Joe Lieberman, the former U.S. senator and Democratic vice presidential nominee whose conservative views on foreign policy and steadfast support for the Iraq War eventually led to his estrangement from the party, died Wednesday in New York City, his family said. He was 82. The cause was complications after a fall. “His beloved wife, Hadassah, and members of his family were with him as he passed,” his family said. “Senator Lieberman’s love of God, his family, and America endured throughout his life of service in the public interest.” The speed of Lieberman’s partisan shift from 2000, when he became the first Jewish candidate on a major party ticket for the presidency as Al Gore’s running mate, to 2008, when he endorsed Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for president, was one of the major political stories of the first decade of the 21st century and one of the first signs the Democratic Party would move beyond its 1990s-era centrism. Lieberman was a steadfast supporter of gay rights, abortion rights and environmental issues, including crafting a major bipartisan attempt to fight climate change. But he was also the first major Democrat to rebuke then-President Bill Clinton in 1998 over his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky and would later play a leading role in killing a public health insurance option as Congress debated the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. “In an era of political carbon copies, Joe Lieberman was a singularity,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who now holds Lieberman’s seat, wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “One of one. He fought and won for what he believed was right and for the state he adored.” The direct cause of Lieberman’s break with the Democratic Party, however, was his unflinching support for George W. Bush’s disastrous invasion of Iraq. Though many congressional Democrats initially supported the war, Lieberman continued to do so even as the number of American troops and Iraqi civilian deaths... |