Kerry on Lieberman's position in the Dem caucus: "I can't tell you what happens next year."

[beachmom]

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g6qFnGB0A_Sm02M6_ul4uHSrBCzwD91AIUPG1

Lieberman irks Democrats by criticizing Obama
By ANDREW MIGA – 6 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Lieberman is fast becoming the Democrats' public enemy No. 1.

The four-term Connecticut senator, who came tantalizingly close to being Al Gore's vice president in 2000, not only has been campaigning for his pal, presumed Republican nominee John McCain, now he's publicly criticizing the Democrats' standard-bearer, Barack Obama. Lieberman has strayed before, most notably switching from Democrat to independent in 2006 to hold onto his Senate seat after a Democratic primary loss.

But the latest betrayal has upset Democrats, who often answer in clipped but polite tones when asked about Lieberman. The reason: The independent still caucuses with the Democrats on most issues except the Iraq war, and he holds their slim political majority in his hands.

"There's a commonly held hope that he's not going to be transformed into an attack dog for Republicans," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., an Obama supporter.

...

Later that day, during a budget vote in the Senate, Obama led Lieberman to a corner of the Senate floor for a pointed private conversation. Without elaborating, Obama told reporters the chat was about politics. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., had a similar private conversation with Lieberman.

For his part, Lieberman said he assured Obama he would avoid personal attacks.

"I said, and we agreed, that any time I get out there mostly I'm going to be talking positively about John McCain — and anytime I would take issue with Barack Obama, it would never be personal because I have the highest regard for him personally," he said.

Still, Democrats were irked. Lieberman seemed to be breaking new ground — shifting gears from simply promoting McCain to taking shots at Obama.

"I'm glad that Barack Obama had a direct conversation with Joe," Sen. Dick Durbin, Obama's fellow Illinois senator, told reporters. "I hope that Joe will realize that even though he's a friend of John McCain's and feels differently on the war, there are so many other issues Barack stands for that have been a part of Joe's career."

To remind everyone, Kerry was one of Lamont's top supporters back in the general election of 2006. Kerry raised him a lot of money, and made an appearance late in October (when Lamont was well down in the polls) for Lamont. I have a feeling there isn't a whole lot of love lost between Kerry and Lieberman these days. Even Dodd is getting "irked". Hmmmm.

There is speculation that if Democrats bolster their Senate majority this fall, they could seek payback by stripping Lieberman of his Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee chairmanship.

While there's no serious talk afoot about punishing Lieberman, Kerry said, "I can't tell you what happens next year."

[democrattotheend]

1. Interesting. Kerry and Lieberman used to be pretty close.

I think I read somewhere that Kerry's the one who actually recruited Lieberman to run for the Senate some 15 years ago. But in fairness to Kerry, Lieberman was a lot more of a Democrat back then.

I'm kind of surprised Kerry has been willing to go out there and attack McCain lately, since I know he and McCain are pretty close personally, and I don't recall McCain being an attack dog for Bush in 2004 (I could be wrong about that). I know McCain eventually criticized the SwiftBoaters, though some people thought he was silent for too long.

[Diamonique]

2. Kerry attacking McCain doesn't surprise me at all.

They're politicians, and they know how things work. Kerry is attacking McCain on policy issues. That's all very fair in politics.

It's when they start attacking on personal stuff... that's when it's gone over the line. I'm sure Kerry would never attack McCain's integrity or anything else personal.

[karynnj]

3. McCain was glued to Bush's side for a period of time

and made sad little comments about his "friend". In addition, Kerry has attacked McCain's positions and comments - never his personality or his background. Kerry has occasionally listed things they did work on together - CAFE standards, veterans' rights etc - and then implied the McCain of today was not the McCain he knew - when he did things like accept money from the SBVT or vote against the veterans' rights bill and some global warming measures. (McCain did criticize the SBVT as soon as they came out - but then asked Kerry to take the comment out of his ad. He then said nothing else and had no problem with the purple heart band aids.)

As to Leiberman, Kerry did recruit him - and knew of his work while a student of joining the Freedom Riders. He also knew his reputation as CT's attourney general - which was good. Leiberman had a lifetime LCV rating of 95, a point less than Kerry, who had the highest - so Leiberman was annoyed when they endorsed Kerry in the primaries - something they never did before.

[democrattotheend]

4. Love your sig line

I'm probably out of touch here, but I wish Kerry had run in 2004 as the John Kerry who served his country in Vietnam but then came home and protested the war, rather than highlighting the military service and downplaying his work to help bring the war to an end.

[karynnj]

12. He actually mentioned both in his convention speech

as two sides of one coin. (Where he spoke of having served his country as a young man, then came home to try to end a war that he had come to see couldn't be won. - paraphrase - and that was what he said in a stump speech.)

Given that we were a year and a half into a war, I can see why he didn't highlight it more, but part of the part was how little time was given to him at the convention. He only got three hours of prime time.

i was with a few other DU Kerry people at the NYC booksigning for the paperback copy of This Moment on Earth in April. When we were near the front as Kerry was signing books, someone pointed out George Butler, the man who made the "Going Up River" video. We were lucky enough to get over to speak to him. A comment was made that it, in fact, was the perfect answer to the real root of the SBVT 's ability to have any success - the anger some still had from their misperception of what Kerry did in his anti-war days.

As a 27 year old, he was able to bring a large group of extremely angry people together and convince them that a non-violent protest where points were made calmly and intelligently was the way to go. He was the one that got all the needed permits and personally resolved many potential problems - one on the way to testifying. It was only because the event had that calmness and was veterans (Kerry fought to exclude celebrities etc) that let Congress people wander out of their offices and join them in what had to be an amazing demonstration of the government listening.

Then there was the testimony. I love CPAN carried hearings - and I would guess that what the Senators expected was that this young vet would spend the time retelling some of the stories told at the Winter Soldier hearing. It would have been a sensational hearing. Instead, he simply explained what the Winter soldier hearings were and then listed things that soldiers spoke of. This left time for a passionate plea to end the war - that he was convinced the politicians already knew was lost, another equally passionate plea that the leaders not abandon the vets who needed help reintegrating into society and in getting adequate medical and psychological help, and ending with a plea for a change in foreign policy (a change he was still arguing for in 2004 and in 2008 seeing Obama as one who could achieve it.)

Going Up River gives a fantastic view of the anti-war movement - as a student than and a parent now - it was the first time I was able to see how we scared the grownups. :) It gives a wonderful view of how weird the Vietnam experience was. Max Cleland gives some wonderful insight on how Kerry's actions helped him.

The sad thing is that some people for their own vested interests have tried to rewrite the impact of this on the country. Now, I was a college student - thus a member of the most intensely anti-war demographic. There is no way that Kerry could have hurt the image of vets. This was one year after Lt Calley and My Lai. Calley and others like him were the ones responsible for the negative image. Kerry's obviously moral comments were the best antidote . At least on my campus, most kids watched his testimony and were impressed.

What Kerry did then was to tell the truth - and that is something he seems to do far more often than most politicians. (That made MTP easy for him) He was interviewed in 1971 by Morey Safer (60 minutes) and asked if he wanted to be President. He said then - sure, but that there were important things to do and that he did not know if he could do them and keep people happy enough with him. Two things are amazing here - that it was not strange to ask a 27 year old about being President and that he knew that his anti-war actions could prevent it, but thought it was more important to do them.

Truth tellers are extremely important, but they are rarely treated well - in Kerry's case he told the truth on Vietnam, the Contras and on the corruption of powerful people in the government who let BCCI get it tentacles into the US. The amazing thing is not that he had a narrow loss, but that even after doing all these things, he was able to win the nomination and nearly unseat a President in a time of war - something no one had ever done - and this was in spite of a media character assassination and politically motivated terror alerts.

[blm]

13. Actually, he always brought up why he protested Vietnam when he spoke of why he was against

Bush's DECISION to go to war when the weapon inspections were proving force was not needed.

War needed to be a LAST RESORT.

The corpmedia editted out much of Kerry's speeches throughout the campaign. Obama and Clinton both received at least twenty times the broadcast airtime for their speeches during their primary race than Kerry was given as the Dem nominee.

[beachmom]

5. Remember, McCain spoke at the same Republican National Convention

where people were wearing purple heart bandaids, and McCain did not say a word. He did call out the Swifts once: "dishonest and dishonorable", but just the one time. And when the Kerry campaign featured McCain in an ad (showing him being slimed in 2000) showing how Bush/Rove had a pattern of smearing candidates, McCain asked that the ad be pulled. After Kerry's loss, McCain said some mean things in the press about how Kerry needed to get back to work in the Senate, when Kerry HAD been hard at work in the Senate.

Kerry did feel betrayed that McCain so actively campaigned for Bush. Remember McCain's people approached Kerry about McCain being VP, and approached Daschle about switching to Dem. It was a shock when McCain came full out for Bush, quite literally in an embrace. It is clear now that in 2004, McCain sold his soul to Bush while turning his back on an old friend who had defended him a lot in 2000 during the despicable SC smears from Rove.

Having said all of that, Kerry only criticizes McCain on policy, and I am sure would defend his old friend from any smears. However, Obama is honorable and would not allow any below the belt attacks on McCain, even from a 3rd party group. Obama has made that clear.

[MBS]

6. thanks for this

I've seen earlier articles (less complete than this one) that also hint at trouble for Lieberman in the Dem caucus (he really has crossed the line in endorsing McCain). And I assume that those "clipped but polite" public remarks are the mere tip of the iceberg of their private frustration and fury with Lieberman's latest moves.

Pity what's happened to Lieberman. As karynnj's note about Lieberman's high LCV rating implies, Lieberman IS good on the environment. But otherwise he seems to be proceeding down such a dark road..

Yup, one more reason to get more good, solid,senate seats for the Dems in 2008, so they're not dependent on humoring Lieberman anymore.
I'll think of this the next time I get a solicitation from the DSCC

[Zhade]

7. Good. Once we trounce the repubs, strip this lying collaborator of EVERYTHING...

...and invite him to jump off a fucking building.

(A low one. I'm talking a broken leg, not his death.)

[greenbriar]

8. I for one will be glad win lie berman is worthless

and irrelevant

[ProSense]

9. My hope is that

Ned Lamont unseats Lieberman in 2012.

[tblue37]

10. I suspect that Lieberman knows his Senate career is essentially

over. Now he is just running for his post-Senate job on FOX News or his post-Senate lobbyist career.

[Zhade]

11. That would be sweet, sweet justice.

NT!

[monmouth]

14. Did Kerry mean like in "If I tell you I'll have to kill you" ?? Just kidding..n/t

[politicasista]

15. K&R

:kick: