Lieberman Strikes Again

Created
Fri, 29/12/2023 - 12:00
Updated
Fri, 29/12/2023 - 12:00
It never fails. The man simply cannot be a decent human being. After months of Lieberman saying that there was no way that No Labels would do anything to help Donald Trump get a load of this: Tensions flared around No Labels, the quixotic third-party operation attempting to place Joe Manchin (or another centrist-ish candidate) on 2024 ballots. On Wednesday, the group’s founding chairman, Joe Lieberman, hit back at Democratic anguish over the group’s spoilsport campaign, tellingThe Wall Street Journal that “Right now, looking at the polling, it’s not No Labels that’s going to re-elect Donald Trump… Right now, it looks like it’s Joe Biden who’s going to re-elect Donald Trump.” Lieberman’s out-of-right-field attack isn’t shocking; after losing the 2006 Connecticut Senate primary, he left the party and successfully ran as an independent, while still caucusing with Dems. Two years later, he crossed party lines to campaign for John McCain, cementing his apostasy with a speech at the Republican National Convention. But the comment is nonetheless extraordinary. For one, Lieberman served for 20 years with Biden, in a chamber and at a time when insults were watered down, indirect, and aimed toward colleagues described as “my friend.” And for all of Lieberman’s beef with Democrats, it’s hard to find much public friction with Biden. Moreover, it’s worth asking how Lieberman squares his current advocacy for a third-party ticket with his own painful experience in 2000, when Ralph Nader vaporized his vice presidential aspirations. I don’t have the energy to dredge up the mountains of posts I’ve written over the years about this…