Why is Bill Clinton in Connecticut?

It helps his wife, and it helps Joe Lieberman connect with a group of long-neglected voters.

By Colin McEnroe

Read more: Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Politics, News, 2006 Elections

AP Photo/Fred Beckham

Sen. Joe Lieberman

July 24, 2006 | "They're desperate. They're losing," Rep. Maxine Waters told me on Saturday. The California Democrat was 3,000 miles from home in Hartford, Conn., at Ned Lamont for Senate headquarters in the black neighborhood known as the North End. By "they" she meant the Joe Lieberman campaign.

Waters had just spent the day storming through the state, even knocking on doors, trying to persuade people to vote for Lamont, a white Greenwich millionaire she'd probably never heard of a few weeks ago. Even so, she can see in him great virtues, chief among them the fact that he is not Joe Lieberman. Lieberman and the very liberal Waters have been at it since at least 1995, when he chaired the centrist Democratic Leadership Council and spoke in favor of California's anti-affirmative-action initiative. Waters would probably campaign for an attractive Ikea wall unit if it were running against Lieberman.

But as a campaigner, Waters can't hold a candle to America's greatest living "black" politician, who will make his own trip to Connecticut Monday afternoon, except he'll be working for the other side. William Jefferson Clinton will appear at a rally in Waterbury on behalf of Lieberman, in hopes of rescuing the incumbent senator's foundering reelection bid.

Why is Bill Clinton stumping for the man who famously rebuked him from the floor of the Senate during Monica-gate eight years ago? Part of the reason is personal. Clinton and Lieberman have known each other nearly 40 years. They met in 1970, when both were Kennedy disciples involved in a Connecticut-wide liberal insurgency that won Lieberman a state Senate seat.

Part of the reason is selfish. Lieberman may have chastised Clinton, but he has also provided a template for the other politician in the Clinton family. Hillary Clinton has undergone a gradual but very public transformation into a kind of Bride of Lieberman, hawkish on the war, adamantly pro-Israel and tracking right on social issues. She even likes to bash video games, just like Joe.

Hillary's politics are Joe's politics. If Lieberman sinks, it will raise a lot of questions about the current Clinton strategy, which is really just a post-millennial version of that old-time DLC religion. When I asked Waters why she thought Clinton was coming to Connecticut, she said there were rumors in Washington that he and his wife are freaked out by the sudden progressive insurgency. The DLC is putting down a small rebellion before it spreads. Thus, Bill, the DLC's greatest success story, will be standing alongside former DLC chairman Lieberman in Waterbury mere hours after Hillary gives the keynote speech at the DLC's annual national convention in Denver.

What Lieberman gets from Bill Clinton, meanwhile, is obvious, at least at first glance. The liberal base of the party has turned on Lieberman with ferocity. With two weeks to go before the Aug. 8 primary, he seems to be in free fall. Lamont has a four-point lead in the latest Quinnipiac poll, a 19-point jump in six weeks. Sean Smith, Lieberman's campaign manager, espouses the idea that "low-information" voters swing elections. Some of those folks will surely be swayed by Clinton, and make up for all the liberal votes that are bleeding away.

But if you lose that many votes that fast, chances are you're bleeding from more than one place. Lieberman's handlers have been looking around for somebody, anybody, who might, you know, vote for him -- some untapped bloc of loyal Democratic voters. How about, um, black folks? And to appeal to those black voters, how about calling in the white politician they like and trust above all others? Instead of, you know, Joe Lieberman.

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