RIP Joe Lieberman, candidate for Vice President

[Songbird]

82. From "a fall"?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/03/27/joe-lieberman-senator-vice-president-dead/

Joseph I. Lieberman, the doggedly independent four-term U.S. senator from Connecticut who was the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000, becoming the first Jewish candidate on the national ticket of a major party, died March 27 in New York City. He was 82.

The cause was complications from a fall, his family said in a statement.

Mr. Lieberman viewed himself as a centrist Democrat, solidly in his party's mainstream with his support of abortion rights, environmental protection, gay rights and gun control. But he was also unafraid to stray from Democratic orthodoxy, most notably in his consistently hawkish stands on foreign policy.

His full-throated support of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the increasingly unpopular war that followed doomed Mr. Lieberman's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 and led to his rejection by Connecticut Democrats when he sought his fourth Senate term in 2006. He kept his seat by running that November as an independent candidate and attracting substantial support from Republican and unaffiliated voters.

 

[Starman]

Very possible. Doctors absolutely harp on the dangers of falling for the elderly.

 

[Deskgrunt50]

RIP. Didn't care for some of his choices late in his political career, but it was quite a career.

 

[Regan MacNeil]

Nothing in there about him single-handedly tanking Single Payer. Of course.

 

[Starman]

Yeah, I'm sure his medical bills were all taken care of.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

This isn't Russia. He didn't fall from a window.

 

[dixiehack]

Yes, surely the dark hand of conspiracy must have bumped off an octogenarian who ran for vice president a quarter century ago.

 

[Liut]

A good man. Much respect. Rest in peace, sir.

 

[Liut]

Very possible. Doctors absolutely harp on the dangers of falling for the elderly.

Harry Truman broke a couple of ribs and suffered a facial laceration in 1964 trying to get out of his bathtub. No, it didn't kill him ... but to your excellent point, he never was the same.
There aren't a lot of Truman photographs from the 1960s (LBJ-Medicare a notable exception), but Harry aged rapidly after his fall. I've seen one where he is almost unrecognizable.

 

[Webster]

Policy disagreements aside, an honorable civil servant and by all accounts a good man. Plus, Hadashah is an elite name for a Jewish wife.

 

[Starman]

My grandmother fell and broke a hip at age 98. The doctors repaired it, she went through rehab and got back up to walking with a cane. Then she got hit with a couple kinds of cancer and died three months after her 99th. She had had a couple cancer bouts before but had been cancer free 15 years or so.

Flash forward 20 years, her son, my uncle, then 84, was out making his daily 20 mile ride on a recumbent bike -- selected on doctor's' advice to reduce the chances of falls -- he had undergone a double hip replacement in his early 70s and recovered to pretty much full strength.

Instead he gets hit by a car, necessitating another hip replacement. Within a year, he's back to walking with a cane, but shortly thereafter, he starts showing early signs of Alzheimer's, a battle which lasted five years.

Five years later, his sister, my aunt, fell and broke a hip at age 87. She also did rehab to the point of getting up on a walker but then congestive heart failure got her.

Doctors told us in all three cases they didn't think the falls and hip fractures were directly causative to the deaths, but recovering from that whole sequence is a huge strain on your body at any age and "couldn't have been helpful."

 

[UPChip]

Policy disagreements aside, an honorable civil servant and by all accounts a good man. Plus, Hadashah is an elite name for a Jewish wife.

When I was in high school, the local public TV station aired high school quiz bowl games on the weekends (it sounds dorky and it is but my team won the tournament my senior year. I got more money from that than any of my peers did in sports). Anyway, the original host was an English prof at the university and there was a question about Joe Lieberman. Nobody answered and at the end, Dave said, "You know, Lieberman is very generous. Every two weeks he gives his entire paycheck to Hadashah."

I have never heard a joke bomb so badly (for obvious reasons), but looking back, it probably deserved better.

For the record, Dave signed off every show with the mantra, "This is Dave Goldsmith reminding you, nothing you learn is ever wasted." Food for thought for the day.