The past year and a half has seen an endless revolving catalog of political figures step up to deliver their version of an elevator pitch for why Democrats and the US as a whole shouldn’t move left — often figures with deeply vested interests in making the case. This has only intensified in recent months, since DSA member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s shock victory over New York Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley, which prompted a series of definitely good-faith pronouncements from conservatives warning Democrats to reject her message for their own good.

Former Connecticut senator and sometime-Democrat Joe Lieberman is the latest to try his hand at this burgeoning genre, with a Wall Street Journal op-ed urging voters to cast their votes for the defeated Crowley, who mysteriously still hasn’t been able to take his name off the ballot in New York’s 14th district. His case is laughable, but it’s worth remembering who exactly Lieberman is.

Lieberman was a reliable Bush ally on the “war on terror” and other issues, and had long been a suspect Democrat, let alone progressive lawmaker in general. His entire career was built on his conservatism, having beaten (with the support of William F. Buckley) liberal Republican Lowell Weicker in 1988 in a campaign where he supported bombing Libya, invading Grenada, and maintaining the US freeze-out of Cuba, all of which Weicker opposed. Lieberman also supported the death penalty for drug traffickers, a stealth form of school prayer, and strict spending cuts for the purpose of balancing the budget.