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August 09, 2006
Honor in Defeat
by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math
I agree wholeheartedly with Mark Schmitt. Whatever you think of Joe Lieberman today, he served Connecticut well for most of his career. And if you're one of those (like me) who would like to bring America back to the point where two reality-based parties found bipartisan compromise (though by forcing Republicans to shift left, not for Democrats to keep tacking right), you have to give Lieberman a lot of respect for his work there, especially on issues like global warming. And so it's important that a public servant who always tried to make politics an honorable profession, who spent most of his career trying to raise the level of discourse, not lower it, find a graceful way out of his independent campaign, as befits his character (and yes, I inserted the last phrase just to set the record for most appositives in a single sentence). If Democrats controlled Congress or the White House, he'd be appointed to a Cabinet position or a bipartisan commission to evaluate the future course in Iraq. Absent such possibilities, perhaps the Ford Foundation, the Brookings Institution, or some other non-profit/think tank could use a new high-profile hire.
Update: I guess I didn't make the obvious point. The more pressing reason for Lieberman to withdraw is to stop making it harder for Democrats to take back the Senate. If that's your goal, you may have to hand Lieberman a nice "lifeboat" rather than try to push him from the race, a strategy I think might just redouble his resolve and cause him to drift further to the right.
August 9, 2006 | Permalink
Comments
A person's character can change over time. Lieberman has shown that whatever his record, he is not the man he used to be. He's not even half the man he used to be.
Anyway.
Lieberman losing the primary without an independent bid? Give him whatever we can scrape up. But he has turned his back upon his supporters, his donors, his constituents and his colleagues. Why then is there any reason to give him anything? He obviously does not think his past record is worth honoring.
"What have you done for me lately" might be cynical, but there is truth in it.
Posted by: Stephen | Aug 9, 2006 2:31:09 PM
Bullshit. Any good that Lieberman may have done for his party and his country are overwhelmingly outweighed by the destruction he has deliberately and systematically enabled this administration to wreak, both at home and abroad. The man is a disgrace.
Posted by: Toast | Aug 9, 2006 2:36:51 PM
Nicholas,
Regarding your update, what good will it do to let Lieberman use whatever platform we give him as a "lifeboat" to continue to bash Democrats?
As long as he is allowed to maintain his status as a Democrat, he will use whatever position he has to give legitimacy to undermining the Democratic party for his personal gain.
Here's what can happen:
1)Lieberman wins, and is accepted back into the Demcrats fold - technically an independent, but keeping all committee assignments that would be coming to him as a real Democrat. His appearances on Fox News would be secure for another 6 years. He would continue to have national influence in moving the country's discourse to the right. The idiots in the DLC would continue to enjoy their baseless influence in and out of the Democratic party.
2)Lieberman wins but is either kept out of the Democratic caucus or is at least stripped of all seniority, or he decides to caucus with the GOP. Fox News doesn't care anymore because he's just one more conservative in a media enviroment drowning in them. He only has one use, and this use is denied him. The worst that can happen in this scenario is that the Democrats have one less vote in the Senate.
3)Lieberman loses, but so does Lamont, and the GOP picks up the seat. Lieberman's entire career is over, forever. No one, absolutely no one, cares what he says or does. The GOP has a Senator who will serve 6 years and then lose. Again, all we suffer is the loss of one seat, while we gain the absence of the most prolific Fox News Democrat.
There is nothing to gain from giving Lieberman anything, because whatever he gets he will try to use as a way to keep up his profile in the media. Nothing else matters to him, and giving him another long-term platform by which he can push the national discourse to the right is far more damaging than anything else he can hope to accomplish.
Posted by: Stephen | Aug 9, 2006 3:07:27 PM
First of all, because he's no longer an elected offical, the press will automatically pay less attention to him.
Second, it depends on what sort of lifeboat you give him. If you make him Executive Director of the Sierra Club (an organization which tries to be bipartisan so it can get things done, and where he's been devoted to environmental issues), he can't really bash Democrats. Obviously you don't want to put him in a foreign policy gig at the Brookings Institute.
Posted by: Nicholas Beaudrot | Aug 9, 2006 3:19:17 PM
" If Democrats controlled Congress or the White House, he'd be appointed to a Cabinet position or a bipartisan commission to evaluate the future course in Iraq. "
Are you taking the Mickey? Lieberman is the very last person you want on such a commission. Surely evaluating the future course in Iraq depends on being able to acknowledge what is going on at the moment.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Aug 9, 2006 3:38:35 PM
I agree with Stephen. No good can come of giving Lieberman a platform.
Did anyone give Zell Miller a platform? (Besides republicans looking for bipartisan cover, that is.)
Posted by: Mark | Aug 9, 2006 3:39:13 PM
like the private sector- politics is about winners and losers- either you get that or you dont.
Posted by: akaison | Aug 9, 2006 3:53:59 PM
Read an analysis that discusses the political strategy ramifications of the Lamont win and how the Democratic position on Iraq will be a key to success in November...here:
Posted by: Daniel DiRito | Aug 9, 2006 3:59:28 PM
Although Democrats need to find a graceful exit for Joe Lieberman. We shouldn't sanitize the picture and make Joe L some paragon of virtue.
He simply hasn't been a very good public servant.
On issues:
SEC regulations - wrong, thanks for Enron!
Dept of Homeland Security - stupid idea.
Iraq - Biggest strategic error since WW II.
Tone:
Schiavo - it was not appropriate to intervene.
Find the nearest hospital - it was insensitive to just wave away the problem of access.
Dissent on Iraq - It was not right to smear the patriotism of those questioning the war.
The Clinton speech - Clinton's BJ just was not that big a deal.
Yes, Lieberman has made some good efforts on the environment and some other issues. But, on balance, I don't think his career has been a plus for the country, nor for the Democratic party. We'd all probably have been better off if Weicker had beaten him 18 years ago....
Posted by: Samuel Knight | Aug 9, 2006 4:02:34 PM
and yes, I inserted the last phrase just to set the record for most appositives in a single sentence
No big deal, but none of the phrases in between commas in that sentence were appositives. Apposition is when two nouns (or noun phrases) are next to each other, serving the same grammatical function in relation to the rest of the sentence. Like the first three segments in: Joe Lieberman, the senator from Connecticut, a sanctimonious blowhard if ever there was one, done got pwned.
Posted by: Christopher M | Aug 9, 2006 5:06:06 PM
Also bankruptcy.
And even on global warming - he supported the freakin Bush energy bill that subsidizes fossil fuels. A zero-chances-of-passing bill cosponsered with McCain that would have done very little towards solving the problem does not make up for that.
Posted by: Gar Lipow | Aug 9, 2006 6:06:31 PM
cause him to drift further to the right
How is that possible? He's been in O'Reilly/Hannity/Limbaugh territory for years.
Posted by: Jeff | Aug 9, 2006 7:13:46 PM
No big deal, but none of the phrases in between commas in that sentence were appositives. Apposition is when two nouns (or noun phrases) are next to each other
Right. So what were mine: parentheticals? Bad Grammar?
Posted by: Nicholas Beaudrot | Aug 9, 2006 7:18:39 PM
He's been there on rhetoric, but not on actual votes; Lieberman is pretty much right there with people like Joe Biden, Jeff Binghaman, Herb Kohl, and more liberal than majority leader Harry Reid.
The real fear is that he might start voting as though he were a Republican in addition to talking like one.
Posted by: Nicholas Beaudrot | Aug 9, 2006 7:23:24 PM
Oh no, it all seemed perfectly grammatical to me. "as befits his character" is a subordinate clause. "who always tried..." and "who spent most..." are also subordinate, but more specifically, relative clauses. (You might say that they're in apposition, actually, in a kind of extended usage where the concept can apply to verbs as well as nouns.) "find a graceful way" is just part of the main sentence. "not lower it" is, oh hell, i don't know.
Posted by: Christopher M | Aug 9, 2006 7:47:55 PM
He's been there on rhetoric, but not on actual votes
Only when they don't count. He's been a democrat on meaningless post-cloture votes to cover his ass.
Posted by: Vladi G | Aug 9, 2006 9:02:01 PM
How will we miss Joe if he won't go away?
Joe is one gracious concession speech and endorsement of the primary winner away from perma-appointment to every bipartisan commission named over the next 20 years. Absent that a posting at Brookings is just a backslap at Party loyalists.
We are Crashing the Gates and Joe was a Gatekeeper that got trampled. The answer is not to put in up in some Carekeepers Cottage in the role of Perma-Scold.
Posted by: Bruce Webb | Aug 10, 2006 6:53:20 AM
auto insurace auto insurace
Posted by: auto insurace | Aug 13, 2006 12:12:03 PM
