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" I have detected a great disturbance in The Force. There seems to be a distinct drop in the fundamental dickishness of the universe for which I cannot account. No, wait. Now I get it. Joe Lieberman is leaving the Senate. He bid farewell to his several friends yesterday. And former Washington Post performance artist Dana Milbank was moved very nearly to tears. A few more senators arrived during the 20-minute speech, but even by the end Lieberman was very much alone - which is how it has been for much of his 24-year tenure. He tried to push back against the mindless partisanship that developed in the chamber, and he paid dearly for it. Lieberman was excommunicated by his party (he won as an independent in 2006 after losing the Democratic primary) and retired this year rather than face probable defeat. Yet he received little love from the Republicans, either, because despite his apostasies on key issues - the Iraq war, above all - he remained a fairly reliable vote for the Democrats. The sparse attendance wasn&amp;#039;t unusual for a farewell speech, but it was a sad send-off for a man who was very close in 2000 to becoming a major figure in American political history as the first Jew on a major party&amp;#039;s national ticket. He was denied the vice presidency not by the voters but by the Supreme Court. As he joked in his farewell speech, he was &amp;quot;grateful to have received a half-million more votes than my opponent on the other side - but that&amp;#039;s a longer story.&amp;quot; Six years later, he was drummed out of his party because of his willingness to embrace Republicans (he received a kiss from George W. Bush after a State of the Union address). If you want to know why the entire courtier press corps needs to be force-marched out of Washington and off to a re-education camp and swamp reclamation project in the Smokies, there you have it. I think there has not been a more completely worthless political figure in my lifetime than Weepin&amp;#039; Joe Lieberman. His practical accomplishments were practically nil, when they weren&amp;#039;t actively hostile to progressive interests. What Milbank sees as a &amp;quot;push back against mindless partisanship,&amp;quot; people who don&amp;#039;t have to worry about their Beltway social schedules will see as the career of an utterly unprincipled, warmongering hack. Let us count the ways. He declined, conspicuously, to vote for Bill Clinton&amp;#039;s impeachment, but he signed on, conspicuously, to the kabuki pursuit of Bill Clinton&amp;#039;s penis, mournfully deploring the fact that he might have to explain to the young folks that fellatio is not an opera by Verdi. He sold out Al Gore during the 2000 recount madness in Florida, most notably by going on with his good pal, L&amp;#039;il Timmy Russert, and undermining the Democratic case against overseas ballots that were filled out in crayon. He was vital Democratic cover for all the depredations and cock-ups that were the hallmark of the Avignon Presidency. He has more blood on his hands than any Democratic politician of his time and, unlike most of them, he is proud of it. He mentioned it yesterday, He shows it off at parties. He refused to accept the verdict of the Democratic voters of Connecticut, and took money from Karl Rove to get himself re-elected, thereby proving that he has the political soul of a roach motel. He took a speaking role at the 2008 Republican National Convention, and was seriously considered for the vice-presidential spot by Senator Grumpy. He personally made sure that the Medicare buy-in -- the last hope for any semblance of single-payer -- was not even considered in health-care reform. So, yeah, it was the kiss from C-Plus Augustus that turned people on him. &amp;quot;There is no magic or mystery&amp;quot; to how such things were done, he said. &amp;quot;It means ultimately putting the interests of country and constituents ahead of the dictates of party.&amp;quot; Anyone who has studied the career of Weepin&amp;#039; Joe can see the historical elision in what he said. You can argue that he put a lot of things ahead of &amp;quot;the dictates of party.&amp;quot; But the one thing he never did was put the interests of the country or of his constituents \u2014 except for those constituents who own insurance companies \u2014 ahead of the dictates of self. Joe Lieberman&amp;#039;s primary consituency always was Joe Lieberman. It&amp;#039;s a wonder people didn&amp;#039;t show up yesterday to pelt him with rotten fruit. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a17405/joe-lieberman-leaves-the-senate-121312/>