It was clear that Joe Lieberman was in trouble with his party when he started talking about the similarities between America’s most recent presidents. The Connecticut senator’s comment came on the campaign trail earlier this summer, when I'd asked him what he thought of the tone of politics today. "I don't like it," Lieberman said. "We’ve seen two presidents, President Clinton and now President Bush, who’ve been the targets of just the worst vituperation and I’d call it hatred from people in our country." Lieberman sounded, sincerely, like the mystified moderate, the man who longed for the old civility in the halls of Congress. But what came across most powerfully was his stunning indifference to the countless Democrats who are outraged about Bush’s policies. Lieberman didn't realize then, and still doesn't today, that to many mainstream Democrats, it is offensive to even mention their vaunted past president in the same sentence as the current incumbent.
Lieberman can forget about those angry Democrats now. After losing his state primary to challenger Ned Lamont last night, he is soldiering on with an independent bid for his Senate seat. His choice to continue the fight will have broad implications for the Democrats bid to control Congress this fall. Here's how last night's result will affect key players in both parties in the coming weeks and months:
Joe Lieberman
Lieberman's greatest advantage going forward is that his primary campaign remained tone deaf to the end. In the final days of the campaign, two of his fiercest defenders, the New Republic's Marty Peretz and Democratic strategist Lanny Davis, implored their fellow Democrats not to go over the cliff with Lamont. But they made their case on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal—the last place you go to win Democratic votes.
That tin ear doesn’t matter much any more: Lieberman is done with the partisan Democrats and is free to be himself. Nor is his independent bid an especially quixotic quest: poll after poll shows public sympathy for powerful independents can run against partisan rancor in Washington. Connecticut is already of this curve—in 1990 it elected onetime Republican Lowell Weicker as its first Independent governor since the Civil War.
Still, Lieberman is far from a shoo-in this fall. His new "Team Connecticut" campaign will require an unorthodox coalition to win. Doubtless, he is counting on support from Volvo Republicans, wealthy northeastern moderates who like soft-voiced children of the center. The problem is, there aren't many Volvo Republicans left, in Connecticut or anywhere else, and the remaining few aren't big fans of the Iraq War themselves. Meanwhile, to stay competitive with Lamont, Lieberman will need heavy support in Connecticut's working class cities, relying on exactly the kind of Democratic machine that affluent Republicans abhor. In essence, Lieberman will have to run as Bill Clinton in New Haven while in New Canaan he runs as George H.W. Bush—no easy task for any politician and a particularly hard one for a candidate who's run a lackluster campaign thus far.
Charles Schumer and the Democrats
For months, Schumer has tried to act as though Connecticut wasn't his problem. As chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the New York Senator swore he was focused on electing Democrats in tight races with Republicans, not in refereeing an internal squabble in a state the party was guaranteed to hold. Now though, Schumer can't afford to ignore Connecticut. Every time Lieberman blasts Lamont and Connecticut Democrats as extremist and out of touch, he makes Karl Rove's "cut and run" argument better than any Republican ever could. Just imagine the Republican campaign ads showcasing the 2000 Democratic vice presidential candidate saying his party is dangerously outside the mainstream.
Democratic leaders will no doubt lean hard on Lieberman to abandon his bid, but it's hard to imagine what they can really offer to make him change his mind. There's no Democratic president to cough up a cabinet seat, after all, and a party unity argument won't work with a senior statesman who genuinely believes the Democrats have lost their way.
