RIP Joe Lieberman
- Thread starter biggreydogs
- Start date
He was a true American that was willing to work across the aisle.
I saw this tonight watching the news and thought that at his prime, this is who America needs now.
Former US Sen. Joe Lieberman on Sunday blasted Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for calling for an election to replace Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, denouncing the New York Democrat’s remarks as “outrageous.”
“I thought the statement he made this week … was a mistake. I can’t ever remember anything like it,” Lieberman told host John Catsimatidis on the “Cats Roundtable” on WABC 770 AM.
Lieberman, 82, a former Democratic senator from Connecticut who later became an independent before his 2013 retirement, was the first Jewish American to appear on a presidential ticket when then-Vice President Al Gore tapped him as his running mate in 2000.
“For a US senator — let alone the majority leader; let alone the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in Washington — to tell Israel that it’s time to get rid of Netanyahu, that’s outrageous,” Lieberman said of Schumer.
...
Lieberman added, “Can you imagine Sen. Schumer or anybody else in the US government saying to the Brits, ‘We don’t like your prime minister. It’s really time for you to dump him’? Oh my God, there’d be outrage all around.
“It’s a bad precedent for us to tell a friend and ally, a democratic ally, ‘Get rid of this government. We don’t like him,'” the former senator said.
President Biden on Friday praised Schumer, telling reporters he thought the Democrat made a “good speech” during an Oval Office meeting with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar.
Biden is facing increased pressure at home over his handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict as presidential election season gets into full swing.
“I thought the statement he made this week … was a mistake. I can’t ever remember anything like it,” Lieberman told host John Catsimatidis on the “Cats Roundtable” on WABC 770 AM.
Lieberman, 82, a former Democratic senator from Connecticut who later became an independent before his 2013 retirement, was the first Jewish American to appear on a presidential ticket when then-Vice President Al Gore tapped him as his running mate in 2000.
“For a US senator — let alone the majority leader; let alone the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in Washington — to tell Israel that it’s time to get rid of Netanyahu, that’s outrageous,” Lieberman said of Schumer.
...
Lieberman added, “Can you imagine Sen. Schumer or anybody else in the US government saying to the Brits, ‘We don’t like your prime minister. It’s really time for you to dump him’? Oh my God, there’d be outrage all around.
“It’s a bad precedent for us to tell a friend and ally, a democratic ally, ‘Get rid of this government. We don’t like him,'” the former senator said.
President Biden on Friday praised Schumer, telling reporters he thought the Democrat made a “good speech” during an Oval Office meeting with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar.
Biden is facing increased pressure at home over his handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict as presidential election season gets into full swing.
Joe Lieberman was one of the good guys. We may never see another politician like him again in Congress. Zell Miller from Georgia was another.
Some in his party never forgave him:
NYT
For many Democrats immersed in Florida's disputed presidential election, there was no worse moment than the one on Sunday, Nov. 19, when Senator Joseph I. Lieberman appeared on national television and said that election officials should give the ''benefit of the doubt'' to military voters.
Until then, the Democrats had conducted a full-scale effort to persuade counties to disqualify any overseas ballots that lacked postmarks or witness signatures. But on that morning, with Republicans attacking the Gore-Lieberman campaign for eliminating the votes of hundreds of men and women in the armed forces, Mr. Lieberman effectively disavowed the strategy.
''There was some gasping,'' recalled David Ginsberg, the research director for the Gore campaign, who watched it with other aides at Democratic headquarters in Washington. ''People said: 'Wait a minute. That's really off. That's not what we're saying.' We could never effectively communicate why we were right because we got ourselves in a position where it looked like we were trying to throw out military ballots when we were trying to throw out illegal ballots.''
Mark Herron, a Democratic lawyer in Tallahassee who drafted a memorandum detailing legal grounds on which to disqualify overseas ballots, said that when Mr. Lieberman failed to defend him on television, ''I was watching with horror.''
Again and again, several important players on Vice President Al Gore's team said Mr. Lieberman's comments that Sunday were the most telling example of the political lapses and public relations blunders committed in the Florida standoff. In numerous interviews, Democrats said they had no one to blame but themselves for failing to blunt the Republicans' successful drive to count overseas absentee ballots.
They said that they had allowed George W. Bush's lieutenants to outsmart them in their legal maneuvering and that the Republicans had been more nimble at turning public opinion to their side on counting votes from military personnel.
