Joe Lieberman on Biden, Trump and centrism: ‘It’s a strategy for making democracy work’

The Democratic ex-senator preaches a deeply unfashionable gospel of compromise in a country paralysed by civil war

A friend once joked to Joe Lieberman, former senator and vice-presidential nominee, that the Democratic party was like his appendix: it was there but not doing much for him.

It's a funny line," he says by phone from his law office in New York, but the truth is that it's more than that because I feel good physically when the Democrats do well - in my terms - and I do get pain when they go off and do things that I don't agree with."