MTP Transcript for Nov. 12

MR. RUSSERT: Coming next, in August, he lost a Democratic primary in his home state of Connecticut. But on Tuesday, he was re-elected to the United States as an independent Democrat. What now for Senator Joe Lieberman and his Democratic Party? We’ll be right back after this.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT: Even though he won as an independent, will Joe Lieberman stay loyal to his fellow Senate Democrats of the past? We’ll ask him after this station break.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT: And we are back with Senator Joe Lieberman. Welcome.

SEN. JOE LIEBERMAN (I/D-CT): Tim, good to be back.

MR. RUSSERT: The Economist magazine, here is the headline. “Stuck with Joe:

Suddenly the most influential man in the Senate.” And what that refers to, senator, as you well know, the Senate is now 51 Democrats and independents; 49 Republicans. If you caucused with the Republicans rather then the Democrats, the Republicans would be in charge of the Senate.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Right.

MR. RUSSERT: You will caucus with the Democrats?

SEN. LIEBERMAN: I will caucus with the Democrats. I said that to my constituents throughout. I’m going to caucus with the Democrats both because it’s good for my constituents in Connecticut, because I retained my seniority, I become a committee chair, but also I want to continue to work to bring the party back to its historic traditions of, of strength on national security, foreign policy and innovation, and progress in domestic policy—the, the Harry Truman/John F. Kennedy Democrat that, that I was raised to be.

But, but I’m going to be an independent because that is how and why I returned to the Senate. I was elected as an independent, I was elected, I believe, because I said to my constituents in Connecticut, “I’m, I’m as fed up with the partisanship in Washington as you are. I promise you I will put progress and, and patriotism ahead of partisanship and polarization.” So I’m going to—I am now an Independent Democrat, capital I, capital D. Matter of fact, the secretary of the Senate called my office and asked, “How do you want to be identified” and, and that’s it. Independent Democrat.

MR. RUSSERT: So you’ll be Senator Joe Lieberman, I/D, Connecticut.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Yeah, we checked with history and actually in the late ‘70s Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia listed himself as an Independent Democrat. You got to go back to the mid-19^th century to find the last Independent Democrat.

MR. RUSSERT: If you look at the exit polls for Connecticut in your race, it’s quite interesting. Here they are: Republicans--70 percent of Republicans voted for Lieberman; 8 percent voted for Democrat Ned Lamont and 21 percent voted for the Republican candidate Alan Schlesinger. Democrats: you got 33 percent. Lamont got 65 percent, Schlesinger—two out of three Democrats in Connecticut voted against Joe Lieberman.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT: And yet you’re caucusing as a Democrat.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Well, it’s, it’s for the reasons that I’ve—that I’ve stated. But it also explains why I consider myself to be an Independent Democrat, and why I said to my constituents on Election Day in Connecticut, “I am going to Washington beholding to no political group except the people of Connecticut and of course my conscience.” If you look at the vote, and this is another reason why, why I’m an Indepen—why I say I’m an Independent Democrat, a majority of my votes came from independent and Republican voters in Connecticut. But of course I couldn’t have won without that Democratic support, either, and I—I’m glad we held a third of it. In the primary we almost got 50 percent. But I wasn’t the Democratic candidate this November.

MR. RUSSERT: And yet when you go back to the Senate, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Barbara Boxer, Russ Feingold, Tom Harkin, Chris Dodd—your fellow senator from Connecticut, did a commercial for your opponent—all of them campaigned or gave money. Is it going to be awkward for you?

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Oh, it may be a little awkward, but look, they, they did—they played by the traditional partisan political playbook. And I can’t say I enjoyed it, but we’re all grownups, we’ve got a job to do, and I’m going to do my best to get that job done. But of course I’m going to continue to do what I’ve always done, and even more so, which is to work across party lines with my colleagues to get things done for my state and country. To me, that is my singular mission. And I’ll work with anybody I agree on. I’m not going to—agree with on a matter. I’m not going to look at party labels, I’m going to look at, at what can we get done for our country and my state.

MR. RUSSERT: If in fact they ask for discipline in the Democratic caucus, and you start to feel uncomfortable with it, would you consider crossing across the—going across the aisle, and joining the Republicans, if they gave you the same chairmanship that you had, and respected your seniority?

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Yeah. Well, that’s a hypothetical, which I’m, I’m not going to deal with here. I’m going to be an optimist, and take some encouragement from the fact that this was an election in which, in the House and Senate, Democrats came to the majority of both chambers by electing moderates mostly. This was an election that might be called the return of the center of American politics. And I think that my colleagues and leaders in the Democratic caucus get that. The fact is that this was not a major realignment election in my opinion. This was the voters in Connecticut and elsewhere saying, “We, we, we’re, we, we’re disappointed with the Republicans. We want to give the Democrats a chance.” But I believe that the American people are considering both major political parties to be in a kind of probation, because they’re, they’re understandably angry that Washington is dominated too much by partisan political games, and not enough by problem solving and patriotism, which means put the country and your state first.

MR. RUSSERT: Jim Jeffords of Vermont crossed over and joined the Democrats.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT: And they gave—they gave him his committee chairmanship.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT: You’re, you’re not ruling that out at some future time?

SEN. LIEBERMAN: I’m not ruling it out, but I hope I don’t get to that point. And, and I must say, and with all respect to the Republicans who supported me in Connecticut, nobody ever said, “We’re doing this because we, we want you to switch over. We want you to do what we think—what you think is right, and good for our state and country,” and I appreciate that.

MR. RUSSERT: Harry Reid, who will be the new majority leader, have you spoken to him?

SEN. LIEBERMAN: I have. We had a very good discussion, and I think Harry—I appreciate Harry’s initial statements here. He’s talked about bipartisanship, he’s talked about getting things done. And he has the ability to do that. And I think if he does, he’ll strengthen the Democratic Party. If we fall back in a partisan conflict, Democrats are going to be, be rejected by the public next time, just like Republicans were this time.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you think the voters talked about corruption and special interests on Tuesday?

SEN. LIEBERMAN: I absolutely do. I mean, you can look at these exit polls in a lot of different ways, but I can tell you in Connecticut that I believe voters were really angry about the failure of the status quo in Washington. The, the, the federal government, the people feel—and I agree with them—is broken, and it’s going to take both political parties to fix it. That includes corruption, that includes partisanship.

Incidentally, I think one of the best things that we could do in this lame duck session of Congress is to take the, the lobbying reform bill that passed the Senate, get it through the House and adopt it. It wasn’t perfect, it didn’t include the office of public integrity that John McCain and Susan Collins and Barack and—Obama and I wanted it to contain, but it, it is, it has total disclosure—excuse me—for lobbyists, a ban on gifts of all kinds. It would be a signal to the people that we heard them. Let’s, let’s clean up our own house.

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