Lieberman Charts Tricky Path to New Partisan Identity

In a recent essay, I asked, "Do you think [Joseph] Lieberman will have to retire from politics at the end of his current term, since on social policy he may not have a home in the GOP?"

The New York Times, in its profile of Joseph Lieberman this morning, comes closest to providing an answer:

Joseph I. Lieberman, lapsed Democrat of Connecticut, strolled into the weekly lunch of the Senate Democrats last Tuesday, unaccompanied by a food taster.

He greeted his colleagues, including some who felt he should not have been there. He ate his lunch (salad, eschewing the mac and cheese) and sat through a discussion about gasoline prices and Medicare.

Then the conversation veered into the danger zone, the presidential election — specifically, Senator John McCain’s recent votes, or nonvotes, on energy policy.

At which point Mr. Lieberman walked out.

“I just didn’t feel it was appropriate for me to be there,” Mr. Lieberman explained the next day.

“It was the right thing to do,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Democratic whip, who said that a colleague approached him afterward to complain about Mr. Lieberman’s showing up. “This is a delicate situation,” Mr. Durbin summed up.

It has grown increasingly so for Mr. Lieberman, once his party’s vice-presidential candidate and now a self-styled “independent Democrat.” He has zigzagged the country on behalf of Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and, in recent weeks, amplified his criticism of Senator Barack Obama to a point that has infuriated many of his Democratic colleagues.

At least two have asked Mr. Lieberman to tone down his rhetoric against Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, two colleagues said, and at least three have advised Mr. Lieberman against speaking at the Republican convention, a prospect he has said he would entertain.

Clearly, Mr. Lieberman’s already precarious marriage with the Democrats has reached a new level of discord and could be approaching divorce, if not necessarily a remarriage into the Republican Party. The strain has been rooted largely in Mr. Lieberman’s steadfast support for the Bush administration’s engagement in Iraq and his hawkish views on Iran. He has not ruled out switching parties but has stopped short of saying he has moved so far from the Democratic Party — or, in his view, the other way around — that he is at a point of no return.

“I don’t have any line that I have in my mind,” Mr. Lieberman said in an interview. “If it happened, I’d know it when I saw it.”

Actually, Lieberman has indicated previously that the Democratic Party's been hijacked by the hardline netroots contingents, especially on national security.

In earlier interviews, he's also dismissed suggestions that he'll always be a Democrat.

My own sense is that Lieberman is just slowly walking away from the party, watching the political trends to see how things turn out.

He's promised not to mount his own "Zell Miller moment" at the Republican National Convention, but the content of his message to the GOP is less important than the symbolism of his defection to the other side. He'll never be forgiven by Democratic Party activists, nor by some of his colleagues in Congress.

My advice to Lieberman is to step up his game. He needs to work even harder for John McCain's victory in November. I see Lieberman with a top cabinet post in a McCain administration, such as Secretary of Defense or State.

If McCain loses, the defeat will signal the sundown moment of Joseph Lieberman's life in politics. I simply do not see him finding a long-term place in either party, with the intense political polarization that is no de rigeur in American politics.

Photo Credit: New York Times