WEBCommentary Guest

Author: Bruce Walker
Date:  August 1, 2006

Topic category:  Other/General

The Lieberman Option


The shameless by Democrats of Joe Lieberman creates some very interesting possibilities for future American politics.  If Joe loses the Democrat primary and if Democrats like Dean, Gore, Kerry and Hillary in fact campaign against Gore and for Lamont in the general election, the Senator Lieberman owes them and their party nothing.  He joins the Senate in 2007 without a party.

The shameless by Democrats of Joe Lieberman creates some very interesting possibilities for future American politics.  If Joe loses the Democrat primary and if Democrats like Dean, Gore, Kerry and Hillary in fact campaign against Gore and for Lamont in the general election, the Senator Lieberman owes them and their party nothing.  He joins the Senate in 2007 without a party.

Although Lieberman has promised to vote with the Democrat caucus for control of the Senate, his promise is not unconditional.  What if, say, Democrats pick up five Senate seats (not counting his Senate seat), so that if Joe votes with Democrats, they organize the Senate?  It looks like Democrats control the Senate – but looks can be deceiving.

Senator Lieberman would be in an even better position that Jim Jeffords was in 2001 to tip the scales.  After all, Republicans did not activity campaign to keep Jeffords from winning the Republican primary in Vermont and they certainly did not actively campaign against him in the general election.  He ran as a Republican and then “decided” that it was too conservative. 

What could Senator Lieberman do?  Well, first he could place a list of demands before the Democrat caucus:  only pro-war Senate Democrats (and there are not a lot) should chair key committees dealing with national to security.  Lieberman himself should be given one of those chairmanships.  The nation, Senator Lieberman should remind his former champions, is more important than party.  If the caucus does not accede, then he could vote with Republicans to organize the Senate.

That is a far fetched situation.  Republicans will probably hold Tennessee and probably pick up New Jersey, Maryland or Washington.  So, at worst, there should be fifty-two Republicans in the next Senate.  But here is a scenario that is not far fetched at all:  if Democrats nominate a dangerously weak presidential ticket in 2008, Senator Lieberman can be – indeed, he should be – duly alarmed.

Some pundits have suggested that Lieberman run on a fusion ticket with a Republican.  That is a bad idea.  Joe is very liberal on domestic issues.  His place on the ticket, although many Republicans genuinely admire Senator Lieberman, would demoralize the sixty percent of Americans who are conservatives.

No, Senator Lieberman, now an independent in the Senate, should run an independent presidential bid.  On domestic issues, Senator Lieberman should run pointedly to the left of the Democratic nominee, as he honestly could on most domestic issues.  Those voters extremely leftist on domestic issues are not going to vote for any Republican, so every vote he gained would come at the expense of the Democrat nominee.  Then Senator Lieberman should make a strong appeal in those Blue states with large, urban Jewish populations that this is a referendum on support for Israel. 

He would win a number of otherwise reluctant Democrat voters in big cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Miami, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Cincinnati  and Detroit.  Although this would not swing New York, California or Illinois to the Republican, it could very easily swing Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to the Republican nominee, and it could help insure that Florida and Ohio stayed Republican.  If even one of the three weakly Blue Great Lake States – Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin – went Republican and if Florida and Ohio stayed Republican, the election is over.  But, to add icing on the cake, Joe Lieberman would probably carry outright one state:  Connecticut, which would otherwise be reliably Democrat.

The Lieberman independent candidacy, targeted at traditionally Democrat voters, would also other important things.  It would allow Republicans to nominate a more conservative candidate, which would energize the base and compel the Democrat nominee to compete with Lieberman for domestically leftist voters.  It would also produce a fight within the Democrat Party.  A party simply cannot dismiss its vice presidential nominee of eight years earlier as irrelevant or silly without looking irrelevant and silly itself.

Finally, if Senator Lieberman carried only Connecticut and did not swing a single state to the Republican column, the Republican would still win.  What, after that, would people be gabbing about?  The popular vote.  Lieberman would almost certainly get five or six percent of the popular vote.  That would give the newly elected Republican president a comfortable plurality in the popular vote.  If the results were like 2004, then the Republican would have won by ten percentage points – the conventional definition of a “landslide.”  What national Democrats are doing to a loyal Democrat is very silly.  They will pay a big price for it.

Bruce Walker


Biography - Bruce Walker

Bruce Walker has been a published author in print and in electronic media since 1990. He is a regular contributor to WebCommentary, Conservative Truth, American Daily, Enter Stage Right, Intellectual Conservative, NewsByUs and MenŐs News Daily. His first book, Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie by Outskirts Press was published in January 2006.


Copyright © 2006 by Bruce Walker
All Rights Reserved.


© 2004-2006 by WEBCommentary(tm), All Rights Reserved