Joe Lieberman

BA, Yale University JD, Yale University

Here’s all you really need to know about Joe Lieberman. In 2008, while he was a Democratic senator from Connecticut, he endorsed the Republican candidate, John McCain, for president. (John McCain. You know—the guy who selected as his running mate that wildly unqualified, babbling idiot, Sarah Palin.) McCain, you’ll recall, was running against Barack Obama, who was not only the candidate of Lieberman’s own party but who had a running mate who was, more often than not, coherent. Lieberman, drippingly serious as always, announced that he had made his principled choice based on McCain’s tough stance on terrorism. Or was it really because McCain had teased him with a shot at being vice president before he chose the Alaskan grifter? Or because, after that, he teased him with a chance of being secretary of state in the McCain administration?

What we know is that Lieberman continued to support McCain even after it became obvious that McCain contained only trace elements of the Presidential Right Stuff, and that Sarah Palin was full-to-bursting with dumbbell bullshit.

Let’s stop here. Except, no, let’s not stop here. Instead, let’s review some optional things to know about Joe Lieberman:

• He was the first Democratic senator to join the Republicans in condemning Bill Clinton for being the recipient of a non-spousal blow job in the White House.

• He was a leading advocate for George W. Bush’s stupid, pointless, lethal, expensive, lie-based invasion of Iraq in 2003.

• He wanted the federal government to have more surveillance cameras to spy on, you know, us.

• He wanted to make it more difficult to investigate the government’s use of illegal wiretaps. Do you see a theme here?

• He avidly supported the confirmation, in 2006, of Sam Fox as George W. Bush’s ambassador to Belgium. Fox, a rich guy and big GOP donor, had contributed $50,000 to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group whose sole purpose was to help Bush get reelected in 2004 by spreading vicious lies about Democrat John Kerry’s Vietnam service.*

• During his next senate campaign, two years later, he took money from Sam Fox.

• When one vote was needed to pass the “public option” piece of the Affordable Care Act, he voted against it.

• After he retired from the Senate, he joined the conservative American Enterprise Institute alongside many of the neocons responsible for the glories of the George W. Bush administration.

Having experienced a presidential race up close and personal as Al Gore’s running mate in the 2000 election, Lieberman decided to give it a go himself as a Democratic candidate in 2004. It is a credit to the American people that he did extremely poorly in the Democratic primaries of 2003. Not only did he fail to get the support of Gore, he didn’t seem to have the support of anyone. He won not a single primary or caucus and finished dead last of the seven candidates, behind even Dennis Kucinich, General Wesley Clark, and Reverend Al Sharpton.

He ascribed his unpopularity to his support for the war in Iraq, but we think he was flattering himself.

Okay, now we’re done.