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Liebermanic-depression
BY ADAM REILLY
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MANCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE — Operation: Liebermania, a three-day push aimed at boosting support for Joe Lieberman’s presidential campaign, arrived in the Granite State last weekend. But on the night of the Connecticut senator’s first New Hampshire town-hall meeting, signs of the effort were scant. Along Elm Street, which runs through the heart of Manchester’s downtown, evidence of Liebermania was confined largely to extra bustle around the campaign’s headquarters and a sign taped to the door of a room that had been used for the previous evening’s volunteer bash (WARNING! ALL PEOPLE INSIDE INFECTED WITH A SERIOUS CASE OF LIEBERMANIA!). A block away from Lieberman headquarters, a middle-aged man sitting in front of the North End Laundry said he had a "very good impression" of Lieberman, but added that he hadn’t even known the former vice-presidential candidate was in town. The overblown name given to Lieberman’s recent New Hampshire foray — and its underwhelming impact — points to the paradoxical (indeed, tenuous) state of the Connecticut senator’s campaign. As Al Gore’s former running mate, Lieberman still has high name recognition, and his numbers — though they’ve ebbed of late — remain strong enough to place him among the top few Democratic candidates in several nationwide polls. In New Hampshire and Iowa, though, the picture is grimmer. According to poll results released this week, only six percent of probable Iowa-caucus voters say they support Lieberman, leaving him tied for fourth with John Edwards and trailing Howard Dean, Dick Gephardt, and John Kerry. Another poll, released at the end of August, brought similar bad news from New Hampshire: among likely primary voters, Lieberman was tied for third with Gephardt at six percent, well behind Kerry (17 percent) and Dean (38 percent). Since the start of his campaign, Lieberman has tried to convince voters that his centrist brand of Democratic politics gives him the best chance of beating George W. Bush in 2004 — but his moderate approach hasn’t played well in the states that could make or break his campaign come January. In other words, if Liebermania’s going to strike, now would be a good time. There were some encouraging signs for Lieberman boosters Sunday night. Aleta Liddeke of Manchester, who’d just parked her car and was headed to the town-hall meeting, appeared to be in the first stages of Liebermania. "I really like him," she said. "Sometimes politicians have a way of speaking where they don’t say anything; they’ve just wasted your time for 15 minutes, and they haven’t said anything. Joe says something. That’s what I like." Liebermania was even more evident inside the New Hampshire Institute of Arts and Sciences, where spectators — including a number of volunteers who’d traveled from other states to canvass for Lieberman — greeted the candidate’s entrance with a standing ovation. They cheered when Lieberman said Democrats had replaced Republicans as the guarantors of fiscal responsibility, and when he vowed to beat Bush on both the president’s strengths (security, values) and weaknesses (the economy). And they roared when he responded to a suggestion that his Judaism might adversely affect his handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by invoking John F. Kennedy’s defense of his Catholicism in 1960. Despite the audience’s enthusiasm, though, it’s hard to say if Liebermania was actually spreading. As Lieberman’s repeated references to his old friends in the audience made clear, it wasn’t the toughest crowd. What’s more, the candidate’s performance didn’t convince Brian Mehlman, a 37-year-old Nashua man who had lauded Lieberman’s fiscal and moral conservatism before the meeting began. Afterward, Mehlman — who says he’s actively looking for a Democratic candidate to back — still wasn’t ready to commit. "Everything he says is in alignment with what I think," he said. "Now it’s just a matter of finding out whether anybody else is just as close."
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