I think everyone generally agrees that Joe Lieberman is a decent and honorable guy and all that. He’s running as a reasonable centrist and he’s getting clobbered for it. I agree with all that. But there’s one thing he’s said more than once which I think reflects badly on his judgment or his honesty. He said time and again in the early debates that “anyone on this stage” would be an improvement over George W. Bush. Lieberman surely doesn’t believe that. And if he did, he’s got real problems. After all, if you take the war on terrorism as seriously as he does, how can you possibly believe that Al Sharpton or Dennis Kucinich or Carol Moseley Braun — or really even Howard Dean — would be a better pick than George W. Bush. And yeah, I know that such displays of party loyalty are one of the obligatory pieties of electoral politics. But considering how badly he’s done, would he really have done worse if he’d said “I’m afraid that replacing George W Bush with Al Sharpton or Dennis Kucinich, fine men though they are, would be a real tragedy for our party and our nation.” In other words, rather than constantly saying he’s a centrist, couldn’t he show it?” Fights attract crowds and they attract supporters as much as they attract critics. Lieberman missed a chance to do the right thing and it might have helped him. It certainly couldn’t have hurt him much more than his existing strategy has.

Of course this is all too late. But it’s been bothering me for a long time.