Lieberman for President?
Difficult as it may be to believe, I think I have come up with a scenario for the next election that nobody else has suggested.
Consider Senator Lieberman's qualifications for the Democratic nomination.
1. He is a long term senator and an (admittedly unsuccessful) vice presidential candidate.
2. In the most recent election, he demonstrated an ability to attract Republican votes unmatched, so far as I know, by any non-Republican candidate in recent history. Connecticut is not, it is true, a Republican state. But holding the Republican candidate for senate to 10% of the vote is still a striking accomplishment.
3. Odd though it may seem in the light of the religious conflicts of past centuries, his status as a deeply believing Jew probably makes him more attractive to the Republicans' religious hard core than any other Democrat.
It is true that Lieberman's support for the Iraq war looks, at this point, like a liability. It is less clear if that will still be true in a year or two, with the Democratic majority in Congress having to share the problems associated with that particular mess and the blame for whichever bad outcomes they support—no good outcomes being available. And there is the argument that someone with a record of support for the war is best placed to get us out of it, as Nixon was best positioned to abandon U.S. hostility to communist China.
One minor objection that might be raised to Lieberman's nomination is that he is not, at the moment, a Democrat. The obvious response is that that was not his choice; it was the Democrats who rejected Lieberman in the primaries, not Lieberman who rejected them. If the party now wishes to kiss and make up, there is no reason he should object. And they are, after all, currently counting on him to provide the crucial vote required to maintain their status as the majority party in the senate.
Which raises another and still more interesting, if even less probable, scenario. The Democrats are not the only party in search of a presidential candidate.
But I don't think I will explore that one today.