Jolting Joe

Liberal Democrats are enraged at Joe Lieberman for supporting the Iraq war. But will attacking the Connecticut senator make the party stronger -- or alienate its moderates?

By Michelle Goldberg

Dec 15, 2005 | No current Democratic politician so maddens the party's progressive grass roots as Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman. And it's not just that he supports the war in Iraq. Other high-profile Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, have declined to repudiate the Iraq campaign (or apologize for their votes authorizing it) and haven't lost the support of the Democratic rank and file. The problem with Lieberman is that he has defended not only the war but also the administration's rosy view of it, insisting that things are going well at a time when other hawks -- from Rep. John Murtha to Iraqi dissident Kanan Makiya -- are warning of impending disaster.

Lieberman is now seen as the most important Democratic apologist for the White House, a man who shores up what little credibility the president has left, while undermining his own party and refusing to own up to the debacle Iraq has become. Increasingly, people in his own party want to take him down. As the 2006 midterms approach, some major Democratic funders, despite their dream of reclaiming at least one house of Congress, are prepared to spend a lot of money and energy defeating one of their own.

The question is who the Democratic war on Lieberman would hurt. If successful, it could wound George W. Bush, who would lose his last vestige of bipartisan support, and send a message that Democrats are united against the president's war. But it would also divert resources from races against Republicans, and make at least some hawks feel unwelcome in the party at a time when Democrats need to expand, not narrow, their appeal.

Lieberman's unpopularity among progressives is nothing new. The senator views himself as a maverick, willing to cross partisan lines in the national interest. (He could not be reached for comment on this story.) But liberals see him as gratuitously hostile to his own party and overly generous to Republicans. In the last few weeks, though, anti-Lieberman sentiment has boiled over as the senator has sought to shore up Bush's increasingly vilified Iraq policy.

On Nov. 29, Lieberman sparked the ire of Democrats with an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal titled "Our Troops Must Stay." "I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there," he began. "More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood -- unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn."

A week after his optimistic Op-Ed, Lieberman called for a bipartisan war cabinet to advise the president on Iraq. "It's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge he'll be commander in chief for three more years," he said at a news conference in Washington. "We undermine the president's credibility at our nation's peril." Around the same time, rumors started flying that Lieberman might succeed Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary next year.

"I don't think there's anyone else on the war who so vocally is ignoring reality and siding with the president," says Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn.org. "It's one thing to have the position; it's another thing to poke people in the eye with it."

Jim Dean, president of Democracy for America -- the organization that grew out of his brother Howard Dean's presidential campaign -- echoes Pariser. "To say we're supposed to go along with the president just because he's going to be president for three more years is frankly inappropriate, to put it nicely," he says.

Both Dean and Pariser say their groups would consider funding a Lieberman challenger in 2006. Such an effort would have the support of star Democratic blogger and fundraiser Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, who wrote on his site, the Daily Kos, "And to think, I used to defend the guy. Now, if MoveOn decides to help a challenger in such a primary, I'm behind them 100 percent."

Next Page: "Without a doubt, Joe Lieberman will not be our senator in '07"

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