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    Joe Lieberman obituary

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    In 2000, midway through his 24 years as a US senator from Connecticut, Joe Lieberman, who has died aged 82 following complications from a fall, was chosen as Al Gore’s running mate in the 2000 presidential election, becoming America’s first, and still only, major-party Jewish vice-presidential candidate. That moment was a peak in a career that arced from the liberal left of the Democratic party to the embrace of Republicans.He identified as a bipartisan centrist, liberal domestically and conservative on foreign policy. The Republican Jewish Coalition chairman Norm Coleman said Lieberman “put principle over politics”, but many of his early Democratic supporters found his later move rightward anathema.Lieberman was the epitome of Connecticut’s unique politics. The small state was finely balanced between the two main parties in his youth, but the presence of John Bailey as state party “boss” and chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) gave it undue influence, which declined even as the state grew steadily more liberal.View image in fullscreenBorn in Stamford, Joe was the son of children of Jewish immigrants. His father, Henry, owned a liquor store, and his mother, Marcia (nee Manger), was a homemaker. From Stamford high school, in 1960 Joe went to Yale University, which then maintained a Jewish quota. He became editor of the Yale Daily News, and eventually was “tapped” by Yale’s top secret society, Skull and Bones. Instead, he joined the “open” Elihu Club.In 1963, influenced by Yale’s chaplain, William Sloane Coffin, he led a student contingent to Mississippi, working first-hand to register black voters in the still segregated south. He also interned for Connecticut’s liberal Jewish senator, Abraham Ribicoff. There, he met another intern, Betty Haas; they married in 1965, by which time he had graduated with a degree in politics and economics and entered Yale Law School.Lieberman wrote his undergraduate thesis on John Bailey, and, after interning for him at the DNC, turned that thesis into a book, The Power Broker (1966). He described Bailey as “a competent centrist who views political issues as a technician, not an ideologue” – a template for his own political approach.With the Vietnam war dividing the country, Lieberman eventually supported Robert Kennedy after he entered the presidential race, following Lyndon Johnson’s withdrawal in the face of a strong showing by the anti-war Democrat Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary. But after Kennedy’s assassination, and Hubert Humphrey’s loss to Richard Nixon, Lieberman joined McCarthy’s Connecticut campaign chief, Joe Duffey, to form the caucus of Connecticut Democrats.In 1970 Duffey failed to enter the US Senate when the Democratic vote was split, but Lieberman was elected to the state Senate, and swiftly moved back toward the party’s mainstream, serving 10 years and becoming majority leader.He ran for Congress in 1980, but the Republican Larry DeNardis branded him a “tax and spend” liberal, and rode Ronald Reagan’s coat tails to an upset win. Lieberman would never again be outflanked from the right.When he and Betty divorced in 1981, he cited the demands of political life and his becoming “more religiously observant” as the causes. Soon afterwards, he met Hadassah Freilich, born in Prague to two Holocaust survivors, and also recently divorced. They married within a year. She worked on health and pharmaceutical issues for Lehman Brothers, Pfizer, and lobby groups including Hill & Knowlton.View image in fullscreenIn 1983, Lieberman was elected Connecticut’s attorney general. Five years later, he won Lowell Weicker’s Senate seat in a major upset. Weicker was a liberal Republican, and Lieberman’s campaign benefited from the endorsement of the conservative journalist William F Buckley (another former Yale Daily News editor) and his even further-right brother, New York Senator James Buckley.Re-elected in 1994 with a record 67% of the vote, Lieberman soon was chairing the “moderate” Democratic Leadership Council, where he took a very public stance against the immorality of President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. In 2000, Gore chose him as running mate, partly to distance himself from Clinton, and partly because Lieberman might be able to pull the Jewish vote in the key state of Florida. This Lieberman did, but when the US supreme court shut down Florida’s recount of heavily contested ballots, they gave the state and the election to George W Bush. Despite some criticism back home about running simultaneously for his Senate seat and the vice-presidency, which Johnson had done, Lieberman won re-election easily.After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Lieberman called for the creation of a Department of Homeland Security; he served on the Senate’s committee and chaired it when Democrats held the majority. In 2004, he ran in the early presidential primaries, but stopped his candidacy after a series of disappointing results.By 2006, opposition to Bush’s war was such that, despite receiving the Senate nomination from the party, he lost a primary forced by the anti-war candidate Ned Lamont – an echo of Duffey and Lieberman 36 years previously. But Lieberman ran instead as an independent, and took 70% of the Republican vote (their official candidate registered less then 10%) to win re-election handily. However, many of his Democratic colleagues had failed to back him against the party’s own candidate.By now, his closest allies in the Senate were Republicans John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins. When McCain got the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, he wanted Lieberman as his vice-president, but was persuaded that “conservatives would be pissed as hell” by such bipartisanship; he chose Sarah Palin to mollify them. Nevertheless, Lieberman endorsed the McCain/Palin ticket against Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and spoke at the Republican convention.After the election, the Democrats held 59 Senate seats, plus Lieberman’s 60th, which would allow them to overcome Republican vetoes. In return, the Democrats let him keep his chairmanship of the Homeland Security committee. His was the vote that passed Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act, but the price of his support was ditching the “public option”, creating a government agency to provide health insurance. He was criticised heavily because of his own support from the insurance industry – still strong in Connecticut – and his wife’s career in private medicine. As an “observant Jew”, Lieberman would still attend the Senate on the Sabbath, though he would walk, not take transport. He was a strong supporter of Israel, receiving the Defender of Israel award in 2009 from Christians United For Israel.In 2012 he retired from the US Senate. He remained neutral in the presidential race between Obama and Mitt Romney, though he endorsed both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in their campaigns against Donald Trump. Lieberman moved to New York and joined Kasowitz, Benson, Torres and Friedman, a law firm whose clients included Trump, and the rightwing American Enterprise Institute. In May 2017, after Trump fired James Comey as head of the FBI, Lieberman appeared to be Trump’s pick as a replacement, but when Trump dithered, Lieberman withdrew his name from consideration.Lieberman was a founder of the No Labels party, dedicated to finding a bipartisan alternative to either Biden or Trump in the 2024 presidential election. A week before his death, he penned a piece for the Wall Street Journal in which he criticised Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, who alleged the “political survival” of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “taken precedence over the interests of Israel”. He called it “meaningless, gratuitous and offensive”, saying it would harm “Israel’s credibility among its allies and enemies alike”.He is survived by Hadassah; their daughter, Hana; his son, Matthew, and daughter, Rebecca, from his first marriage; and his stepson, Ethan, from his second. More

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      Joe Lieberman, former US senator and vice-presidential nominee, dies at 82

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      The former US senator Joe Lieberman, who ran as the Democratic nominee for vice-president in the 2000 election and became the first Jewish candidate on a major-party ticket for the White House, alongside presidential candidate Al Gore, has died at the age of 82.Lieberman died in New York due to complications from a fall, according to a statement from his family. He was a Connecticut senator for four terms.Lieberman took one of the most controversial arcs in recent US political history. Though he had the status of a breakthrough candidate for America’s Jewish community as Gore’s running mate, his support for president George W Bush’s Iraq war heralded a rightward journey that saw him anger many Democrats.Lieberman sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 but his support for the war in Iraq doomed his candidacy with voters, amid increasing anger at the invasion and its bloody aftermath. It also meant Lieberman was rejected by Connecticut’s Democrats when he ran for a fourth Senate term there in 2006.However, in what he said was a vindication of his positions, he kept his Senate seat by running as an independent candidate, with substantial support from Republican and independent voters.By 2008, Lieberman was a high-profile supporter of Republican senator John McCain in his bid to defeat Democrat Barack Obama’s quest to become America’s first Black president.Thus Lieberman did manage to both impress and offend people across party lines. He expressed strong support for gay rights, civil rights, abortion rights and environmental causes that often won him praise of many Democrats, and he frequently fit mould of a north-east liberal. He played a key role in legislation that established the US Department of Homeland Security.He was also the first national Democrat to publicly criticize President Bill Clinton for his extramarital affair with then White House intern Monica Lewinsky. He scolded Clinton for “disgraceful behavior”, earning the ire of his party – though his position has become much more standard in the wake of the #MeToo movement.As he sought a political home outside Democratic politics, Lieberman’s close friend in the Senate John McCain was leaning strongly toward choosing him as vice-president for the 2008 Republican ticket, but Lieberman’s history of liberal policies were seen as too unpopular for McCain to pull off such a move with his conservative base. He plumped for Sarah Palin instead.In announcing his retirement from the Senate in 2013, Lieberman acknowledged that he did “not always fit comfortably into conventional political boxes” and felt his first responsibility was to serve his constituents, state and country, not his political party.Harry Reid, who served as Senate Democratic leader, once said that while he didn’t always agree with the independent-minded Lieberman, he respected him.“Regardless of our differences, I have never doubted Joe Lieberman’s principles or his patriotism,” Reid said. “And I respect his independent streak, as it stems from strong convictions.”After leaving the Senate, Lieberman joined a New York law firm and took up company boards – as is common for retiring senators. But his public positions continued to be a mish-mash of liberal and rightwing views.View image in fullscreenHe endorsed Donald Trump’s controversial decision to move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and was a public supporter of Trump’s rightwing education secretary Betsy DeVos – a hated figure for many liberals. But at the same time, he endorsed Hilary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 in their runs for the White House.Lieberman continued to push his message of compromise with his 2021 book The Centrist Solution, comparing far-right extremists to progressive leftists in a Guardian interview at the time, saying: “The divisive forces in both of our two major parties have moved further away from the centre. But I believe those more extreme segments of both parties are in the minority in both parties.”He also said he was optimistic that “more mainstream, centrist elements” in the Republican party would take over again.He remained active in recent years as the founding chairman of No Labels, an organization to encourage bipartisanship but which is currently exploring backing a third-party bid for the presidency as Trump and Biden face off again. Faced with criticisms that the group’s efforts could boost Trump’s chance at victory, Lieberman said last year he did not want to see Trump re-elected, but that he believed Democrats would fare better if Biden was not running. In recent weeks, No Labels has struggled to find a candidate as ballot deadlines near.Lieberman grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, where his father operated a liquor store. He was the eldest of three siblings in an Orthodox Jewish family. A Yale law school graduate, Lieberman went on to serve as Connecticut attorney general in 1983, before defeating the incumbent Republican, Lowell Weicker, to earn his Senate seat in 1988.Tributes poured in from both sides of the aisle on Wednesday night. Chris Murphy, a US senator from Connecticut, said in a statement that his state was “shocked by Senator Lieberman’s sudden passing”, adding: “In an era of political carbon copies, Joe Lieberman was a singularity. One of one. He fought and won for what he believed was right and for the state he adored.”Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa and oldest sitting senator at 90, recalled working with Lieberman on whistleblower initiatives, saying in a statement: “Joe was a dedicated public servant working [with] anyone regardless of political stripe.”Gore published a tribute praising Lieberman as a “truly gifted leader, whose affable personality and strong will made him a force to be reckoned with”, recounting his former running mate’s support of the 1960s civil rights movement.Obama wrote that he and Lieberman “didn’t always see eye-to-eye”, but commended the former senator for supporting the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the passage of the Affordable Care Act: “In both cases the politics were difficult, but he stuck to his principles because he knew it was the right thing to do.”Paul Harris and the Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Can Biden’s climate bill undo the fossil fuel industry’s decades of harm?

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      Can Biden’s climate bill undo the fossil fuel industry’s decades of harm?The US spent six decades losing the climate war as fossil fuel companies spread misinformation. It has finally gained significant ground The scientists’ warning to the US president on climate crisis was stark: the world’s countries were conducting a vast, dangerous experiment through their enormous release of planet-heating emissions, which threaten to be “deleterious from the point of view of human beings”. Some sort of remedial action was needed, they urged.This official alert was issued not to Joe Biden, who is poised to sign America’s first ever major legislation designed to tackle the climate crisis, but in a report given to his presidential predecessor Lyndon Johnson in 1965, a year when the now 79-year-old Biden was still in college.That it has taken nearly six decades for the US to tackle global heating in a significant way, despite being responsible for a quarter of all emissions that have heated the planet during modern civilization, is indicative of a lengthy climate war. Pernicious misinformation of the fossil fuel industry, cynicism and bungled political maneuvering have stymied any sort of action to avert catastrophic heatwaves, floods, drought and wildfires.If on Friday, as expected, the House of Representatives assents to the landmark $370bn in climate spending hashed out in the US Senate and sends it for Biden’s signature, it will be a watershed moment in a saga that can be measured in whole careers and lifetimes.Al Gore was a fresh-faced 33-year-old congressman from Tennessee when, in 1981, he organized an obscure hearing with fellow lawmakers to hear evidence on the greenhouse effect from Roger Revelle, his former professor at Harvard and one of the scientists who had cautioned Johnson 16 years earlier of a looming climate disaster.Gore is now 74, a former US vice-president and veteran climate advocate whose increasingly urgent warnings on the issue won him the Nobel peace prize when Greta Thunberg was barely four years old. “I never imagined I would end up devoting my life to this,” Gore said.“I thought, naively in retrospect, that when the facts were laid out so clearly we would be able to move much more quickly. I did not anticipate the fossil fuel industry would spend billions of dollars on an industrial scale program of lying and deception to prevent the body politic acting in a rational way. But here we are, we finally passed that threshold.”Gore considers the bill, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, as a “critical turning point in our struggle to confront the climate crisis” that will supercharge deployment of renewable energy such as wind and solar and push fossil fuels towards irrelevancy.Al Gore hails Biden’s historic climate bill as ‘a critical turning point’Read moreMany current Democratic lawmakers, who narrowly passed the bill through the Senate, also felt the weight of the moment, with many of them wearing the warming stripes colors showing the global heating trend. Some burst into tears as the legislation squeaked home on Sunday.“We’ve been fighting for this for decades, now I can look my kids in the eye and say we’re really doing something about climate,” said Brian Schatz, a senator from Hawaii and one of the tearful. “The Senate was where climate bills went to die and now it’s where the biggest climate action by any government ever has been taken.”The list of previous failures is lengthy. Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the roof of the White House, only for Ronald Reagan to rip them down. Bill Clinton attempted a new tax on pollutants only for a sharp backlash from industry to see the effort die. The US, under George W Bush’s presidency, declined to join the 1997 Kyoto climate accords and then, when Barack Obama was in the White House, botched climate legislation in 2009 despite strong Democratic majorities in Congress.Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, torched most of the modest measures in place to curb planet-heating gases and campaigned wearing a coalminer’s helmet. “I didn’t doubt we’d get there but there were times when the struggle became harder than I thought it would be, such as when Trump was elected,” Gore said.Climate change has inflicted increasingly severe wounds on Americans as their politicians have floundered or dissembled. Enormous wildfires are now a year-round threat to California, with the US west in the grip of possibly its worst drought in 12 centuries. Extreme rainfall now routinely drowns basements in New York, Appalachian towns, and Las Vegas casinos. The poorest fare worst from the roasting heatwaves and the continued air pollution from power plants, cars and trucks.James Hansen, the Nasa scientist, told Congress in a landmark 1988 hearing that “it is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here” and yet the escalating subsequent warnings appeared to make little difference. Shortly before a Senate deal was brokered, the climate scientist Drew Shindell said that the lack of action made him “want to scream” and that “I keep wondering what’s the point of producing all the science” if it’s only to be ignored.Much of the blame for this has been laid on the fossil fuel industry, which has known for decades the disastrous consequences of its business model only to fund an extensive network of operations that concealed this information and sought to sow doubt among the public over the science.“These forces have been far more active and effective in the United States than in other countries,” said Naomi Oreskes, an American historian of science who has written on the false information spread by industry on climate crisis.“For more than 20 years, American public opinion has been heavily influenced by the ‘merchants of doubt’, who sold disinformation designed to make people think that the science regarding climate change was far more uncertain than it actually was.”Industry lobbying and generous donations have ensured that the Republican party has fallen almost entirely in line with the demands of major oil and gas companies. As recently as 2008, a Republican running for president, John McCain, had a recognizable climate plan but the issue is now close to party heresy, despite rising concern among all Americans, including Republican voters, about climate-induced disasters.The strategy of misinformation “worked even more than its originators imagined”, Oreskes said, noting that every single Republican senator voted against the Inflation Reduction Act. Mitch McConnell, the GOP Senate leader, lambasted the bill as “Green New Deal nonsense” out of step with Americans’ priorities, even as much of his home state of Kentucky lay underwater from its worst flooding on record, killing dozens and inundating whole towns.The continued, staunch opposition to any meaningful climate action by Republicans means the climate wars in American politics are not likely to draw to a close anytime soon. But climate advocates hope the gathering pace of renewable energy and electric car adoption will soon be unstoppable, regardless of any attempted backsliding if Republicans regain power.The question will be how much damage to a livable climate will be done in the meantime. The climate bill is expected to help slash the emissions of the US, the world’s second largest carbon polluter, by about 40% this decade, which should prod other countries to do more. Crucial, upcoming UN climate talks in Egypt suddenly look a more welcoming prospect for the American delegation.“In the prior administration, I think the rest of the world lost faith in the United States in terms of our commitment to climate,” said Gina McCarthy, Biden’s top climate adviser. “This doesn’t just restore that faith in the United States, but it creates an opportunity zone that other countries can start thinking about.”But almost every country, including the US, is still not doing enough, quickly enough, to head off the prospect of catastrophic global heating. The climate wars helped enrich fossil fuel corporations but cost precious time that the new climate bill does not claw back.“It was a celebratory and joyful moment when the legislation finally passed but we can’t let this be a once in a lifetime moment,” Gore said. “The path to net zero (emissions) requires us to move forward and a lot of the hard work lies ahead.”TopicsClimate crisisAl GoreUS politicsBiden administrationTrump administrationObama administrationfeaturesReuse this content More