Joseph Lieberman, an iconoclast who frustrated the Democratic Party, dies at 82
Former Connecticut Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent who sometimes baffled his original party over four terms in office and was the first Jewish vice presidential nominee, died Wednesday at age 82.
According to a statement from his family, Lieberman died in Manhattan from complications from a fall. First elected as a Democrat in 1988, when he narrowly defeated Republican Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr., Lieberman made a name for himself as a national security hawk and social liberal and was frequently a key swing vote and bipartisan deal-maker, heading up the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.
When then-vice President Al Gore picked Lieberman to be his running mate in 2000, it was widely viewed as helping inoculate the ticket against being too close to the scandals that defined the last years of the administration of President Bill Clinton that Gore served.
For instance, Lieberman said on the Senate floor during Clinton’s impeachment trial in 1999 that Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky was “not just inappropriate,” but “immoral and it is harmful.” Gore and Lieberman lost a close election to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, a contest that was determined by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bush v. Gore that halted a recount in Florida’s vote tallying.
Lieberman’s relationship with the Democratic Party soured in the 2000s, particularly over his support for the Iraq War. He lost his 2006 Senate primary to Ned Lamont who ran on an anti-war platform. Lieberman went on to run as an independent that year and beat Lamont and Republican Alan Schlesinger.
In the Senate, he retained his Democratic seniority and continued to caucus with the party, but as the 2008 election approached, he began a more public break with his party, culminating in his endorsement of his close friend and colleague, Sen. John Mccain, R-ariz., for president, complete with a throaty speech at the Republican National Convention.
That did not sit well with his Democratic colleagues, and some of them wanted to punish him after Barack Obama beat Mccain, perhaps by taking away his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
But then-senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-nev., knowing how ambitious Obama’s first term agenda was, pushed back on such efforts and kept Lieberman in the fold. He was one of the holdouts during the debate over the 2010 health care law, and was instrumental in beating back efforts to create a public option for health insurance. But he did vote with Democrats to establish one of Obama’s chief legacies. He chose not to run for a fifth term in 2012, and Democrat Christopher S. Murphy won that race and still serves in the seat.