APRIL 3, 2024 (prospect.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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OLIVIER DOULIERY\/ABACA\/SIPA USA VIA AP IMAGES<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) at the Republican National Convention at the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota, September 2, 2008<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These weekly chronicles of mine are intended to explain the \u201cInfernal Triangle\u201d that structures America\u2019s democratic decline. The three sides: authoritarian Republicans, incompetent media, feckless Democrats. So far, sorry to say, I\u2019ve been sleeping on the \u201cfeckless Democrats\u201d piece. The passing of former Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman last week at the age of 82 is the perfect occasion to set things right. The undearly departed was feckless Democrats\u2019 poster child.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Expand<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019ve surely read by now the liberal-left\u2019s bill of indictment, if you hadn\u2019t been reciting it to yourself already. There was Lieberman\u2019s election to the United States Senate running to the right of his Republican opponent, Lowell Weicker, in a campaign backed by William F. Buckley and National Review<\/em>. His warm welcome<\/a> from Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a ferociously right-wing Republican, and before that the leader of the \u201cDixiecrats\u201d: \u201cI understand we think a lot alike in the way we do things.\u201d (\u201cYes,\u201d the Connecticut Yankee replied, \u201cI think we do.\u201d) Then, Lieberman\u2019s loyal service in the cause of the Iraq War, on behalf of both our government and that of \u201cthe only democracy in the Middle East.\u201d And his \u201cpaternalistic tut-tutting that led Lieberman to join Tipper Gore\u2019s ridiculous moral crusade against rap music,\u201d as my friend Jeet Heer put it<\/a>, akin to \u201cthe pious frauds who populate the novels of Charles Dickens.\u201d His sabotaging of the possibility of a public option in the Affordable Care Act, on behalf of the nation\u2019s dominant private insurers, based in his state, and Big Pharma, for whom his wife became a prominent lobbyist. His endorsement of John McCain over Barack Obama in 2008, then his refusal to support Obama\u2019s re-election in 2012. His last act, fronting for No Labels, the exploding political pustule that treats a second Trump presidency as a small price to pay for defeating the Pol Pots they seem to think run the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More from Rick Perlstein<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n You may also have been hearing of Lieberman\u2019s responsibility for tipping the scales that made George W. Bush president of the United States. Is that judgment fair? It\u2019s more than fair. Is it worth dwelling on? It\u2019s more than worth dwelling on. Few incidents better describe the way the least partisan political party on Earth has failed to protect us from the depredations we face now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Start at the root of the problem: The idea that a Joe Lieberman would have seemed like a good running mate on a Democratic presidential ticket was loony in the first place. What was his glide path to the job? His willingness, during the 1998 impeachment trial of President Clinton for lying about consensual sex, to stand up and scourge Clinton as a threat to public decency itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To voters<\/em>, the Republicans\u2019 piously fraudulent impeachment crusade was about as popular as botulism. That was why, in a historic reversal, the party of the embattled president actually gained seats in that year\u2019s off-year elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the other side of the ledger, however, agenda-setting elite political journalists acted like Monicagate was worse than Watergate<\/a>. The party\u2019s Powers That Be\u2014most particularly, vice president and presidential nominee Al Gore\u2014sided with the media elite, tabbing Lieberman as just the man for the ticket. Voters? We don\u2019t need no stinking voters.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, the near-tie in Florida. My ex-wife and I sat glued to MSNBC and Josh Marshall\u2019s new Talking Points Memo blog for the monthlong minute-by-minute melodrama; we called it \u201cThe Florida Recount Show.\u201d In the thick of things, it seemed absurdly labyrinthine. But an excellent podcast from Leon Neyfakh\u2019s<\/a> shop boils it down pretty admirably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Republicans fought it as an existential war, but with a strategy borrowed from playground bunko artists. You remember that annoying kid: the one who invited you to decide something by flipping a coin, then cried out, \u201cHeads I win! Tails you lose!\u201d Every step along the way, Republican schoolyard bullies ate poor Al Gore\u2019s lunch. Pretty much, mainstream media stood with the bully and disparaged the nerd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It started with an automatic recount triggered by the closeness of the statewide vote. That severely narrowed Bush\u2019s lead, by a little bit in most counties, but a lot more in four particular counties. Originally, Bush was ahead by 1,784 votes. After the computer recount, he was only up by 327. So the Gore campaign\u2019s next move was to request hand recounts, as the law provided, in those four counties. They just happened to be the state\u2019s most urban, Democratic counties. So the Republicans claimed Democrats were cheating by not demanding recounts in every <\/em>county\u2014even though that was not practically possible. Their refrain: \u201cCount every vote!\u201d Heads we win<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You might think they had a point. Or rather, you might wish <\/em>the Democrats had been that aggressive. Except, as Jeffrey Toobin discovered for his 2001 book Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide<\/em> the 2000 Election<\/em>, 18 of Florida\u2019s 67 counties never even bothered to carry out that statutorily required computer re-tally\u2014the one that, in the 49 counties that did carry it out, narrowed Bush\u2019s lead by 1,457 votes. And the Democrats proved so feckless they never bothered to object<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The media, though, bought the Republican narrative. Strikingly, they also bought the one that came next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gore then stated that he agreed<\/em> with Bush that there should be manual recounts in every county\u2014to count every vote<\/em>, according to standards agreed to by each party (\u201changing chads,\u201d \u201cdimpled chads\u201d\u2014don\u2019t get me started). He also proposed a meeting between the candidates: \u201cnot to negotiate, but to improve the tone of our dialogue in America\u201d and \u201ccall on all of our supporters to respect the outcome of this election, whatever it may be,\u201d to \u201caffirm our national unity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n George Bush cried foul. His eyes shot daggers into the assembled TV cameras: \u201cThe outcome of this election will not be the result of deals or efforts to mold public opinion. The outcome of this election will be determined by votes and the law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The law, after all, said don\u2019t <\/em>count every vote, because the Florida election code didn\u2019t allow a candidate to ask for a statewide recount, just county by county.<\/p>\n\n\n\n See how this game works? Tails, the Democrats lose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Expand<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n SUSAN WALSH\/AP PHOTO<\/p>\n\n\n\n Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Al Gore stands with his running mate Joseph Lieberman as he makes a statement from his home in Washington, November 15, 2000, regarding the Florida recount controversy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Several turns of the screw later, Lieberman stepped onstage. A Democratic lawyer pulled together a guide to the rules for challenging improperly cast overseas absentee ballots: ones with postmarks after Election Day, for example, or with no postmark at all. You know, the better to determine the outcome of this election by votes and the law<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The memo leaked. The Republicans brazenly claimed that this was a Democratic plan <\/em>not to count every vote, by way of the overseas ballots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No, scratch that: not \u201cthe overseas ballots.\u201d Since the majority of these were from military personnel, Republicans began referring to them as \u201cthe military ballots.\u201d The brazen, power-mad zealots marching behind Vladimir Ilyich Gore were actually seeking to disenfranchise our brave boys risking their lives for freedom overseas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Fourth Estate bought that one hook, line, and sinker too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Readers of a certain age will recall that the pope of the Washington media elite, round about then, was Tim Russert, host of NBC\u2019s Meet the Press<\/em>. The \u201cmilitary ballot\u201d story broke on November 16. Lieberman appeared on Meet the Press <\/em>three days later. Russert ventriloquized the Republican talking point:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can a campaign who insists on the intent of the voter, the will of the people \u2026 accept knocking out the votes of people of [the] armed services?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or, in fewer words: How dare you<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The correct reply\u2014correct in accuracy, correct politically\u2014was obvious: \u201cDemocrats are for counting every vote<\/em>, provided it was cast legally, and my friends across the aisle, any more than I, would never want any citizen, whatever their profession, to get to cast a vote after Election Day,\u201d blah blah blah blah blah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, Lieberman said this: \u201cAl Gore and I don\u2019t want to ever be part of anything that would put an extra burden on the military personnel abroad who want to vote. We don\u2019t want to benefit from any votes that we don\u2019t deserve,\u201d so \u201cmilitary ballots\u201d [sic<\/em>] should \u201cget the benefit of the doubt.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so they did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The<\/em> New York Times <\/em>did a six-month investigation on the matter\u2014just in time for America\u2019s new president to report back that he had just looked into the \u201csoul\u201d of Russia\u2019s Vladimir Putin and found him an \u201chonest, straightforward man\u201d who \u201cloves his family.\u201d They concluded that 608 clearly illegitimate overseas ballots had been counted. One hundred sixty-nine came from voters who were not registered, didn\u2019t sign the envelope, or never requested a ballot, as federal law required. One hundred eighty-three were mailed from inside the U.S., also in violation of federal law. Five were received after the deadline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And 344 were not postmarked on or before Election Day, and 19 were from people who also voted in person. Eighty percent of these illegitimate votes came from counties that George Bush won. They were only giving those ballots the benefit of the doubt, after all, just as Sen. Lieberman said they should. Heads they won.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I just learned something new about this travesty by googling Lieberman\u2019s Meet the Press <\/em>vote concessions, which I had originally pulled off LexisNexis. It was an article by a scrappy new journalist on the scene from the alternative outlet Salon. \u201cAccording to a knowledgeable Republican operative,\u201d he reported<\/a>, \u201cthe Bush camp even discussed a strategy that, if implemented, would have broken the law \u2026 according to the knowledgeable GOP source, on Saturday, Nov. 11, Bush\u2019s political team held a 60- to 90-minute conference call for campaign operatives scattered throughout Florida. In the course of the discussion, they discussed having political operatives near overseas military bases encourage soldiers who had registered to vote\u2014but never did\u2014to fill out their ballots and send them in, more than four days after the voting deadline.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reporter became progressively less scrappy in the fullness of time, until he ended up host of\u00a0State of the Union with Jake Tapper<\/em>, CNN\u2019s Sunday morning rival to\u00a0Meet the Press<\/em>. Joe Lieberman went on to smaller and dumber things. Condolences to his family for their loss and all that, but dear God, I\u2019m grateful it happened before he could do any more damage.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Rick Perlstein is the author of a four-volume series on the history of America\u2019s political and cultural divisions, and the rise of conservatism, from the 1950s to the election of Ronald Reagan. He lives in Chicago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A remembrance of this most feckless of Democrats BY RICK PERLSTEIN APRIL 3, 2024 (prospect.org) OLIVIER DOULIERY\/ABACA\/SIPA USA VIA AP IMAGES Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) at the Republican National Convention at the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota, September 2, 2008 These weekly chronicles of mine are intended to explain… Continue reading ![\"Infernal](\"https:\/\/prospect.org\/downloads\/20612\/download\/Infernal%20Triangle%20badge.jpg?cb=61246ca7af487320deae9f95295dfe2f\" "\\"Infernal")
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nRICK PERLSTEIN<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n