The Democratic Leadership Council presents an impassioned defence of Senator Joe Lieberman (full text over the fold). Ironically, he’s currently under challenge by Move On, who should.
The Return of Liberal Fundamentalism
Democrats are rightly enthusiastic about the opportunities afforded in this fall’s midterm elections to recapture control of Congress and reverse the narrow Republican advantage of the last two electoral cycles. But there’s an undertow that could undermine the potential Democratic tide: efforts by some Democratic activists and organizations to introduce ideological litmus tests for elected officials and intimidate or even purge those who do not meet a narrow definition of what makes a “real Democrat.” These efforts not only threaten party unity and divert attention and resources from the broader goal of defeating Republicans; they also signal an intolerance toward dissent and diversity that can repel voters and make an enduring Democratic majority more difficult to achieve.
This phenomenon is best illustrated by the nationally driven campaign to deny re-nomination to Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT), with MoveOn.org and Democracy for America (an organization founded by DNC chairman Howard Dean and now run by his brother, Jim) playing an especially active role in recruiting money and volunteers for the challenger, Ned Lamont.
We deplore this purge effort because Joe Lieberman is an outstanding and respected U.S. Senator. He is a man of utmost integrity who speaks and governs by his values and principles, even when they lead him against the popular tide — as he did when he went to Mississippi to fight for civil rights in 1964. He is a man who always puts his country above his party or his personal interests. Those are qualities we should cherish, not disdain, in today’s far too polarized politics. We need more, not fewer, people with Joe Lieberman’s character in the Democratic Party.
Lieberman served as DLC chairman for six years, handing over the gavel to Sen. Evan Bayh after the 2000 presidential elections. But opposition to this kind of intra-party purge is also a matter of tradition for us: One of the major reasons for the DLC’s founding in 1985 was to resist what we called “liberal fundamentalism,” a conformist tendency to stifle dissent among Democrats and require adherence to litmus tests devised by interest groups and ideological advocates. The Democratic Party today is far more unified in its basic values and policy positions than it was two decades ago, and also urgently needs to expand its electoral and geographical base. There’s less of an excuse than ever to indulge in liberal fundamentalism, litmus tests, intimidation of dissenters, and purges, and much more to lose from shrinking the party’s big tent.
But that’s exactly what the national movement to purge Joe Lieberman represents. Comparing him to apostates like Zell Miller is crazy. As Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid points out in a recent letter endorsing him, the most recent independent analysis of Lieberman’s voting record shows him in solidarity with Democrats 90 percent of the time, about the same as Reid’s own record. He’s a recognized leader among progressives on issues ranging from the environment and labor to taxation and fiscal policy. He was a loyal partner of Al Gore’s in the bitter 2000 presidential election, less than six years ago.
Some Lieberman foes, dubbing him “Holy Joe,” are angry at him for championing the expression of religious faith in the public square, and for standing up against corporate-sponsored trash culture on behalf of families struggling to control their kids’ values and upbringing. But his main sin appears to be his staunch and very consistent belief that the war in Iraq was and is right, even if that means occasional agreement with a Bush administration that he criticizes on almost every other issue.
As it happens, we don’t agree with Lieberman’s views on Iraq in every particular, but we respect his point of view. It is especially odd that some liberal activists who are forever telling Democrats they should stand up for their principles without regard to polls and fashions are now determined to purge this senator for doing exactly that, as part of a divisive intra-party revisiting of the original war resolution. That’s why Harry Reid said of Lieberman: “Very few people I’ve known in my lifetime are as principled and decent as Joe Lieberman. I don’t agree on every position he takes, but he has an unquestionable commitment to the progressive principles that make our Party great.”
Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, whose liberal credentials no one could doubt, has also endorsed Lieberman despite a strong difference of opinion over Iraq, saying: “We must focus on the vast number of differences we have with our Republican opponents. While you may not agree with Joe on everything, he is truly a leader on women’s rights, the environment, education, health care and so many other issues that concern our families and define our party.”
Sen. Hillary Clinton was even more blunt about Lieberman’s value to the Democratic Party: “We have the chance to put Democrats in control of the Senate and the House, to curb the excesses of one party Republican rule and hold Republicans accountable for their actions. Keeping Joe Lieberman in the Senate is an important part of that victory plan.”
In many respects, the purge-Lieberman movement is more a test for its proponents than for its object. Internet-based liberal activists have a lot to offer the Democratic Party: energy, fundraising prowess, a commitment to open debate, and a healthy skepticism about the orthodox liberal interest groups and consultants who rarely look beyond the Beltway.
But if they want to be a serious and permanent element in progressive politics, they should resist the temptation to indulge themselves in mean-spirited vengeance against Democrats like Joe Lieberman who proudly defend the Clinton legacy and warn against counter-polarization as the sole answer to Karl Rove’s polarization strategy. And they should understand the signal that the effort to purge Lieberman sends to voters with serious doubts about the party, especially on the national security and cultural issues he is so identified with.
Sen. Barack Obama perfectly captured the dangers of liberal fundamentalism last fall, in a diary he posted on the DailyKos blog site, a hotbed of anti-Lieberman sentiment:
[T]o the degree that we brook no dissent within the Democratic Party, and demand fealty to the one, “true” progressive vision for the country, we risk the very thoughtfulness and openness to new ideas that are required to move this country forward. When we lash out at those who share our fundamental values because they have not met the criteria of every single item on our progressive “checklist,” then we are essentially preventing them from thinking in new ways about problems. We are tying them up in a straightjacket and forcing them into a conversation only with the converted.
Beyond that, by applying such tests, we are hamstringing our ability to build a majority.We couldn’t agree more. A party with no room for Joe Lieberman — or for that matter, such occasionally lonely dissenters on the left as Russ Feingold or Bernie Sanders — is a party with no prospects for a majority. It’s the worst possible time for Democrats to make that choice.
yea, Joe Lieberman has not been a bad Senator.
But Joe just voted for Brett Kavanaugh!!! The author of the Starr report is now a Judge? Are there no limits?
I never thougth Joe was a bad democrat.. only that it is time for a change. Time to let someone else be Senator. Isn’t 18 years enough?
SM, don’t let your ignorance of American constitutional practice affect your opinion of Senator Lieberman! Nor, for that matter, your ignorance of American politics full stop.
If 18 years is enough then there are many better candidates than Lieberman for removal. If your underlying motivation is desire for a change then focusing on Lieberman becomes incomprehensible.
As for my part, I think this is excellent – if the koskids do win, great, because all the sooner that the Democratic party can disappear, and hopefully what replaces it will be something much more tuned towards governing America. Otoh, if DLC wins, then maybe the Democratic Party isn’t a write-off after all.
No, fuck him. In U.S. political terms, I’m a moderate, generally pro-business Democrat. You don’t have to want to drive the Democratic Party to the left or hand it to the MoveOn crowd to want Lieberman gone. In that sense, the DLC argument is one straw man after another.
The central reason Lieberman has to go is because he has actively worked to provide political cover for the worst excesses of the Bush Administration. Screwed up Iraq? Tortured prisoners? Domestic spying? Whatever it is, there’s Joe Lieberman on Fox News intoning whatever are the GOP talking points of the day. The one thing that all Democrats should be united about is the need to hold the Administration accountable for its incompetence, duplicity and defiance of law. But Lieberman’s adoption of GOP spin is so complete that he even criticises his own party for daring to question Bush’s credibility. Give me a fucking break! Why would any Democrat in their right mind put up his his sanctimonious shit for a second longer? Especially when there’s a better choice in Ned Lamont?
Apart from all of that, Lieberman was as wrong as he could be about Iraq – in which he wasn’t alone, but he’s just about the only one outside the Administration and its shills who hasn’t used the intervening period to find a clue and engage in a little self-reflection. If his judgment and capacity for self-reflection are that frigging poor, he’s fundamentally not competent to hold representative office.
So fuck him.
So, Barbara Boxer says: “he is truly a leader on women’s rights”
A reasonable person then must ask why as the National Organization for Women endorsed Ned Lamont?
Here is a summary of his latest thinking:
Lieberman said he believes hospitals that refuse to give contraceptives to rape victims for “principled reasons” shouldn’t be forced to do so. “In Connecticut, it shouldn’t take more than a short ride to get to another hospital,” he said.
Can anyone point me to this progressive checklist that everyones being tested on ?
I am sure it exists as the piece references it a dozen times or more. No ?
I think Liberman should stay, though he deserves his fair wack of criticisms. But its also a sign of the fear in the DLC that after 6 years of incompetent congressional and Presidential campaigns, they react with such vigor to push by the new online movements to change the democrats. This sounds more like a fight to retain control of the party, than any fear that some people what to engage in ‘liberal fundermentalism’.
Personally I sit far more with the DLC than the DailyKos crew, but this is really a fight about direction and political tactics of the party, not policy. And the DLC’s record since clinton has been all downhill.
There should be a place for Liberman in the party, but many others need to hand over their reigns if the Democrats are going to get close to recapturing congress or even the presidency.
Goodness me!
‘This sounds more like a fight to retain control of the party‘ – really? That isn’t what the koskids meant, of course…
‘the DLC’s record since clinton has been all downhill.‘ – really truly? As opposed to, er, um, still looking…ah-ha! The republican party’s record since Clinton!!!! The DLC’s influence has been all downhill since Clinton, but that might be more causative of the Democratic party’s decline than vv.
Isn’t koskid no 1 the one with a 16 out of 16 candidates backed and lost record??
No, Lieberman should go – not because he’s a conservative but because he has shilled for the Bushies, and continues to do so.
In particular, that he’s STILL of the pro-war, pro-torture party shows that either he has no judgement at all or his much vaunted ‘integrity’ is bulldust (in short, he’s a fool or a knave).
This is pretty lame, particularly when one of the problems with the ALP is the sitting members’ union that largely exempts sitting MPs from challenge. The Democrats do have to be a broad church to hold Nebraska in the Senate etc. but Lieberman is one of those un notables who earn plaudits by attacking their own party. This is simply a preselection battle and the DLC’s rhetoric is as phoney as the voice-over in a sanitary products advertisement. Time to climb down from the moral high ground.
Some more on Lieberman’s record from a columnist in the Hartford Courant:
http://www.courant.com/news/local/northeast/hc-pbass0604.artjun04,0,7611693.column
One other thought for moderates who deride or disdain the efforts of the likes of MoveOn and DailyKos: it seems to me that the signal political development of the 1990s was the development of the sophisticated far-right “noise machine.” While it has been largely ineffective in terms of advancing its own stated agenda, what is has achieved is creating a constant drumbeat of negative associations for Democrats that they have been forced to respond to defensively. It has also played a role in cowing the “liberal media” to the extent that they will bend over backwards to avoid being characterized as “liberal”, and provided an endless stream of messages that journalists feel compelled to repeat so that their pieces contain “balance”, leading to the false equivalence that destroys the usefulness of the political press as a mechanism for government accountability.
The net effect of all that has been to shift the centre of political discourse to the right.
Much as it is a deplorable way to pursue politics no matter who does it, moderates need to realise that there is nothing they can do to rein it in, so the only question is whether the right gets to do it unopposed, or whether there is an effort on the left to counterbalance that effort. This moderate, for one, is glad that those guys are there.
At least they get to have these sorts of open debates, rather than preselection being decided by a few dozen Cambodian branch-stacks or whomever. I definitely sympathise with the call for Aus to have a more open preselection process
‘what is has achieved is creating a constant drumbeat of negative associations for Democrats that they have been forced to respond to defensively.‘
And your clever response is to beat up a constant cacophony of exactly those negative associations so that instead of saying: that isn’t really us, the Democrats can say: hey, look, we really are like that?
My immoderate self is glad those guys are there, too. My pragmatic self, however, knows that they are bad for the Democrats and America. As I said before:
‘As for my part, I think this is excellent – if the koskids do win, great, because all the sooner that the Democratic party can disappear, and hopefully what replaces it will be something much more tuned towards governing America. Otoh, if DLC wins, then maybe the Democratic Party isn’t a write-off after all.‘
And your clever response is to beat up a constant cacophony of exactly those negative associations so that instead of saying: that isn’t really us, the Democrats can say: hey, look, we really are like that?
Patrick, when I see this kind of “please don’t throw me into the briar patch” hand wringing from conservatives who are suddenly full of concern for the tone of American politics and the well-being of the Democratic Party, my reaction is to nod and say “right, it’s working then!”
? I think I was trying to be too clever with the rephrasing. Emphasising that it isn’t the tone that worries me, but the substance, I will have another shot.
In response to what you clearly don’t think are legitimate allegations, are you really endorsing a group who basically give life to the most extreme of the right-wing noise machine’s allegations? Sure, koskids probably wouldn’t actually eat a baby, but they sure would crush it to death in the name of principle. The views endorsed on that site appeal to about, oh, the percentage of Americans that is the readers of that site.
I don’t care, as I thought was clear, whether the Democrats live or die, nor the Republicans, for that matter! Part of me, however, does think it would be better that at least one of them do one or the other sooner rather than later. Since the Republican party despite all its failings has done rather better electorally lately, I tend to think that it should be the Democrats – but I am open-minded!
Or do you actually think that the ‘netroots revitalised’ ‘inner scream’ Democratic party is an electoral hit stymied only by Halliburton and voting machines? If so, you are not a moderate, you are a lunatic.
Patrick – I don’t want to be rude and ignore your post completely, but I don’t think that you and I have enough common ground on this to have a sensible discussion.
To return to a more serious point the question of primaries is an interesting one, would they be good for the ALP or the Coalition? They would however imply an end to rigid party voting I think, but the ACT and Tasmanian case where voters choose between different candidates might suggest this is not inevitable. As I have noted however the current California Democrat primary is not encouraging.
I wonder what the result would be if Australian senate ballot papers were changed to be more like the Tas. House of Assembly ballot papers – the candidates are shuffled around in their party column and there’s no party vote. No doubt the number of informals would increase, but you could make a ballot paper formal if at least a small number of boxes were marked (eg 6 for a half-senate election).
Personally, I always fill all the squares “below the line” on the senate ballot sheet.