One of the things most U.S. Senators do, in states where the party registration makes future election a lock for the incumbent, is hunker down. For all the hoopla about elections, the fact is that more than 95% of incumbents retain their offices every time they run and in some states – like Massachusetts, for example – reelection happens just about 100% of the time. Connecticut could be like that, too. Instead, both Connecticut Senators have defied the odds and are in the running to be part of the 5% who don’t keep their seats.

One way to become a vulnerable incumbent is to lose focus on the political process and actually put all your energies into governing. Alienating his political party is how Joe Lieberman made himself vulnerable in his last election.
Another way to place your seat in jeopardy is to abuse the public trust in a way that makes it difficult to survive a re-election. Senator Dodd’s dalliance with mortgage lenders puts him in a position in which voters this coming November will judge whether or not his actions are sufficiently egregious to look at him through that tainted prism and turn him out of office.
In both cases, the Senators were pretty much in line with their constituents’ expectations, except for one small part of the equation that a significant segment of voters found compelling enough to take issue with.
As for Joe Lieberman, it was his position on Iraq that caused him problems within his own party. Other than that issue, Joe was about as “D” as any “D” in Congress could be. In 2000, as his party’s vice-presidential nominee, he was always a dependable Democrat vote and a leader in the U.S. Senate.
Having said that, it would have been very easy for Joe Lieberman to do a John Kerry on the Iraq war: support it when it was politically convenient and turn against it when public opinion and his party veered a different way. When almost all of his party in the Senate reversed their previous position on Iraq, Joe stayed with his initial vote, making his life very difficult both within his party and his state. Imagine Joe doing a Kerry. Ned Lamont would never have been heard from, and the epithets on Moveon.org, The Daily Kos and Huffington Post about “Jew Lieberman” might never have been uttered. Re-election would have been a lock in this bluest of blue states. Instead, however, Joe had to carve out a win with a majority of Republican and Independent voters to go along with his base of Democrat support. It wasn’t an easy thing to do. But in the end, Joe won a majority of all three voting groups.
With that election behind him, one might have thought that, after seeing his advocacy of the surge in Iraq turn out positively, Senator Lieberman could return to his party and tend to his sinecure going forward. That is not the case. Senator Joe has thrived in his independent role as is evidenced by his positions on the issues. The Senator has eschewed the easy way and has blazed an independent path for himself in Washington; one that is little understood by the career politicians around him and probably not entirely appreciated by many here at home.
It’s clear on domestic issues, the always certain Lieberman Democrat vote is no longer so certain. Joe Lieberman speaks his mind, and the vagaries of the Senate voting system make him an incredibly important vote for the Democrats to retain and Republicans to court.
On healthcare, for example, he’s been able to view the proposed legislation in ways that don’t echo the orthodoxy of either party and he can speak freely about his reasons. He defines the Democrats’ political problem with this legislation as one in which they are “supporting two goals which don’t go together.”
In a Wall Street Journal article this weekend in which he outlines his opposition to the public option, Kim Strassel quotes him as saying that the Democrat goals of increased coverage and a reduction in health care costs are at odds with one another and he advocates other ways of reducing costs. He would rather see a focus on malpractice reforms and other abuses of the current system that would help lower costs to all users.
The ability to weigh each issue before him in his own terms allows Senator Lieberman to take into account what he believes is in the best interests of his constituents and the country without regard for what is good for one party or the other. The Senator looks at this as a refreshing liberation.
When the attack at Fort Hood took place, it was Joe Lieberman who spoke out first for a Congressional investigation into the security issues that pertained. Now, this politically incorrect stand has placed him in the center of another controversy as he tries to pry answers out of various government agencies in order to give us all a better understanding of the facts. How easy it would have been to just let it float by; but Joe did what he thought was right.
We’ve all watched our Senator evolve into what he is today. He’s not in lock step with his former party on most issues, though in the end he may vote with them most of the time. When he does, it is for reasons he has arrived at on his own. He weighs the merits of each issue before him and ignores the tug of the party interests asking him to go along. On issues in which he might agree with the Republicans, the same deliberative process comes into play – intertwined with his historic allegiance to his traditional constituencies, which include support of labor and a penchant for government solutions for economic problems. Not traditional Republican postures.
Joe Lieberman is not up for re-election this coming November 2010, but nonetheless Connecticut voters ought to be appreciative of a Senator who sees the issues through the lens of what he believes is best for them, and not on the basis of what a party thinks is best. In so doing, he is still savvy enough as a politician to gain maximum advantage for his state without paying undue homage to the ruling ethos in the District of Columbia. Would that there would be more like him in the United States Senate.

nrg

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