coming to a decision.  Lieberman was always more conservative than me but I liked that he would come up with creative solution to problems even if they weren't my preferred solution.  Parties need people like this even if you don't always agree with them.

I think running for VP changed Lieberman and fed the already large ego most Senators have.  As most pols do, I suspect he loved the attention and being a national player.  You have to remember the post 2000 era was the first where Lieberman had not been in either the Senate majority or in a Senate with a Dem President.  I think he cozied up to Bush because he couldn't stand sitting on the sidelines.  His personality and temperment are clearly not suited to being in the political minority.

It is clear he forgot about home base in the last 6 years which is really why he is in trouble.  Pols lose a lot more for being absent than for specific issue stances they take.  Hillary has taken very similar votes and stances on Iraq and she is going to win in a landslide because the woman is everywhere.  Hell, she was in Queens the other day during the blackout.  I bet Lieberman went to Bridgeport a few months ago for the first time in 6 years.

I wouldn't vote for the guy if I lived in CT but there is something sad when you see a pol you once respected fall to this level.

I just asked my mom (now a retired nurse) who was a registered Republican in CT when Lieberman first started his career and witnessed his rise all the way through his first term in the Senate. She said she never had any use for him and he was always in the middle of everything as CT AG, whether it had anything to do with the law or not. Lieberman's career as CT AG had a few successes on the enivronment and a lot of smoke and mirrors on values. Her take (and mine) is that Lieberman is hyperambitious and has always been more concerned with getting attention than govering. I can remember reading about this ruling when I was a teenager.

"The state human-rights commission has ruled that ''ladies night'' promotions discriminate against men, Attorney General Joseph I. Lieberman said today, and Connecticut bars and nightclubs are being told to discontinue them. ''Sex discrimination is illegal in Connecticut, and ladies nights discriminate against men,'' said Mr. Lieberman said. - NYT, 6/8/85

It was an issue in search of a constituency similar to so many Lieberman positions over the years on video games and rap music.

Lieberman suffered an early defeat by being tied to Jimmy Carter and called too liberal and I think it affected him the same way George W. Bush was affected by losing in a race where he was called a Connecticut elitest. He overcompensated in the extreme. He ran to the right of Lowell Weicker and for all of Lieberman's civil rights cred as a college student Lowell Weicker was getting arrested protesting apartheid in 1988. That's who Lieberman pushed out of the Senate.

Joe Lieberman is a decent but hyperambitious man who calculated his every move out of the machine politics of his CT upbringing and his desire to never again be seen as too liberal. The pinnacle of that success was getting selected VP by Al Gore based in large part by his sanctimonius attack of President Clinton. The beginning of his downfall was placing bipartisanship ahead of the needs of the ticket in a bloody recount fight.

In 2004 Lieberman got a taste of democracy in an open primary system and the results were not pretty. What David Brooks calls an inquisition other people call primaries. Primaries are supposed to represent progress, not the dark ages.  Participatory democracy is good, right?

If people want a quick history of Joe Lieberman read the NYTimes summaries in the archive below. You can see a man putting people first - himself above others - for 30 years. Here's a bit from 11/04:

"Talking about his race for the Senate six years ago, Joseph I. Lieberman recently recalled one of the lower moments. He had just left another fruitless meeting in Los Angeles to raise money, and, utterly exhausted, lay down to nap in a park, wondering if he was about to be humiliated at the polls. "I felt like Willy Loman," Mr. Lieberman said."

Lieberman has been selling himself as a sensible moderate for a long time. Like Willy Loman he's running out of buyers.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/ timestopics/people/l/joseph_i_lieberman/ index.html?offset=0&&&&& amp;&s=oldest&

Couldja spell Gandhi's name correctly?

Just a minor peeve...

Lieberman is the poster boy for the progressive movement taking the Dem. Party to task for losing its backbone.

I know you know that but I really do think it is that simple.  If it wasn't Lieberman it would have been someone else.  

A power-vacuum was created when Dems moved toward the rethugs (starting with impeachment and exploding after 9/11) and 2006 is our most successful attempt yet to re-balance the ship.  

From the NYT endorsement given to Ned Lamont:

       "On the Armed Services Committee, Mr. Lieberman  has left it to Republicans like Lindsey Graham of South Carolina to investigate the administration's actions. In 2004, Mr. Lieberman praised Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for expressing regret about Abu Ghraib, then added: "I cannot help but say, however, that those who were responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11th, 2001, never apologized." To suggest even rhetorically that the American military could be held to the same standard of behavior as terrorists is outrageous. . ."

                             *   *   *

Holy sh*t -- what an incredibly stupid thing to say!

I was beyond furious with Al Gore for picking Lieberman as his running mate in `00.  Sadly, I have NEVER regretted voting against George Bush while also NOT voting for the 2000 Dem. ticket because it included Joe Lieberman.  

Mine was one of the few legitimately "spoiled" presidential ballots that year. (Admittedly, casting my ballot in a state where Al Gore received, by far, one of his highest vote percentages made it far easier for me to cast a "principled" (mis)vote than, for instance, someone living in Fla. or New Hampshire - still it did my soul good).

For such an allegedly pious guy, the torture quote cited in the NYT's Lamont endorsement editorial is just another example of Lieberman's proclivity to cluelessly and foolishly dry-hump cowardly GOP lies and wet-kiss their blatant crimes. I don't know how I missed this particularly offensive and superciliously ridiculous quote that the NYT dredged up in its editorial, but it certainly gave me another in a long, long line of post-Lowell Weicker era blood pressure spikes.

Lieberman's problems started well before the Iraq war and do not reflect a departure from otherwise good service.  His political obituary will reflect three terms in the Senate of consistently poor judgment, selfish disloyalty and insouciance toward the bill of rights - especially first amendment freedoms.  His "sudden" appearance as a tragic figure merely reflects evolutionary gains in his ability to inflict his illiberal and poor judgment on a larger scale and from a bigger pedestal as he acquired more seniority and power over his tenure.

cl

CL

I also want to address some of the revisionist history of Lieberman's record from the 1990s which really bothers me.  There is plenty to run on against him from the last 6 years.

1 - Lieberman did not scuttle the Clinton health care reform.  He proposed an alternative with John Breaux and a few others to the wreckage that had become the proposal in mid-1994.  While not my preferred solution, that idea was a heck of lot better than what happened which was NOTHING!!!  THe HIAA, NFIB and the Repubs DID SCUTTLE the bill.  Congressman Jim McDermott didn't help by refusing to support anything other than single payer forcing Dems on the House Ways and Means Committee to craft all sorts of compromises to get a bill out of committee.  I once again recommend The System by Haynes Johnson and David Broder to understand what really happened in 1994.

2 - I love the hype today around Lieberman's Monica speech in 1998 when at the time people were less upset with it and many agreed privately with it.  I don't think this was the intent but Lieberman's speech ended up helping Clinton because it gave him the opportunity to show the contrition he did not when he gave the angry admission of the affair on TV after his testimony.  In the end Lieberman voted against all the Repubs articles of impeachment which is really what counts.

3 - I never liked Lieberman's war on "Hollywood" but I think it should be pointed out Tipper Gore started out this movement by testifying in the Senate in 1987, a year before Lieberman was even elected to that body.

Me, I've always been wary of people whose religiosity is too conspicuous.  Instinct tells me that deep down, they're accommodating evil impulses.

     I think a lot of the positive publicity Sen. Lieberman got was because he is so ostentatiously religious. The corporate media seems to assume that anyone who is religious has good moral character.

As a Democratic operative told me recently, voting records mean much less than a) public statements and b) committee memberships.

The reason?  Votes on issues are usually set by the party leadership, not the pols in question.

Bear that in mind the next time someone touts Lieberman's "liberal voting record".

Josh Marshall is part of the establishment but he wants to give the appearance of breaking from them. And every once in a while, you get to read the establishment talking points memo.

Josh and Kevin Drum are semi-establishment bloggers.  I'm not surprised Josh cannot see the "real" Joe Lieberman for who he truly is.

I haven't liked Lieberman since his days of culture warring pre-2000 (even prior to his Lewinsky grand-standing).  For that reason I didn't like him as the VP selection in 2000.   The culture warring issue also cause me to have some reservations about Gore in 2000 as well because I remembered his PMRC days.  

Remember, Bush is a "nice guy" would be cool to have a beer with.

Ann Coulter is nice - backstage to the producers - so she'll be asked back and can advocate killing people ON THE AIR.

I never thought my neighbor would kill 20 teens. He seemed like a "nice guy".

========

This shit is over, done, and dead. Anyone can be nice when they have to. It's his public record we are voting on. If the producers at NBC said, "Hey, Ann Coulter wants to kill my co-worker", they might not invite her on time after time.

I don't give a fuck if Joe's nice. People have died and will die for the political positions he has taken in support of GWB.

Lieberman is the perfect reflection of the 60s/early 70s generation that has gradually abandoned what made them relevant in the first place (aside from huge numbers).

I don't know about tragic, but the pathos is undeniable.

Right now, the most important thing is to figure out how to get as many Lamont supporters to the polls on the 8th as possible.  Let's take a lead from PsiFighter37 and be talking about phonebanking and canvasing.

That said, the question fascinates me.  I've lived in Connecticut for fifteen years, and I have many old friends who are close to Sen. Lieberman.  I've set up a poll to ask people here when they think Joe jumped the shark.

To push it even further, when I hear 'tragic', I think of Greek tragedy, and I think about Lieberman's story in this context.  Is there sum sort of hubris that is his Achilles' Heal?  Has he failed his task as a returning hero (ref, Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces) to bring his experiences back and make the world a better place?

Has he been corrupted by the lust for power that we see in stories like The Heart of Darkness or The Pearl?

What can we learn about our current political milleau from all of this?

Perhaps, these are good discussions to have after we get the vote out next week.

when you put a old horse down, you sooth it. You don't approach it be yelling "fuck you bitch you are fucking dog food". It's not for this horse, but for all ones coming after it.

I think Lieberman fought in the Civil Rights days because he had the strength to speak truth to power. There was also a part of him that took advantage of the narrative.

He had the sense to see that history would remember well anyone who marched with MLK.

Over time, as he lost the strength it takes to speak truth to power, he also decided that the narrative of America has changed.

He believes that history will remember well anyone who refuses to be a Neville Chamberlain when it comes to fighting terror.

This explains his utter giddiness at going on Fox and helping bash Chamberlains - real and imagined.

...asking him.

What did he say?

shouldn't this wait until aug 9th? just curious

How the hell did Lieberman undermine the Gore campaign?  He was the one who convinced Gore to contest Florida.  And if you're referring to the VP debate, remember that Gore was equally ineffectual in that Meet The Press format and that Edwards in '04 didn't lay a glove on Cheney either.

And yes, I am over 30 and HAVE won elections with Democratic candidates.  Is that some kind of scarlett letter to you know-it-all bloggers?

...when he ran for Senate to right of Republican Lowell Weicker.

... no Pat Moynihan

Insane to compare Moynihan to Lieberman.  Moynihan was a fantastic Senator -- awful person -- who actually cared about and made a positive impact on policy.  Tax reform, welfare reform, immigration reform and many other issues that were not necessarily popular but were important were defined by the man. He worked across the aisle with real moderates like Simpson. I was in the Senate as a staffer when he was Chair of the Finance committee and he was head and shoulders above the rest of the Dem Caucus at the point.

Lieberman is an opportunist. I can't point to a single piece of policy that he was the intellectual author of (I guess the mess that is the Homeland Security Dept) and pushed through.  Moynihan's intellectual beliefs led him to positions -- welfare reform is what the critics here are talking about -- that went against progressive caucus. But, he did not abandon or take cheap shots against the caucus (like Joe does).  Lieberman's desire for press is what leads him to his contrarian positions (condemnation of Clinton, etc.).  

Final footnote, Moynihan was widely known as one of the biggest SOBs on the hill (drunk and mean).  Lieberman is actually supposed to be a nice guy (I hear this from those that work for him).  But, give me Moynihan anytime.  I long for the days when we had Senators like him who actually viewed their position as a moral and civic duty to impact national policy rather than nothing more than a national political platform.

EricJaffa's mom's recollection sure matches mine and while I was a major Weicker supporter, I was far to the left on most things. Lieberman looked to a lot of us as an complete opportunist, willing to take any position that would further his personal career and that's what he's done since '88. Tt's baffling to see him characterized as "the smartest guy" or a sympathetic figure, etc ...

In the Shakesperean sense of a befuddled old douche ambling around offering his kingdom for a horse, Lieberman is tragic.

But, he's still a douchebag.

If oppportunistic, anti-feminist, darling of AIPAC and the banks Lieberman is a mensch, then George W. Bush is a brainiac.

We know that Lieberman was elected VP in 2000, and that he would have been the front-runner for 2008.  But the Supreme Court cheated him out of it.  Al Gore was able to deal with this, but it shook something loose in Joe's mind.

Lieberman is in bed with Neocons -- therefore he is by association a Neocon.

 In one history of the Neocons -- they are liberals who've lost their way and ended up as Neoconservatives.

 Mostly what I don't like about Lieberman he wears his brand of religion and "morality" as a mask. Somewhere along the line he misplaced his morals -- he's seen the other side and those guys are really living like he wants to live -- well taken care of.

He was backed by the Republicans, who really wanted to get rid of their own Lowell Weicker because he was too liberal for them.  

Weicker was a good man and a good Senator but with the backing of people like William F. Buckley, Lieberman could beat him - and did.  

He's dancing with those that brung him.

Here is what I have observed as one of his Constituents.    ANYIME I have written with a request on how I wanted him to vote, I got a formal, flim-flam letter talking round in circles so you did not know what the hell he was really saying .   any time I called the office, or wrote and criticized HOW he voted,  the staff or his form letter fell back on "He is a man of Principles so that is why he voted such and such"!
He has consistently hidden behind the term 'Principled" in order to vote how ever he wanted!      I personally am sick and tired of hearing he is principled, so he voted for Cloture on Alito, or Energy bill, or stuck his nose in Terri Schiavo, or told rape victims to take a cab to the next hospital!

The man is a total phony and we need all the help you can give to get him out.

Josh's affinity for Lieberman is really about Josh, whom if you've read for a long time is recognizable as something akin to a late 1940s cold war liberal at heart, with a strong pro-Zionist bent and some earlier-style Jewish anti-racism (the latter making him seem more liberal than he really is).

As for Lieberman, it's to his credit that he participated in the Freedom Rides.  Yet, it's important to recognize that there were different political and cultural motivations that drove people to participate.  SDS, for example, was founded in 1962 by the right-wing of the Socialist movement, many of whom had a few years ealier gone to an international youth conference(s) and put out anti-Soviet propaganda on CIA money.  Yet, some of them put their lives on the line in the South.  The question is, for what program?  Another thing is that Judaism back in the '50s and early '60s was big on Brotherhood, be it the church across the street or with "Negroes" on the other side of town.  Urban rebellions/riots, the 1967 war and finally the 1973 one changed all that.  And so I wouldn't be surprised if it was thus for Lieberman, who apparently went south to promote voting rights, as opposed to more radical social change; i.e., working within the system, not against it.  To wit, he was soon in law school and supporting Bobby Kennedy, who many in the Civil Rights and labor movements (among others) considered an outright pig.  And Lieberman's taking on the CT Attorney General's post, i.e., chief state legal enforcer of the ruling order, however how much he tried to tinker with it (aka reform), reinforces that view.  

An earlier writer is correct that some people move to the left over the course of their lives and some go the other direction.  Age typically brings greater caution and better sense in daily affairs, but for many it also brings some remolding if not demoralization of the idealist's soul (cynicism).  If you're working within this political system, making the everyday compromises and giving the blind eyes it requires, it doesn't get better over time.  Being a Yale graduate, with its myriad of upper class and professional social and political connections there for a lifetime, doesn't hurt either.

Joe Lieberman is an Orthodox Jew.  Not to suggest that Orthodoxy is a monolith, but that belief and affiliation is in itself a flashing red light for the underlying social conservatism of the man, because that's its nature.  Moreover, in these days when Christian evangelicals have been allying with Israel's expansionist goals for mutual (and fundamentally contradictory) ends, it's not surprising that Joe has felt comfortable playing Bush toadie.  Thus, when you think about it, anyone who has an affinity for Lieberman is to be looked at cautiously, and anyone surprised or disappointed with him needs to go look in the mirror, not blame it on him.  I think he's been pretty up front about where he's at.

Great post. I don't get it either.

But I also do not understand why anyone would meet with the President or VP either.  They are clearly immoral, war criminals who should be in prison or worse.  

Why isn't this the case?  Reporters joke around with Bush, pundits continue to talk about him in weekly terms (he's had a good week), etc.  Sorry, but you don't get good weeks after what he has done.  You cannot wash away 50 or 100,000 dead like that.

Either I am really whacked out or the country is and for the sake of the country I hope its me.

No, hotpotatomash, you're not whacked out, just need to take a step back.  People in Congress meet with the President and Vice President all the time to talk about the various aspects of running capitalist America and its imperial ambitions.  Nothing unusual there.  The Democrats are no less a party of "immoral, war criminals" than the Republicans.  After all, it was Democratic presidents who authorized the mass slaughter of civilian areas in Germany and Japan (and France) during WWII, including the dropping of A-bombs.  And it was for a long time a Democratic President that authorized the carpet bombing and worse of Vietnam.  And then there's Iraq (and Israel/Palestine), which the Democrats have supported Bush on.  Lieberman may be an extreme example, but have Hillary and others been all that different? Check out Carroll's House of War for a recounting of much of this political-military history from WWII.

You do raise a good point about individual responsibility.  During the 1960s and into the '70s, it was common for government officials responsible for various opressive policies and despicable actions to be picketed and demonstrated against in one form or another.  Likewise, cops and their provocateurs were fingered and thrown out of political meetings.  There was this sense of collective action as being against the system, or at least against those responsible for its current policies and deeds, be it the President of the university board of regents, the governor, or the president and defense sec. of the U.S.  And it was recognized that the cops and feds were part of that system, there to infiltrate and disrupt.  With the rise of "Me Generation" politics at the end of '70s, the individual and his/her desires and feelings started coming first.  You mention meetings.  Here's an example.  In the early '80s General Alexander Haig, then (or just recently) Chief of Staff to Ronald Reagan, a certified war criminal and the only man in the history of the U.S. to try to stage a coup, visited U Mich to give a talk.  Instead of demonstrations, as there would have been 10-15 years earlier, there was a signup list on campus for those who wanted to meet with him privately.  When reporters asked the latter why, typical answers were about wanting to hear the man's point of view with their own ears, as if this was not readily available public information and that they were actually going to get him to tell the unsugar-coated truth.  Likewise, in political meetings and demos/sit-ins the leaderships opposed throwing out the plain-clothed (and sometimes uniformed) cops, as a way of showing that the activists were really not "radicals" but just good boys and girls who wanted "fairness."  Nothing I've seen during the Iraq war suggests anything has changed.

I don't think this applies to Lieberman et al., however, because they long ago tossed their axe in with the ruling system, including its chief political executive.  They wouldn't have been elected otherwise (take a look at the process of corporate endorsement and fund raising).  By the way, my comments are not meant in any way to imply endorsement of Ned Lamont, who doesn't have much different to offer than that good old American fallback, "change."