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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Lieberman

  • Joseph Isadore Lieberman (February 24, 1942 – March 27, 2024) was an American politician and lawyer who served as a United States senator from Connecticut from 1989 to 2013. A former member of the Democratic Party, he was its nominee for vice president of the United States in the 2000 U.S. presidential election. During his final term in office, he was officially listed as an independent Democrat and caucused with and chaired committees for the Democratic Party.

    Lieberman was elected as a Reform Democrat in 1970 to the Connecticut Senate, where he served three terms as majority leader. After an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1980, he served as the Connecticut attorney general from 1983 to 1989. He narrowly defeated Republican Party incumbent Lowell Weicker in 1988 to win election to the U.S. Senate and was re-elected in 1994, 2000, and 2006. He was the Democratic Party nominee for vice president in the 2000 presidential election, running with presidential nominee and then Vice President Al Gore, and becoming the first Jewish candidate on a U.S. major party presidential ticket.[2][3]

    In the 2000 presidential election, Gore and Lieberman won the popular vote by a margin of more than 500,000 votes but lost the deciding Electoral College to the Republican George W. Bush / Dick Cheney ticket 271–266. He also unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination in the 2004 U.S. presidential election. During his Senate re-election bid in 2006, Lieberman lost the Democratic primary election but won re-election in the general election as a third party candidate under the Connecticut for Lieberman party label.

    Lieberman was officially listed in Senate records for the 110th and 111th congresses as an Independent Democrat,[4] and sat as part of the Senate Democratic Caucus. After his speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention in which he endorsed John McCain for president, he no longer attended Democratic Caucus leadership strategy meetings or policy lunches.[5] The Senate Democratic Caucus voted to allow him to keep the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Subsequently, he announced that he would continue to caucus with the Democrats.[6] Before the 2016 election, he endorsed Hillary Clinton for president and in 2020 endorsed Joe Biden for president.

    As senator, Lieberman introduced and championed the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010 and legislation that led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. During debate on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), as the crucial 60th vote needed to pass the legislation, his opposition to the public health insurance option was critical to its removal from the resulting bill signed by President Barack Obama.[7]


    EARLY LIFE

    Lieberman was born on February 24, 1942, in Stamford, Connecticut, the son of Henry, who ran a liquor store, and Marcia (née Manger) Lieberman.[8] His family is Jewish; his paternal grandparents emigrated from Congress Poland and his maternal grandparents were from Austria-Hungary.[9]

    In 1963, Lieberman traveled to Mississippi to work in support of the civil rights movement.[10] He received a Bachelor of Arts in both political science and economics from Yale University in 1964,[11] and was the first member of his family to attend college.[12] At Yale, he was editor of the Yale Daily News and a member of the Elihu Club.[13] While at Yale Lieberman was introduced to conservative thinker William F. Buckley Jr., who was also editor of the Yale Daily News; Buckley and Lieberman maintained a social relationship.[14] His roommate was Richard Sugarman, who later went on to become a Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Vermont and advisor to 2016 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.[15] Lieberman later attended Yale Law School, receiving his Bachelor of Laws in 1967.[16] After graduation from law school, Lieberman worked as a lawyer for the New Haven-based law firm Wiggin & Dana LLP.[17]

    Lieberman received an educational deferment from the Vietnam War draft when he was an undergraduate and law student from 1960 to 1967. Upon graduating from law school at age 25, Lieberman qualified for a family deferment because he was already married and had a child.[18][19]

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I didn't really know who Joseph Lieberman was, until Al Gore picked him as his VP running mate in the 2000 election.
That was a bitterly contested election, but I don't recall Lieberman being part of the biterness. And after the election, I saw him increasingly as a Democrat who reached out to the other side to find common ground. I saw Lieberman as a principled liberal I could disagree with, but still liked. I see Alan Dershowitz and a few others in the same category. Another in the same category was liberal Alan Colmes (up until 2009, the liberal half of the political dialogue on Hannity and Colmes), who I thought made fact-based arguments, that I found far more persuasive than the usual relentless talking points and insults most Democrat pundits engage in.

And Lieberman had a similar approach to Colmes, he projected a very likeable civility and dignity, and often partnered with Republican Senators to propose bipartisan legislation.
There used to be many moderates like Lieberman in the Democrat party, where the two sides could politely disagree but still find common ground and get things done, and even be friends. Lieberman was possibly the last of a dying breed.
Kirsten Sinema is too enabling of radical legislation, despite her occasional dissent from the Democrat mainstream (for which even that minor dissent raises far-Left activist intimidation and threats.)
And Joe Manchin who I used to regard as among the last Democrat moderates, disappointed me by at the last minute caving in to be the deciding vote in passing 2 trillion in destructive new spending, giving Biden a win of sorts and undue momentum right before the 2022 mid-term election. So signing on with the most radical legislation, Manchin has lost his moderate street cred too.

When the Democrat party moved increasingly hard-Left in 2004, 2006, 2008 and forward into the Obama years went full authoritarian Democrat-Bolshevik, the Democrat party became so far-Left that Lieberman remarkably, a lifelong liberal, became regarded by his party as too moderate by the party elite. At which point he ran as an Independent, AND WON re-election as Senator.
Although I have come to see "Independent" candidates as de facto Democrats, as they consistently caucus with Democrats, and Lieberman even continued to be appointed by the Democrat party to head Senate committees, despite his independent status. But I think he didn't run for re-election after his last term, because he no longer felt welcome.

As this political cartoon from the media (which is an extension of the most far-Left elements of the Democrat party itself, and unashamedly its PR and cheerleading wing since the 2008 election), the hostiliy of the Left toward Lieberman is unmistakeable:

[Linked Image from prosebeforehos.com]

And sadly, I don't see that Lieberman changed, his views on issues. His low-key personal style remained the same.
It was his party that changed out from under him, and turned really ugly, mean-spirited, intolerant, and radical-Left. Threatening, intimidating, silencing any dissenters, which ultimately came to intimidating and silencing Lieberman.

But against attempts to silence and cancel him, Lieberman remained a voice of civility up to the end. Even when I disagreed with Lieberman's political views, I still listened to his views and liked the guy.
And from a hardline Republican/conservative like me, that's a high compliment.