Below is a statement by singer/songwriter Rickie Lee Jones, ("Chuck E's in Love", "Danny's All-Star Joint", "Coolsville"), on Joe Lieberman.
Lieberman was the first indication that there were actually Republicans in the Democratic Party.
Forgive my naivety, but before the series of betrayals by Lieberman against important progressive legislation... I thought people with his sensibilities, voting for the war, for the Patriot Act, and voting against Medicare benefits for a very severely taxed generation of elderly ill, and against the few ideological stands the so-called left has been willing to brush up against since Bush took office... here were registered Republicans. Herr Lieberman helped me realize there is not much of a fine line left between the middle of the right and the edge of the left. We have moved so far over that even middle America stands perched on one foot, with it's one strand of hair tossed across its frowning face, trying to straighten the coffee in a cup that will forever be leaning far too right to ever feel balanced again.
No good American can go out into the street today and not turn gray with nausea at the complacency of every single newspaper, financial institution, and influential individual in the conspiracy to keep this unqualified, uneducated, unelected criminal in office. Lieberman was an important candidate, and he, above all of them, is a turn coat who helped to nullify the potency of the left.
-Rickie Lee Jones
February 27, 2006