Former Vice President Al Gore praised the late Senator Joe Lieberman as a ‘mensch’ and revealed the deep disagreements that arose between them when the former Democrat strayed on partisan and security issues.
Gore, who has retired from electoral politics, attended Lieberman’s funeral services in Stamford, Connecticut, Lieberman’s hometown, and spoke about how the two men drifted apart following their bitter defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
After going down the road with their wives, the men developed divisions over Lieberman’s support for the Iraq War and his decision to back Republican John McCain.
Former Vice President Al Gore, left, speaks with Connecticut Lieutenant Governor Susan Bysiewicz at the funeral of former Senator Joe Lieberman, in Stamford, Connecticut. She called Lieberman a “mensch” and spoke openly about the difficulties in their friendship.
“I, for one, was sometimes tempted to get angry, frustrated by Joe’s stubbornness and disappointed that he was taking a path I thought was wrong,” he said. And I know that his disappointment and my estrangement from him were surely just as profound. So that’s where the story could have ended. And if it were, we would have reached a dead end in a once loving and fruitful relationship,” he stated.
‘But it does not end there. We had another turn. “We both knew, deep down, that the solid foundation of our friendship and what we shared in common was much bigger and much stronger than what separated us in those years,” she said.
Gore, who has issued stark warnings about climate change throughout his career, also issued stark warnings about the country’s political culture, speaking of “rabbit holes” and the “echo chamber.”
“And spending enough time in the echo chamber induces a new form of AI, artificial madness,” he joked.
I’m not just saying this as a humorous phrase. I mean referencing QAnon, election denial, climate denial and even the resurgence of the Flat Earth Society, if you can believe that,” she said.
Gore, who keeps a low profile, delivered a eulogy for Joe Lieberman
Lieberman’s funeral took place at Agudath Sholom Congregation in Stamford.
Former Vice President Al Gore offers his condolences to Hadassah Lieberman during the funeral of her husband, former Senator Joe Lieberman in Stamford, Connecticut, on Friday, March 1. 29, 2024
Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Al Gore (left) and his running mate, Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, greet supporters at a campaign rally in Jackson, Tennessee, on October 25, 2000. Lieberman, who almost won the Democratic vice presidency alongside Gore in the disputed 2000 election and who almost became Republican John McCain’s running mate eight years later, died on Wednesday, March 27.
Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) arrives with his wife Hadassah at the Kennedy Center for a tribute concert for Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) on March 8, 2009 in Washington, DC
“And this is a form of rancor that has the potential to divide our country, but we also have a solid foundation and common beliefs and values that are stronger than what divides us.”
It came in a eulogy in which he praised his former running mate and four-term senator as mensch, a Yiddish term.
“Those looking for its definition will find it not so much in dictionaries as in the way Joe Lieberman lived his life: friendship over anger, reconciliation as a form of grace,” he said. “We can learn from Joe Lieberman’s life some critical lessons about how we can heal the bitterness in our nation today.”
Lieberman, who died this week after a fall at his New York home, was the first Jewish candidate on a major party ticket, a longtime senator and co-founder of the group No Labels seeking a candidate to challenge the main parties on strike. fear in the hearts of some Democratic operatives.
Top Connecticut Democrats, including Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy and Gov. Ned Lamont, Lieberman’s former rival for the Senate seat, shared similar sentiments.
Lamont said his relationship with Lieberman began on “an unfavorable note” when they faced each other in 2006. After Lamont defeated incumbent Lieberman in the Democratic primary for his Senate seat, Lieberman ran as an independent and defeated Lamont.
Lamont said Lieberman loved Frank Sinatra songs, especially ‘My Way.’ “He did it his way,” Lamont said. “He never quite fit into that Republican or Democratic box. I think maybe in a weird way I helped free him because when he beat me (by the way, he beat me pretty well) he won as an independent.
Lamont said Lieberman “was always a calming presence” and a “bridge over troubled waters when you see partisans shooting from both directions.”
Blumenthal recalled Lieberman’s “tremendous accomplishments,” including helping form the Department of Homeland Security and championing civil rights, voting rights, women’s reproductive freedom and LGBTQ rights. “But the greatest achievement of her life was her marriage to Hadassah and her children and grandchildren,” Blumenthal said.
Services were held at Agudath Sholom Congregation in Stamford. For Lieberman, a self-described observant Jew who followed the rules of the Jewish Sabbath from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, the congregation played a key role from the beginning of his life.
He once recalled that the congregation’s old synagogue building was ‘a place that gave me the first sense of religion; a very special elevation,” according to a post on the congregation’s website.
“I feel very lucky: my adherence to Jewish tradition is really an advantage,” he said. ‘Religious Catholics and Protestants find a bond of common value with my beliefs and my position. This is what makes me so proud to be an American.”
Lieberman’s youngest daughter, Hana Lowenstein, who moved to Israel in 2018 with her family, said through tears that she had prayed: “Please, God, give my father many more years.” Let him see all my children’s bar mitzvahs, their weddings, their great-grandchildren.’ But she said God “had other plans.”
Lowenstein said observing the Jewish Sabbath was “very dear” to his father and that he walked 5 miles (8 kilometers) to comply with the Sabbath ban on traveling in a motor vehicle. “You were literally someone who sanctified the name of God with everything you did,” he said.
Matthew Lieberman, a son from the former senator’s first marriage, said Lieberman “was a blessing to all of us,” but “a solid portion of people” nevertheless developed a hatred for him.
Despite that animosity, Matthew Lieberman said his father encouraged others not to let those disagreements turn into hatred. “We’re not the Hatfields and the McCoys here,” Matthew Lieberman said. ‘We are Americans, we are fellow citizens in the greatest country in the history of the world. We are all human and we are all we have.’
Lieberman, a former state Senate leader and attorney general, had long been known for his pragmatic and independent streak. After losing the chance to serve as vice president under Democrat Gore, he came close to becoming Republican John McCain’s running mate in 2008. However, conservatives resisted the idea of turning to Lieberman, known for supporting rights. of homosexuals, civil rights and abortion. human rights and environmental causes, while he takes a tough stance on military and national security issues.
President Joe Biden on Thursday called Lieberman a friend, someone who was “principled, firm and not afraid to stand up for what he thought was right.”
“Joe believed in the shared purpose of serving something bigger than ourselves,” Biden, who served 20 years in the Senate with Lieberman, said in his statement. “He lived the values of his faith as he worked to repair the world’s wounds.”
Lieberman came tantalizingly close to winning the vice presidency in the contentious 2000 presidential race that was decided by George W. Bush’s 537-vote margin victory over Gore in Florida after a lengthy recount, legal challenges and a Supreme Court decision. . He was the first Jewish candidate on a major party’s presidential ticket.
Over the past decade, Lieberman helped lead No Labels, a centrist third-party movement that has He said he will offer candidates yet to be named for president and vice president this year. Some Democratic-aligned groups oppose the effort.for fear that it will help presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump win the White House.
Lieberman and his wife, Hadassah, have four children.