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Rock the boat,
David

“Desperate politicians do desperate things” should be written on the political gravestone of Sen. Joe Lieberman (D) come this election season when he finally loses his job. Lieberman is so desperate, he’s now dispatching his top political consultant to create a blog, and spread brazen lies about me, after I had the nerve to point out in a Hartford Courant op-ed and an earlier post that Lieberman has been using his Senate seat to advocate far-outside-the-mainstream positions. Instead of actually having a debate over Lieberman’s record, Lieberman is having his consultant blast out lies about me personally, disparage progressive heroes like Bernie Sanders and try to paint Jews opposing Lieberman as anti-Israel or anti-semitic.

That’s right, Lieberman aide/consultant Dan Gerstein - known in Washington as a classic, haughty, self-important, professional election loser - claims that “the same guy who is viciously attacking Joe Lieberman as the great Satan of the Democratic Party actually sought not one but two jobs from the target of his hatred, and did so at time when all of the supposed sins that Sirota is attacking Lieberman for now were well known.” In other words, Gerstein is claiming that I sought not one but - gasp! - two jobs from Sen. Joe Lieberman in 2003, and am thus a hypocrite for pointing out that Lieberman has sold out the Democratic Party.

The fact that Gerstein would write such a lie in black and white shows the depths of the desperation Lieberman’s camp has reached. Here’s what really happened folks: In 2003, after I had just arrived at the Center for American Progress, I received inquiries from various Lieberman staffers about a press job, and whether I would come in to chat with them - and possibly the Senator - in preparation for Lieberman’s presidential run. Obviously, they knew who I was and what kind of serious progressive politics I represented, as evidenced by Gerstein’s derisive reference today to the fact that I served “a stint with the lone socialist in Congress” (aka. progressive champion Bernie Sanders). I figured Lieberman might have been considering a reform of his politics back to the old days when he was far more progressive, and that they wanted me to discuss progressive strategy with them. What other reason would Lieberman people call me and ask me to chat with them?

An eternal optimist in the ability of people to see the fault of their ways and change, I agreed to the meeting and had a very cordial interaction with Lieberman’s chief of staff, Clarine, and then held my nose for a meeting with the notoriously arrogant Gerstein. They seemed interested in having me work for them in some capacity, they made clear Lieberman was going to run his campaign on the themes of undermining the Democratic Party from the right. Over the next few days, I discussed the interaction with a bunch of folks at the Center for American Progress, including my boss John Podesta. And after a few days, I decided I simply was totally uncomfortable with the concept of working for Lieberman, that his staff showed no signs that they were interested in being progressive team players, and that as a committed progressive, it would be wrong for me to go to work for Lieberman. So, via email and phone, I respectfully declined the offer to chat further with them, as I didn’t want to waste any more of their time (And by the way, you’ll notice that in his post, Gerstein doesn’t say why I didn’t end up working for Lieberman - his silence on this matter is incriminating: he doesn’t say it because telling folks that I told them a flat no would expose his whole story as a lie).

I didn’t think much about the interaction until December of 2004, when the Hartford Courant called me asking for a comment about Lieberman’s publicly considering accepting a hypothetical appointment as President Bush’s Secretary of Defense. In the story headlined, “LITTLE INTEREST IN LIEBERMAN SEAT; VACANCY MAY ARISE IF SENATOR JOINS BUSH ADMINISTRATION,” I was the only Democrat who would go on record telling the truth and saying that Lieberman’s public mating ritual with the Bush administration was disgusting. Here’s the excerpt:

“‘Lieberman is exactly what is wrong with the Democratic party’s image today,’ said David Sirota, a fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based research group headed by former Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta and including many prominent Democrats. Let him go, said Sirota. ‘In many ways,’ he said, ‘Joe Lieberman’s politics epitomizes the elitist, out of touch character Republicans have been ramming down people’s throats for the last 10 years.’”

Within days, former Connecticut Congressman Jim Maloney - then aspiring to be Connecticut Democratic Party chairman - fired off an angry letter to Podesta on behalf of Lieberman, outraged that someone at the Center for American Progress would have the nerve to say such a thing about Lieberman. A few days later, I received a call from the Washington Post’s Richard Lieby - then writing the gossip column - saying that Lieberman staffers (likely Gerstein) had called him telling him they had rejected me for a job and that I just made that comment about Lieberman because of sour grapes. I offered to show Leiby the email exchanges I had with Lieberman’s staff showing that exactly the opposite happened - and that I had told them I didn’t want the job. I also offered to have Leiby speak to various people who I talked about the potential job with when I was deliberating it. Lieby subsequently did not publish the story he was writing - realizing he was being lied to by the Lieberman folks.

That’s the same thing that is happening now. Gerstein, who relies on Lieberman as his last fading hope for political relevance, is once again spinning out a sheer lie as a way to distract from a real debate about his suggar daddy’s record. He doesn’t want people to think anyone like me or Harold Meyerson could actually take issue with Lieberman on principle - instead, he is willing to shred his own credibility brazenly lying, and then perhaps even worse, make inflammatory claims that my opposition to Lieberman has something to do with Lieberman’s stance on Israel - a sad effort to play the Jewish card against me, a religious Jew, who has substantive criticism of Lieberman (an effort, by the way, that is nauseatingly being fired at other Jews who are critical of Lieberman - very nice, Joe - using the religion you purport to care so much about as a weapon of dishonesty against other Jews in a desperate effort to deflect criticism from your record).

I’m in Louisville, Kentucky right now after a big press conference going after another desperate politician, Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R), so I don’t have access to my computer at home. I can’t be sure I still have the email exchanges between me and Lieberman’s staff from way back in 2003 - they were on the Center for American Progress server, and I have to see if I still have them (Rest assured, I will do my best to dig them up, if I can). But regardless of the emails, my record stands on its own: I’ve never wavered from advocating - or working for - progressive heroes. I have never worked for a corporate sellout who undermines the Democratic Party, and I never will. Now I know - that’s difficult for people like Dan Gerstein to understand - he sees politics as a business where selling one’s soul and selling out the Democratic Party is considered desireable. He’s angry that I rejected the Lieberman offer on princple, and more generally, he’s angry that honest people like Ned Lamont have the chutzpah to stand up to a bully like Lieberman on principle.

Dan Gerstein, Joe Lieberman and all of his Washington buddies who make a great living off Big Money’s dime can attack me with all the firepower they like, but I’ll put my record advocating for the progressive movement up against anyone’s. I’ve spent my career working for political heroes like Bernie Sanders - progressive heroes that Lieberman and his cronies enjoy attacking. I’ve spent my career trying to build progressive institutions and movements - not trying to rip them down and undermine them like Lieberman and Dan Gerstein. I’ve spent my career trying to strengthen the Democratic Party by electing real progressives to office in red districts and red states - not, like Lieberman and Gerstein, trying to weaken the Democratic Party by electing Republicans-in-Democrats clothing in blue states.