Sen. Joe Lieberman, 1942-2024

Joe Lieberman’s death is a stark reminder of the insanity that’s consumed his party. The four-term senator and first-ever Jewish VP candidate was an honorable, reasonable man, never afraid to break with party orthodoxy.

He was the first national Dem to take then-President Bill Clinton to task publicly over his affair with Monica Lewinsky, a risky move given the intense polarization around Clinton’s shenanigans, perjury included.

And though he shared his party’s views on domestic issues, he split on foreign policy — backing the Iraq War and remaining a staunch friend of Israel.

His Iraq stance drove him out of the party: He lost a Senate primary to lefty Democrat Ned Lamont, winning in the general as an independent with bigtime bipartisan backing.

Lamont was an early example of a candidate backed by the party’s growing left fringe; Lieberman’s exit was a sign of things to come. In the years since, that fringe has become the party’s dominant power.

Open antisemites like Reps. Ilhan Omar, Jamaal Bowman and Rashida Tlaib spray vitriol in public as their Squadmates cheer them on. “Defenders of democracy” like Nancy Pelosi and Dan Goldman rip apart norms in their pursuit of political power.

The Democratic Party has become synonymous with racial grievance-mongers like Black Lives Matter, the climate fanaticism that demands zero emissions no matter the death toll, gender extremism that wants to see little kids shot up with cross-sex hormones and borders open to endless floods of illegal immigrants.

A Democratic Party with no room in it for Lieberman is an ugly, divisive and corrosive assemblage. So you’ll be badly missed, Joe — by everyone who remembers a saner politics.