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Jewish Democrats are anxious that Sen. Joe Lieberman’s support for Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) will hurt their own nominee’s chances with voters of their faith.
Their increasing frustration came to a head Wednesday when liberal activists and bloggers dropped off a petition calling for Democratic leaders to remove Lieberman, an Independent from Connecticut who caucuses with the Democrats, as chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in the next Congress. The petition contained 43,000 signatures.
But their frustration also has been building for months. And many of them have silently gritted their teeth while one of the most well-known Jewish members of Congress, who served as their vice presidential candidate in 2000, has sought to drive Jews even further from presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.).
“Joe Lieberman, a friend of mine, just sees life differently,” Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) said recently. “And so it’s too bad. We miss him.”
Lautenberg has been one of the most vocal Jewish lawmakers working to refute Lieberman’s claims that McCain, not Obama, offers the best path on dealing with Iran and securing the safety of Israel.
Before the Fourth of July recess, Lautenberg and other Jewish lawmakers joined the National Jewish Democratic Council to drudge up a three-year-old vote on an amendment to a defense authorization bill to charge that McCain’s rhetoric does not match his voting record on tough economic sanctions for Iran.
The press conference, also attended by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Reps. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) and Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), was designed to cast doubt about McCain’s credentials on Israel while trumpeting Obama’s.
Lautenberg, who said he was saddened by Lieberman’s notable absence at the press conference, acknowledged that his fellow members of the faith have their work cut out for them in this area.
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