Hillary Clinton is turning to a familiar figure from the national political stage to help boost her chances in Florida--even if her new ally isn’t always a reliable one for Democrats.
Joe Lieberman, the former U.S. senator from Connecticut who was Al Gore’s running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket back in 2000, has been stumping across South Florida on Clinton’s behalf in recent days.The first member of his faith named to a major party presidential ticket, Lieberman’s outreach towards the Jewish community in the Sunshine State has garnered attention from national Jewish publications.
Hitting the campaign trail for Clinton, Lieberman has insisted she can be relied on far more than Donald Trump when it comes to supporting Israel. Despite that insistence, Lieberman has clashed with Clinton on Middle Eastern affairs, most recently in opposing President Barack Obama’s deal with Iran on its nuclear program.
That’s often been the norm for Lieberman. Even going back to 1988, when he defeated longtime liberal Republican Sen. Lowell Weicker, Lieberman could count on the support of plenty of conservatives, including William F. Buckley. Despite having been Gore’s running mate back in 2000, Lieberman has often split from Democrats in the years since then, mostly on foreign policy. One of the most vocal members of his party supporting the Iraq war, Lieberman ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 and flopped badly. Two years later, Lieberman narrowly lost the Democratic Senate primary to businessman Ned Lamont who opposed the war. Lieberman ran outside the major parties in the general election and defeated Lamont as Republicans ditched their party’s candidate to keep the incumbent in office. During his fourth and final term in the Senate, Lieberman continued to go his own way, supporting John McCain for president and speaking at the 2008 Republican convention.
Still, as he’s rallying voters in South Florida for Clinton, Lieberman is stressing he has come back to the Democratic ranks, insisting he never left them. Even as he backed McCain over Obama in 2008, Lieberman’s Democratic roots and leanings shouldn’t be downplayed. While he broke with the party several times, Lieberman started his career as an observer of Connecticut Democratic boss John Bailey, the subject of his senior thesis at Yale which was later turned into a book entitled “The Power Broker.” It was a flattering look at one of the last statewide party bosses.
Lieberman also has long ties to the Clintons. Even though he famously chided Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal, Lieberman has always been allied with the 42nd president. Back in the early 1970s, when Lieberman was running for the state Senate, Bill Clinton, then a Yale law student, helped his campaign. In 2006, President Clinton went to bat for Lieberman, campaigning for him against Lamont in the primary. Lieberman also chaired the DLC,a group which often served as Bill Clinton’s brains trust when he first ran for president.
Conservative pundits tripped over themselves in praising Lieberman during the leadup to the Iraq war. Some even compared him to Andrew Johnson, the Jacksonian Democrat from Tennessee who refused to resign his Senate seat and join the Confederacy. Johnson was chosen as Abraham Lincoln’s running mate on the “National Unity” ticket in the 1864 election and took over as president after Lincoln was assassinated. During his presidency, Johnson clashed with his new Republican allies on Reconstruction, the political rights of former slaves and a host of issues. As presidency and in his strange post-presidential political career, which led him back to the Senate for a brief stint, Johnson showed he remained, at heart, a Jacksonian Democrat instead of a Lincoln Republican.
The same thing essentially holds true of Lieberman. Even with his 2006 win and backing McCain for president, Lieberman remains what he has always been: a liberal Democrat on most issues but one who stands with Republicans like McCain and Lindsey Graham on foreign policy. The same holds true on the domestic front. Lieberman won applause from conservatives when he famously bemoaned violence in video games but he still stood with liberals on gun control, LGBT issues and abortion. Despite their differences on the Iran deal and other international issues, Lieberman’s support for Hillary Clinton should come as no surprise.
