10 Years ago today Lieberman was picked to run as VP on Dem Ticket

[JI7]

at the time i believe Gore was many points behind but the polls got close with Lieberman as the pick.

of course much of this was the media whores praising Lieberman for being some moral conscience . HAHAHHAHAHAHHAHA

less than 4 years later the Democrats rejected Lieberman. and 4 years after that he was rejected again when the candidate he endorsed lost horribly.

and of course he lost his own senate primary.

Lieberman has shown to be a bitter loser. conscience of the Senate????? this is the person the media whores propped up as all Dems should be like.

[vi5]

1. Gore picking Lieberman was I believe...

..along with his distancing of himself from Clinton the first major act of a national Democratic leader/figure allowing the village media right wing narrative determine what he did to disastrous results. People didn't hate Clinton and they didn't (and don't) like moral scolds. So what did he do based on the reverse narrative reality? He picked someone who was a moral scold in an effort to distance himself from Clinton.

I'm sure there were others before that, but this was the largest in scale and it's only continued to happen more and more and more until now it's the norm for any and every democrat in a position of power to do this all the time.

[JI7]

4. to be fair to Gore this was before 9/11 and the times were mostly good

so people made stupid shit like Clinton's getting sex into some huge horrible thing. that was THE big issue in the whore media.

Bush was also running as some compassionate conservative. different from the previous republican extremists like Buchanan .

the time before 9/11 and 2000 election seems further than between 9/11 and now. things are so different now.

[vi5]

7. Yeah, but polls showed....

..that people had a favorable view of Clinton. The whole notion of Clinton as unpopular and toxic to most people was your typical right wing myth, propagated by the village media idiots and not something firmly rooted in reality. It was at that time that Fox News was just getting geared up and Cable News in general was turning into full on blood sport rather than actual news and reporting what was really going on.

My point was (is) that it was an example of something that was not true (Clinton being unpopular and toxic) being repeated against fact by the media, and Democratic politicians reacting to the media spin rather than the actuality of what was really going on. Now it happens on an hourly basis, but this was the first real example of the power of the cable news narrative.

[AnArmyVeteran]

5. And democratic leaders seem clueless because they keep falling for the same crap.

Obama should have just shut out republicans and did what was right and what he promised. He caved into the same right wing trap that anyone with an IQ over 50 can easily see.

[Zenlitened]

13. Excellent post!

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[napi21]

2. I'm just hoping he doesn't win AGAIN when he runs.

I believe it was a Pub plot by the Pubs last time when they ran a candidate that was sooo unlikeable in order to get allThe Pubs & a few loyal Dems to elect old Joe as an Ind. I'm reasonably sure that he would get NO voes from any Dems next time, and hopefully whoever the Pub candidate is will at least be a real Pub.

[AnArmyVeteran]

3. Lieberman is the BJ VP

Lieberman would have never have been picked if not for Clinton's BJ. If Clinton had kept his dick in his pants Gore would have beaten the idiot Bush by such a large margin the election couldn't have been stolen. No BJ, no Lieberman, no wars, no economic destruction & no huge deficit. Clinton caused all of that with his reckless behavior.

[InvisibleTouch]

15. Gore didn't "lose" because of Lieberman.

Not defending Lieberman - at the time I neither liked him nor disliked him - but Gore "lost" because of Diebold, not because of an ill-chosen VP. And he *was* ill-chosen, but they still technically won. I guess one could say, if he'd chosen someone with more presence and charisma, the additional votes would have outweighed the stolen ones, but we have no way of knowing that.

[MajorChode]

18. That's pretty presumptious

The GOP had been hounding Clinton since he got in office. They spent $100 million on witch hunt investigations that went nowhere. Had it not been for Clinton's BJ they would have simply invented more lies about Gore just like they did with Clinton and Kerry. If anything Clinton's BJ helped Gore because it deflected all the lies they had been manufacturing about the Clinton/Gore administration and focused their smear machine almost exclusively on Clinton, who would never be running for anything ever again anyway.

And even if there was any merit to blaming Clinton for Gore's defeat, what you describe is really more of a symptom of the righteously indignant American public who would rather talk about a blowjob than real issues. So if you're looking for the real problem and not just the symptom of the problem, look no farther than the people around us all.

[scarletwoman]

6. I believe Lieberman was a devil's bargain that Gore was forced to make by the DLC.

Just speculating, of course, but I think it might have gone down something like this: "Okay Al, we'll get you lots of money for your campaign, all ya gotta do is take Joe on board and stick with our program."

Yes, I know Gore himself was DLC at the time, but he was maybe showing incipient signs of going off the reservation at that point -- near the end of his campaign he started making populist noises (his poll numbers started going up when he did so, but it was probably too late in the game), and he cut his ties with the DLC altogether after the election.

It seemed obvious throughout most of the 2000 campaign that Gore was being boxed in by his "handlers", and I think that included having Lieberman forced on him.

sw

(edited for misspelling in subject line)

[Skink]

9. that is the exact same scenario that goaded Mccain into picking Palin

The RNC money men offered a deal and it shut him out. Although maybe they were also trying to throw the election.

[scarletwoman]

11. "Although maybe they were also trying to throw the election."

It's possible that's what the DLC was doing, too.

I wouldn't put it past either party -- as far as the party inside power brokers go.

They operate on different calculations than the rest of us.

sw

[mike r]

8. Don't forget these pics:

[spanone]

10. one of the worse decisions the democratic party ever made.

[T Wolf]

12. ... a day that will live in infamy..." nt

[scarletwoman]

14. BTW, the choice of Lieberman did NOT improve Gore's poll numbers.

The one substantial bump in his numbers came near the end of the campaign when Gore started making more populist oriented campaign speeches. Unfortunately, it was too little, too late.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Lieberman#Vice-Presidential_campaign

Vice-Presidential campaign

Gore/Lieberman 2000 campaign logoIn August 2000, Lieberman was selected as the nominee for Vice President of the United States by Al Gore, the Democratic Party nominee for President. Lieberman was the first Jewish candidate on a major political party ticket.

The announcement of Lieberman's selection was unusual in that it did not cause a positive "bump" in the Gore campaign's poll numbers according to a Newsweek poll done at the time. {21} (citation on wiki page)

Polling also indicated that Lieberman had badly lost his televised debate against Dick Cheney,{22} (citation on wiki page) leading some to suggest later that Gore had lost the election due to choosing Lieberman as his running mate.

I don't usually use wikipedia as a source, but since it confirmed what I also remembered to be the case -- I paid VERY close attention throughout that campaign -- I decided to make an exception this time. Especially since it contains a link to an external source.

sw

[FunkyLeprechaun]

16. Oh god don't remind me

10 years ago is when Bush unlawfully won the presidency :-(

[Jim Lane]

17. Lieberman had plenty of minuses but he probably did help in Florida

Early on, the conventional wisdom was that the four biggest states were locked in: California and New York for Gore, Texas and Florida for Bush. Florida turned into a swing state partly because of Lieberman's popularity with many of the Jewish retirees from the North. I wouldn't be surprised if, with a different running mate, Gore would've lost Florida legitimately.

Of course, a different running mate would have brought his or her own strengths to the ticket. Kerry was said to be on Gore's short list. New Hampshire was a narrow Bush win in 2000, but Kerry, with his over-the-border appeal, carried it in 2004. With Kerry on the ticket in 2000, perhaps Gore would have lost Florida by several thousand votes, no recount needed, but would have won New Hampshire and thus the Presidency.

[Blue Owl]

19. A decade of Joementum

I see a pattern developed over the past 10 years, Joe. A definite trend.