His role? In a party sufficiently anti-Semitic not to embrace the brilliant Lieberman, to have a Clintonian horse in the race (oxymoronically, a Clintonian Galahad) - who, if inadequate to the task alone, could pair with a late-entering Hillary to give final comeuppance (retribution?) to the vast right-wing conspiracy.
In characteristic fashion, the Democrats are piling on - now Lieberman, now Dean and now Clark. The party has lost its birthright, has no soul, consists only of splintered interest groups and consequently has no critical mass. This is a party two-thirds of whose members cannot name a single one of the 10 presidential wannabes - those wannabes, such gravitas do they have, listing at the Baltimore debate (for instance) their favorite popular songs.
A party of monstrous egos such as Clark's, Clinton's and Teddy Kennedy's. Yet a party careening left, the remains of whose soul may reside in precisely the candidate it can neither nominate nor elect - Joe Lieberman.
He has warned that the party risks being captured by the "far ideological left" and vowed: "I'm not going to stand back and let this party be taken over by people who would bring us to the political wilderness again."
Maybe not. But the operative question remains: Are the likes of Kerry, Dean, Clark, and (prospectively) Hillary prudent guides for leading the party out of the wilderness - or in?