Six years ago, Joe Lieberman came within a hair’s breadth of becoming vice president of the United States. If the Supreme Court hadn’t stepped in and given the job to Dick Cheney, right now (whether Gore won reelection in 2004 or not) Lieberman would likely be putting together his inside-track campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008.

And yet, as most of you probably already know, Lieberman is now in danger of losing the Democratic primary in Connecticut to upstart Ned Lamont, who is raising money and rising in the polls. And Lieberman is openly considering the possibility of ditching the Democratic Party and running for reelection to the Senate as an independent.

So what’s happening to Joe Lieberman?

To hear Lieberman’s defenders tell it, he is either a victim of conscience for his stand in favor of the Iraq war or the first political scalp to be collected by enraged and emboldened left-leaning bloggers.

But neither explanation really adds up. It’s far more accurate to see Lieberman as a victim of President Bush and the Washington he has created.

Let’s take these two supposed explanations in order.

First, is Lieberman in the fight of his political life because of Iraq? That’s certainly part of what’s fueling opposition to him in Connecticut and around the country, but it just doesn’t explain Lieberman’s woes. He’s not the only pro-Iraq-war Democrat. There are many others, and none of them has drawn a serious primary challenge.

Bloggers don’t really cut it as an explanation either. Lieberman may be a constant whipping boy on Democratic sites like Daily Kos and Eschaton, and they’re helping to raise money for Lieberman’s challenger, Lamont. But Lamont’s money isn’t what has the Lieberman camp worried. It’s the polls inside Connecticut.

Though Lieberman is clearly still in the lead, an early June Quinnipiac University poll showed that among likely Democratic primary voters Lieberman pulled only 55 percent against Lamont’s 40 percent. And a June 16 Rasmussen poll showed the split at 46 to 40 percent.

Lamont even managed to make a respectable showing at the state party convention. He needed 15 percent of delegates to support him to get on the primary ballot, and he ended up getting one-third.

A Democratic primary is made of … well, Democrats. And if Lieberman loses a third of Democratic Party delegates, you can see he’s got a serious problem.

Those numbers aren’t about blogs. They’re about Connecticut Democrats. And however powerful blogs may be becoming as voices in national politics, they simply don’t have anywhere near that sort of media penetration.

So, sure, many Democrats may disagree with Lieberman on key issues. But that in itself isn’t what’s causing Lieberman’s problems. It’s his style of politics — one that caters heavily toward Beltway opinion’s love of bipartisanship and independence for independence’s sake. Whether that approach to dealing on Capitol Hill ever made sense, the Bush era has made it irrelevant and Lieberman a man out of time.

The Bush presidency has witnessed what we might call a parliamentarization of American politics. On first blush, that might seem nonsensical, since a strong executive has been so key to Bush’s presidency and the essence of parliamentary government is leadership from the legislature. But the key feature of the Bush presidency has really been an extremely powerful executive that to a great degree co-opts and controls its own congressional majorities.

The key elements are extremely tight party discipline (something political scientists have lamented the absence of for years) and a sharp diminishment of rivalries between the branches of government, which used to cut against unified party control.

Party discipline is simple enough. Bush’s first term was replete with examples. (An instructive comparison is how much Bush was able to accomplish with thin majorities in 2001-’02 compared to what President Clinton was able to do with much more substantial majorities in 1993-’94.) And congressional leaders have increasingly worked to pass legislation on narrow party-line votes rather than racking up larger majorities with relatively small legislative revisions.

In that sort of political world, guys like Lieberman who cross party lines, or flirt with doing so, seldom wrest free any substantive changes in legislation. They are simply exploited by the majority party to create the illusion of bipartisanship.

Over the past six years, most Democrats have come to understand the pattern and reacted accordingly. And in that way, Bush has contributed mightily to Democratic Party discipline. Even relatively conservative Democrats are far more partisan in their orientation than they were half a dozen years ago.

But Lieberman doesn’t seem to get it. Or if he does he doesn’t care. In 2005 he sowed immense bad will among Democrats for flirting with the idea of helping Bush privatize Social Security long after far more conservative Democrats who were up for reelection in 2006 decided it just wasn’t a compromisable issue. Again and again, Lieberman shows what almost seems like contempt for his own party and the people who support it.

It’s not about ideology. It’s not about Iraq. And it’s not about blogs. Lieberman’s problem is that most Democrats have come to see the Bush presidency as a zero-sum game in which Democrats need to stick together as much as and whenever they can.

Lieberman’s actions say he doesn’t agree. And that’s the root of all his troubles.

Marshall is editor of talkingpointsmemo.com. His column appears in The Hill each week.
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