Where Have You Gone, Joe?

By Associated Press

Likely Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R.-Ariz., left and Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., wave before McCain speaks with members of the National Restaurant Association in Chicago on May 19.

On the evening of Jan. 27, 2004, I was in Manchester, N.H., waiting in a ballroom for Sen. Joe Lieberman to come make his concession speech and leave the race for president. I had flown up days earlier, like most of our national campaign staff, from Washington, D.C. I disagreed with Sen. Lieberman on certain policy issues, but he was intelligent, thoughtful and decent, and I was proud to be working for him.

So it was with sadness that I was preparing myself that evening for the end of the campaign. Yet, when Sen. Lieberman took the stage, he declared that he and others were in a “three-way split decision for third place.”

In truth, we very clearly ended up finishing fifth - three points behind Sen. John Edwards and four behind Gen. Wesley Clark. But with the utterance of that now infamous phrase, Sen. Lieberman had announced his intention to continue on.

Despite even the most junior staffers knowing it was likely over, every staff member and numerous volunteers continued working hard. There was no mystical expectation of success, but there was a deep feeling of loyalty to Sen. Lieberman. It had been a difficult and rocky campaign, but if he wanted to make one last push, he deserved to do so and we owed him nothing but our best efforts which I believe most staffers gave.He worked hard for state

Fast forward two and a half years. Despite my disagreement with Sen. Lieberman's continuing support of the Iraq war, I made the decision to openly support him in both the primary and general elections for Senate in 2006. I may have not agreed fully with Sen. Lieberman but he had worked hard for Connecticut, and I believed he deserved to be re-elected.

And then late last year, after years of support and loyalty to the senator, it all changed. The moment on Dec. 16, that Sen. Lieberman announced he was supporting John McCain for president, my support for Sen. Lieberman came to an unambiguous end.

I wasn't angry. I wasn't hurt. I wasn't surprised. I was simply disappointed that he would voice support for a man who championed policies Lieberman had fought against for years.

The Democratic Party is a big tent. After the 2006 Senate primary, I was forced to constantly explain to friends why I was continuing to support Sen. Lieberman. I have always believed that Democrats are not and should not be a single viewpoint party, with a choice of conforming to a rigid far left partisan viewpoint or being constantly isolated and alone.

Democrats, to succeed, genuinely need both the liberal Daily Kos and the moderate DLC factions. I am not interested in being fragmented and pigeonholed into one or the other. I am a Democrat - period. When Sen. Lieberman stood up and endorsed John McCain, he made clear that he is not.

The modern Democratic Party permits and often encourages, for the sake of electoral success, candidates to take positions that are not in line with traditional core Democratic policies. One need look no further than the fact that Democrats elected Sen. Harry Reid as majority leader and cleared the primary field in Pennsylvania for now Sen. Bob Casey, despite the fact that both are pro-life. Some repudiated him

And so, I understood why Sen. Lieberman, when going through the 2006 primary, felt that the Connecticut Democratic Party and its populous were treating him unfairly - and perhaps he was right. A large segment of Connecticut Democrats repudiated Sen. Lieberman for his policies on the Iraq war, disregarding his years of loyal service and championing of core Democratic values and principles.

But for Sen. Lieberman to use, in part, his primary difficulties to now try to somehow justify his endorsing Sen. McCain, by saying that the Democratic Party has abandoned him, is both arrogant and offensive. Sen. Lieberman said recently that the Democratic Party is no longer a party of “strong internationalists, strong on defense, pro-trade, pro-reform in our domestic government.” Well I am all of those things and I am a proud Democrat who is fully supporting Sen. Barack Obama for president.

When I hear Sen. McCain talking about policies including nominating justices to the Supreme Court in the mold of Justice Samuel Alito (who Sen. Lieberman voted against), it is impossible not to recognize that it was Lieberman who abandoned the Democratic Party, not the other way around.

I will miss the Joe Lieberman that I supported for years. But being a Democrat means an allegiance to core values, not to individuals. Joe Lieberman is gone, but with Sen. Obama at the helm, the Democratic Party and the country have a chance once again, to thrive.

Jonathan Panikoff is a lawyer and the former chief of staff of delegate operations for the Joe Lieberman for President Campaign. More recently he served in the political department of the Democratic National Committee.

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