While everyone else is going gah-gah for Sarah Palin, I’m going to take a moment to reflect on one of the lesser newsmakers of this weeks events - Senator Joseph Lieberman. Lieberman, who spoke at the Republican convention, is a cause celebre among Republicans and a pariah amongst his own party. The central issue is his continued support for Bush and the Iraq war. Such was also the case in 2006 when Lieberman was up for re-election. Long memories best serve the armchair wonks here, so I’m going to go into a flashback.
The date was March 31st, 2006 and Joseph Lieberman was hosting the Jefferson Jackson Bailey dinner for the Connecticut Democrat party. As he attempted to introduce Senator Barack Obama to the audience, he found he was largely ignored except for scattered cheers and jeers. That night, Obama proclaimed his solid support for Lieberman, and upon concluding his speech was met with a round of applause that could be best concluded as polite. Though his speech had been riveting, there was a sense of uncommitedness around Lieberman. Though previously endorsed by Senators Clinton, Kennedy, Dodd, Durbin, Biden and other such powerhouses there was a grassroots movement of ultra-radicals hostile to the war in Iraq, hostile to continued US-Israeli support and hostile to Lieberman’s outspoken support of Bush on a number of issues other than the war. By mid-summer, this groundswell had turned into a political Tsunami. Only five Senators would endorse the long-time incumbent, and none of them were key party players. By contrast every heavyweight among the Senate Democrats endorsed Lieberman’s primary opponent, Ed Lamont. Along with those endorsements came long-time contributors. Though officially the Local, State and National parties rarely support one candidate over another during the primary cycle, party leadership holds considerable back channel sway. PAC money flows more or less along the lines of endorsements which is why soft-money donors found on lists turned in by the likes of Obama, Biden, Clinton and Kennedy match very well to those turned in by Ed Lamont. Likewise, few donors were found in common between those four and with Lieberman, even though many had previously supported Lieberman. (To be fair, Lamont funded the lions share of his primary campaign with money from his personal business, and Lieberman had nearly $4 million left over from his 2000 and 2004 fundraising accounts.)
Lieberman lost the primary, and ran as an Independant winning his seat handily. To sweeten his victory, Lieberman the Independent now held the balance of power the US Senate in his hands. As a Democrat, he’d give the party a slim majority. As an Independent, the Dems were 50/50 to the Republicans. A deal was cut that let Lieberman keep his Seniority and his position on key Senate committees so long as he sat in the Senate as a Democrat and voted in favor of Democrats in procedural matters. But with the sweet comes the sour - Lieberman forgave, but didn’t forget that it was Obama, Biden, Clinton and the current Democratic leadership that turned on him. For Lieberman, this week was payback time. With his endorsement, McCain now looks more attractive to independents, crossovers and disaffected Blue-Dogs.
As an interesting aside, among the Democrats supporting Lieberman was John Edwards, former Senator from North Carolina. Edwards’ shutout in this last election is largely seen as a backlash from the current in-crowd for having endorsed Lieberman at the time.
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