Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Sen. Joe Lieberman seems...

...genuinely baffled by his critics as he retires from the U.S. Senate. From a piece in the Times this morning (my emphasis): 

“I’m not saying I was always right,” he said at his Senate office. “I’ll leave that to God and history. But I believed I was doing what I thought was right and people didn’t just disagree with me. There was hatred. But I’m not alone in that. You can take the last three presidents — Clinton, Bush, Obama — and people haven’t just disagreed with them, they’ve hated them. And to me, that’s really terrible. That’s a cancer that’s eating at our politics.” 

Gee, Joe, maybe it was more about, you know, you

But Mr. Lieberman became estranged from much of the Democratic Party over his enthusiastic support of the Iraq war. He then alienated more Democrats by backing Mr. McCain for president in 2008, his decision to speak at the Republican National Convention and his role in killing a so-called public option in President Obama’s health care bill. 

And critics, including many former supporters in Connecticut, say Mr. Lieberman’s form of bipartisanship has been in part pique because of his rejection by Democratic voters, in part egotistic grandstanding, in part a way to curry favor with Republicans and corporate interests. 

“He found a way to disguise opportunism as high-mindedness, and as much as anyone is the architect of this myth of bipartisanship,” said Bill Curry, a former unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Connecticut governor who served with Mr. Lieberman in the State Senate. 

Goodbye Joe. Don't let the door knob hit you on the way out.

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