Do you think Gore would have won outright in '00 if...

[WI_DEM]

Lieberman hadn't been on the ticket?

Some people say Lieberman helped make Florida close. True or false? On the otherhand, would Gore have gotten enough of Nader's nearly 3 million votes to win NH and Florida if Joe hadn't been on the ticket?

[Nightjock]

1. I think he helped.

Now I fucking hate him.

[MadAsHellNewYorker]

2. Gore did outright win in 2000, he just wasn't given the presidency. n/t

[WI_DEM]

yes we know

but big enough so they couldn't steal it, maybe that is the way to have put it.

[MadAsHellNewYorker]

10. ahh ok....

I think, sadly, Lieberman did more to hurt Gore.

The way I heard what unfolded from friends of mine in the traditional "Dixiecrat" areas, those who would vote Dem, but are racist and born-again, voted for bush over gore cause of the Lieberman's a Jew thing.

I don't think Lieberman made Florida close. Jews will mostly vote Dem., not always, but more often then not. It didn't help gore any more in Fla if it had been person X on the ticket instead of Lieberman.

[Wabbajack]

21. Fuck those racists

we don't want their votes.

[MadAsHellNewYorker]

26. you are totally right

they arent the people who share my values

and, just to get back to WI_DEM's original question, Lieberman was also far to right for a lot of people. He was just a bad choice based on his record.

[mattclearing]

36. Amen. I got flamed the last time I said this.

There are some people whose votes we don't need or want. Let the R's have them.

[kodi]

38. you are correct. simply, a lot of people won't vote for a jew

i have heard it with my own ears from blacks and whites who would instead vote for bush/cheney in 2000.

gore did a brave thing when he nominated lieberman. i had tears in my eyes when i heard the anouncement, thinking that maybe, perhaps it was a sign that anti-semitism was waning.

but, now i am afraid i won't live long enough to see it.

[SammyWinstonJack]

5. Exactly n/t

[bluestateguy]

3. Lieberman may have cost Gore white Protestant votes in the South

West Virgina, Arkansas and Tennessee do not have a lot of familliarity with Jewish people. Gore wins one of those states and the election is over.

[robbedvoter]

4. Gore DID win outright in 00 in spite of Lieberman on the ticket

The Nader voters in Florida (the real ones) were directed at Gore based on a Bush lie that the wise greenies bought.

[TApprentice]

6. No

[theresistance]

7. At the time, wasn't Lieberman meant to secure

the Jewish vote? If so, then did he?

[AntiCoup2K4]

9. That may have been the intention, but....

...thanks to Theresa LeWhore's deceptive butterfly ballot, the Jews in Palm Beach voted for Pat Buchanan.

[Roland99]

8. I liked Clinton but not so much so Gore...Liebermann clinched my Bush vote

in 2000.

[Bridget Burke]

11. Why did you dislike Leiberman?

Because he wasn't a good enough Democrat? Or because he's Jewish?

And what's your problem with Gore? Who did you vote for in 2004?

[Roland99]

12. I've been a Republican since my first vote in 1984.

Just so happened I liked Clinton in 1992 but the various scandals throughout his term turned me off to him and Gore was a stick, personality-wise and his wife is responsible for those explicit lyrics stickers on CDs.

Something about Liebermann just never struck me and I couldn't picture him 2nd in line to be President.



Oh...I voted for Kerry in Nov.

[Bridget Burke]

29. You do realize the Clinton "scandals" were not real?

If we had a lots of money & complacent media, we could stir up some REAL scandals against your president.

How many speeches did you ever hear Gore give? Have you read anything he wrote? Are stickers on CD's reason enough to vote for the idiot that allowed 9/11, started an illegal war & let the economy go to hell?

Odd priorities.

[Roland99]

30. Lying to Congress was not fake

All Clinton had to do was tell the truth.

Sure, the underlying issue wasn't that big of a deal. But, if that was the case, why did Clinton lie under oath? That really turned me off of Clinton.

And, I bought into the rhetoric of Bush during the 2000 campaign of a history of bi-partisanship.

As far as 9/11, that would have likely happened if Gore had been President so blaming Bush for it is quite dishonest.

The economy was starting to tank from 2000 on. The internet bubble had burst and the resulting domino effect was kicking in. That had nothing to do with Bush either.

[Bridget Burke]

31. You mentioned scandals--plural....

Name a real scandal that didn't involve Monica. And how many lies has Bush told?

Would Gore have ignored a security bulletin titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US"?

As a Texan, I knew that Bush's bi-partisanship was a lie. Actually, he did work a bit with some of our worst Democrats; the result was a disaster for the state.

What has Bush done to help the economy? Which jobs were created by the tax cut?

[Roland99]

33. .

White House travel office
Marc Rich
Chinese campaign contributions
Mystery around Vince Foster's death
Elian Gonzalez
Waco

Other issues:
Supported the WTO and NAFTA
DMCA

[Bridget Burke]

37. All of the "scandals" are crap.

Unless you really believe that Bill helped "Hitlery".

The issues, which you had not mentioned previously, have validity.

But your vote for Bush helped so much!

[Roland99]

39. Yeah...Reno was a saint

:eyes:

[leyton]

13. Possibly, but you have to remember the closeness of the pop vote.

Say Kerry had been chosen as the Vice-Presidential nominee. Gore would have likely won the states he did win, as well as New Hampshire. However, Kerry is a liberal and Lieberman was a centrist; having a real liberal on the ticket might have cost Gore so many votes in 2000 that he would have lost the popular vote. Instead of Democrats angry about Florida, there would be Republicans angry about Iowa and New Mexico.

Gore ought to have picked someone who would just deliver some electoral votes straight-up. Bob Graham would have been an excellent pick; Evan Bayh as well.

[BlueInRed]

14. I think he would've been better off with another

I think for everyone Lieberman brought in, he lost at least one and possibly two.

[Spacejet]

15. Lieberman is so buddy buddy with bush...

it makes me wonder if he wasn't there for any reason but to sabatoge it...

[AP]

16. Nobody votes for VP, and Lieberman seemed interesting at the time

However, although I don't think Lieberman cost Gore the election, one has to wonder what the hell he was thinking.

Gore thought a neocon who loves the insurance industry was a good number two for America?

Lord.

This tells me a great deal about where Gore's priorities are and I'm not surprised he lost.

[AP]

17. I.e., if Gore had been the kind of candidate who would have picked

someone better (like Edwards) he probably would have won.

The problem wasn't that Lieberman dragged the ticket down. The problem was that Gore didn't percieve the issues of class and opportunity well enough to make a better decision.

The same attitude that made him pick Lieberman was the attitude that made him such a lame candidate.

[dolstein]

18. No, but if Bill Clinton hadn't screwed around . . .

I used to think that perhaps -- PERHAPS -- Gore would have won if he had picked Bob Graham instead. After all, Graham was the most popular Democrat, and probably the most popular politician period, in Florida at the time. But then I saw Graham's aborted presidential campaign in 2004 and realized what a disaster he'd be as a VP candidate.

The one factor that I'm positive cost us the election was Bill's affair with Monica. If that had never happened, I can't possibly imagine Gore losing that election. Of course, Gore nearly won in spite fo that, and having better skills as a candidate probably would have helped.

I'm sure that Bill Bradley's primary challenege probably didn't help either. It pushed Gore much further to the left on gun control than he should have been.

[AP]

19. It's true that Gore lost a lot of Democrats who said that they

agreed with Gore's policies (without being told they were his, apparently) but said they just didn't like Clinton.

That's why Gore picked someone religious who had criticized Clinton as his VP.

There was a different strategy he could have tried. He could have embraced Clinton and made an argument that you may not like the man, but you have to love the policies. Clinton had very high approval ratings while Gore was avoiding him, so I think it's possible that Clinton-hating Democrats after hearing the argument about what's so important about Clinton's policies might have stuck with the party.

Also, you have to wonder what the hell is going wrong with a candidate for whom people don't vote even though they agree with all his policies.

You know what's wrong? Gore doesn't embody and articulate progressive values very well. He's a baby boomer who made government smaller and more efficient. But you look at him and you don't think that he knows how middle America experiences life. People didn't connect him up to a set of policies because he didn't articulate a progressive framework for understandign what he believed in.

[AP]

20. It's true that Gore lost a lot of Democrats who said that they

agreed with Gore's policies (without being told they were his, apparently) but said they just didn't like Clinton.

That's why Gore picked someone religious who had criticized Clinton as his VP.

There was a different strategy he could have tried. He could have embraced Clinton and made an argument that you may not like the man, but you have to love the policies. Clinton had very high approval ratings while Gore was avoiding him, so I think it's possible that Clinton-hating Democrats after hearing the argument about what's so important about Clinton's policies might have stuck with the party.

Also, you have to wonder what the hell is going wrong with a candidate for whom people don't vote even though they agree with all his policies.

You know what's wrong? Gore doesn't embody and articulate progressive values very well. He's a baby boomer who made government smaller and more efficient. But you look at him and you don't think that he knows how middle America experiences life. People didn't connect him up to a set of policies because he didn't articulate a progressive framework for understandign what he believed in.

[hector459]

22. Yes!

I said this during the 2000 campaign right after Lieberman was announced. some things just don't change in the sourht no matter how they spin it.

[surfermaw]

23. Gore lost the day he took L... I could have cired.

[Jack Rabbit]

24. I think Gore won outright in 2000, with Lieberman on the ticket

!!

[erpowers]

25. Yes, but Gore Did Win

I think the Gore would have won by a bigger margin if Libermann had not been on the ticket. I believe many people were not willing to vote for Gore because they felt Liberman was too far to the right. I think there were some people who would have voted for Gore if he had picked a different VP. I do not think Liberman helped Gore get votes in Florida or Hew Hamshire. However, Gore did win outright.

[JoshK]

27. No. It was not well-understood at the time how rightwing Joe is.

He has a reasonably pleasant personality, and that, plus his Jewishness (a plus in Florida) is most of what people saw in 2000.

The last few years have demonstrated that he is really a Republican in all but name. Most people didn't know that, back then.

Interestingly, Cheney knew it. In his 2000 VP debate with Joe, I recall him saying that "Frankly, (he) preferred the 'old' Joe Lieberman." From today's vantage point, it's easy to see that Cheney knew what he was talking about.

[StephanieMarie]

28. He would've won outright if every vote had been accurately counted!

[leftynyc]

32. I knew the minute he put Lieberman on the ticket

that they wouldn't win one southern state.

[nickinSTL]

34. I almost didn't vote the Gore-Lieberman ticket

in 2000 because of Lieberman.

I considered seriously writing in Gore and...ANYONE else.

[Yupster]

35. What can a VP candidate do?

If he can get you a few extra percent in an important state, he's a success. I think Lieberman probably did that in Florida.

On the other hand, I don't think Edwards got Kerry nuthin.

[Dookus]

40. yes

I think almost anybody other than Lieberman would've helped more, and Gore could've won Tennessee, Florida more obviously, and perhaps one or two more states.