This week, I note with sorrow the passing of former Senator Joseph Lieberman, who represented Connecticut in the Senate from 1989 to 2013.  At a time when our politics has become more divisive than at any time save the years before the Civil War, Joe Lieberman was the voice of reason, and in truth, he may have been the last reasonable Democrat.  At age 82, Lieberman died suddenly on March 27, reportedly after a fall at home.  An obituary in The Wall Street Journal referred to Lieberman as a “Party gadfly.”  That label trivializes the man’s accomplishments.  A gadfly is an irritating critic, or a nuisance.  What Joe Lieberman was was the conscience of a Democrat Party which had become increasingly intolerant to dissent of any kind.  Joe Lieberman was the embodiment of the American dream.  Born to Jewish immigrants, he attended Yale University, where he became the editor of the Yale Daily News.  He went on to Yale Law School, and served as Attorney General of Connecticut before his election to the Senate in 1988.  When first elected, Connecticut was split between Democrats and Republicans.  During his tenure in the Senate, things changed.  Connecticut went to the Left.  The Parties moved farther and farther apart.  Politics became more and more divisive.  But Joe Lieberman never changed.  He was from a different, more reasonable time.  Unquestionably liberal on social issues, Joe Lieberman was no ideologue.  He was less concerned with what the Democrat Party line demanded, and more concerned with doing what was right.  He angered Democrats by supporting the war in Iraq.  It cost him dearly.  In 2006, he was defeated in the Democrat primary by Leftist Ned Lamont.  Instead of just going away, Lieberman ran as an Independent and won, getting 70% of the Republican vote.  It is one of the persistent ironies of the Democrat Party, which blathers constantly about bipartisanship, that a candidate who truly is able to reach across the aisle, is reviled rather than being embraced.  For Democrats, bipartisanship means they tell Republicans what to do, and they just do it.  Lieberman later supported the candidacy of John McCain in 2008, angering Il Duce Obama.  He incurred the wrath of the Almighty again in 2010, when he blocked a Democrat scheme to impose a Socialist single-payer healthcare system, during the debate on what became known as Obamacare (the Unaffordable Care Act).  After retiring from the Senate in 2012, Lieberman refused to endorse Il Duce Obama for reelection.  He later became the head of the No Labels Party, which every four years threatens to run an Independent candidate for president.  This year is no exception.  In his last days, Lieberman lashed out at the detestable Chuck Schumer, who had called for the replacement of Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, labeling his criticism, “meaningless, gratutitous, and and offensive.”  As you will remeber, it was the detestable Chuck Schumer who famously warned Donald Trump that, “If you criticize the intelligence establishment, they can get back at you six ways to Sunday.”  That may turn out to be the only thing Schumer ever said that was true.  The intelligence establishment tormented Trump for 6 years.  In any case, a week after his criticism of Schumer, Lieberman was dead, and with him went the last voice of reason in the Democrat Party.  Ronald Reagan was fond of reminding people that he once was a Democrat, quipping, “I didn’t leave the Democrat Party, it left me.”  Sadly, that is the truth.  While the Republican Party is plagued by a few of its own unmovable ideologues to be sure, what has become of the Democrat Party in the past 40 to 50 years is shocking.  For those whose political information is limited to lies from MSNBC, half-truths from CNN, and fantasies from The New York Times, let me set the record straight.  Democrats may still pay homage to John F. Kennedy, but he would be unwelcome in today’s Democrat Party.  He was elected by being perceived as stronger on national defense than Richard Nixon.  He was succeeded by LBJ, who engineered the enactment of Medicare, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act, and who launched the War on Poverty.  Despite these liberal programs, LBJ was considered a conservative by mainstream Democrats in the 1960’s, and he’s never mentioned by today’s crop of nuts.  LBJ’s Vice-President, Hubert Humphrey was to the Left of LBJ, so much so, the LBJ referred to him as “a bomb thrower.”  However liberal Humphrey was, he would not be insane enough to fit in with today’s Democrat Party.  In the Broadway show Evita, there’s a song with the lyric, “Politics, the art of the possible.”  It once was just that.  Consensus was not only a positive, it was an imperative.  Our politics has moved from the art of the possible to the enforcement of purity.  The result is stalemate at a time when the problems of the world cry out for action.  They used to say you don’t want to see how sausage or laws are made.  Right now, legislative gridlock has reached the point where nothing is being made, while we fall deeper into debt, and become ever more vulnerable to our enemies.  Joe Lieberman represented a time when finding the middle ground meant you were a Statesman, and not a traitor.  His voice will be sorely missed.