CORRECTION: Well, this is embarrassing. Turns out it was McCain supporter Mike Libman who said the part about credentials. Mea maxima culpa, and I apologize for any disrepute my error might bring to DKos. (Hat tip: Hyde Park). The rest of Joe's comments though, are accurate.
"Obama has no credentials in my mind."
-- Joe Lieberman,
August 7, 2008 |
Joe Lieberman's mind, in his own words...
JULY 6, 2006
I want democrats to be back in the majority in Washington and elect a Democratic president in 2008. This man (Ned Lamont) and his supporters will frustrate and defeat our hopes of doing that.
FEBRUARY 22, 2007
"I have no desire to change parties. If that ever happens, it is because I feel the majority of Democrats have gone in a direction that I don't feel comfortable with."
APRIL 3, 2008
"Well, I think that - let me say generally that Sen. Obama doesn't come to this debate with a lot of credibility. Basically on the question of Iraq, John McCain has had the guts to stand out on his own arguing for what he thought was right."
MAY 21, 2008
From the Official Senate Website of Joe Lieberman,
still posted online as of November 14, 2008
Today, less than a decade later, the parties have completely switched positions. The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001. The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.
Instead a debate soon began within the Democratic Party about how to respond to Mr. Bush. I felt strongly that Democrats should embrace the basic framework the president had advanced for the war on terror as our own, because it was our own. But that was not the choice most Democratic leaders made. When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy - not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush - activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.
Far too many Democratic leaders have kowtowed to these opinions rather than challenging them. That unfortunately includes Barack Obama, who, contrary to his rhetorical invocations of bipartisan change, has not been willing to stand up to his party's left wing on a single significant national security or international economic issue in this campaign.
In this, Sen. Obama stands in stark contrast to John McCain, who has shown the political courage throughout his career to do what he thinks is right - regardless of its popularity in his party or outside it.
John also understands something else that too many Democrats seem to have become confused about lately - the difference between America's friends and America's enemies.
There are of course times when it makes sense to engage in tough diplomacy with hostile governments. Yet what Mr. Obama has proposed is not selective engagement, but a blanket policy of meeting personally as president, without preconditions, in his first year in office, with the leaders of the most vicious, anti-American regimes on the planet.
Mr. Obama has said that in proposing this, he is following in the footsteps of Reagan and JFK. But Kennedy never met with Castro, and Reagan never met with Khomeini. And can anyone imagine Presidents Kennedy or Reagan sitting down unconditionally with Ahmadinejad or Chavez? I certainly cannot.
If a president ever embraced our worst enemies in this way, he would strengthen them and undermine our most steadfast allies.
JULY 9, 2008
"When asked about concerns he is creating the impression that Obama would not be a friend to Israel, Lieberman responded: "It's my way of thinking that if I've concluded, as I have, that John McCain is best for our country, then why wouldn't I do that?"
JULY 15, 2008
What Sen. Obama does not seem to understand is that, had we taken the course he had counseled and retreated from Iraq, the United States would have suffered a catastrophic defeat that would have left America and our allies less safe not just in Baghdad, but in Kandahar and Karachi and Tokyo and London.
JULY 20, 2008
I think everybody -- that is, Prime Minister Maliki, President Bush, people like John McCain and I -- agree the sooner we're out, the better. But it has to be based on conditions on the ground.
Senator Obama doesn't seem to feel that way...
Look, the fact is that if Barack Obama's policy on Iraq had been implemented, Barack Obama couldn't go to Iraq today. It wouldn't be safe...
The reason I say Barack -- if Barack Obama's policy couldn't -- had been implemented -- if Barack Obama's policy in Iraq had been implemented, he couldn't be in Iraq today is because he was prepared to accept retreat and defeat...
The reality is if we lost in Iraq, which Obama was prepared to do, we would go to Afghanistan as losers... bottom line, no question that Barack Obama was prepared to lose in Iraq.
APRIL 14, 2008
NAPOLITANO: Hey Sen. Lieberman, you know Barack Obama, is he a Marxist as Bill Kristol says might be the case in today's New York Times? Is he an elitist like your colleague Hillary Clinton says he is?
LIEBERMAN: Well, you know, I must say that's a good question. I know him now for a little more than three years since he came into the Senate and he's obviously very smart and he's a good guy. I will tell ya that during this campaign, I've learned some things about him, about the kind of environment from which he came ideologically. And I wouldn't...I'd hesitate to say he's a Marxist, but he's got some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America.
AUGUST 3, 2008
"I need to speak personally about McCain raising the question of whether Obama is a risky guy. It has nothing to do with his name or skin color. It has to do with his lack of experience and bad judgment, with his unreadiness to be president."
MAY 12, 2008
"But the fact that the spokesperson for Hamas would say they would welcome the election of Senator Obama really does raise the question, 'Why?'"
JUNE 6, 2008
"As you know, I caucus with the Democrats as a United States Senator and was the Democrat Party's nominee for Vice-President of the United States against President Bush and Vice President Cheney."
-- Lieberman email to McCain supporters
AUGUST 7, 2008
"Obama has no credentials in my mind."
Correction: This was actually said by McCain supporter Mike Libman. See explanation at head of diary.
AUGUST 14, 2008
"If there's one public official who has consistently put his country ahead of his party, working across party lines to get things done in Washington, it is John McCain. It's not Barack Obama, with all respect."
SEPTEMBER 2, 2008
"I'm here, as a Democrat myself, to tell you: Don't be fooled."
-- Speech to the Republican Nominating Convention
SEPTEMBER 2, 2008
"So tonight, I ask you whether you are an Independent, a Reagan Democrat or a Clinton Democrat, or just a Democrat: This year, when you vote for President, vote for the person you believe is best for the country, not for the party you happen to belong to."
-- Speech to the Republican Nominating Convention
SEPTEMBER 5, 2008
"Lindsey Graham last night blasted Barack Obama for having "voted to cut off funding for our troops." A day earlier, Joe Lieberman chastised Obama for voting to "cut off funding for our troops on the ground." Both the McCain campaign and the RNC have run ads making the same claim."
OCTOBER 3, 2008
"Overall, Governor Palin had a tremendous evening, and I think she passed the threshold of credibility tonight for people who doubted whether she is ready for the national stage, ready to be John McCain's vice president. I think she dispelled the doubts. She was strong, she was confident, she was informed, she was very sensible. She speaks the language of America's main street. And she did it on Iran. I mean she knows evil when she sees it and she spoke very directly, along the lines of John McCain has, you can't allow Iran to get nuclear weapons, and how foolish it would be for the president of the United States to do what Senator Obama said he'd do which is to meet with Ahmadinejad without preconditions..."
OCTOBER 6, 2008
"She's so strong, she's so capable, she's so competent... with your help, and God's help, will be the next vice president of the United States."
OCTOBER 7, 2008
Sen. Barack Obama's "naive" world view could embolden America's enemies during one of the most dangerous periods for America since the 1930s, U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman told Newsmax in an exclusive television sit-down interview Tuesday.
Lieberman, visiting Fort Lauderdale, Fla., also told Newsmax that he is so disappointed with the Democratic Party, he will consider whether to bolt the Democratic Senate caucus next session.
"I believe he's naive to think that people like [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad and Tehran will somehow become America's friends by talking to them -- a warm embrace and a cup of tea. It's not going to work that way," said Lieberman.
McCain's recent decline in the polls was "unfair" and "not rational," Lieberman said, referring to the negative economic news that has impacted the McCain campaign.
The Connecticut senator suggested that many Americans don't realize that the global economic crisis is also a security crisis--one that will require an experienced foreign policy hand like McCain to navigate.
In a wide-ranging interview, Lieberman also said:
-- It's important for the political process to question Obama's ties to former Weather Underground bomber Bill Ayers: "I think these are very fair questions and it's now up to Senator Obama to answer them."...
Asked if he may leave his party and join with Senate Republicans, Lieberman said he had no immediate plans to make that move, but said he would consider it at a later date.
"The Democratic Party of today is not the Democratic Party that I joined in the '60s under my hero President Kennedy, and it's not the Democratic Party of my dear friend Bill Clinton," Lieberman said.
"Frankly, he has to convince the American people that Barack Obama is not ready for prime time, that he's not ready to be president of the United States,'' Lieberman said.
OCTOBER 25, 2008
"You guys are going down a road, you have contributed to the demeaning of our politics by this kind of focus. I mean, give me a break. Have any of you been out listening to me?"
-- to Connecticut reporters on 'negative' coverage of his remarks on Obama