I actually turned Sean Hannity’s radio show on in the car yesterday. It was the first time I’d listened to his radio show in, I’m guessing, about 15 years. There was a period before the 2000 election when I’d listen to WABC out of New York on the way home from work, and that’s when Hannity was airing back then. I wanted any information on the election, and WABC was the only place that was talking about it 24/7.
The show hasn’t changed, but other things have. Hannity’s guest yesterday was Al “Sore’s” old running mate “Loserman.” He came on right after Hannity spent about five minutes explaining that we’re all going to die and that Israel will be turned to glass if we go ahead and make this deal with Iran. Lieberman promptly said something like, “Sadly, Sean, I have to agree with almost everything you just said.”
He never bothered to explain which parts he didn’t agree with.
I was an early adopter of the idea that Joe Lieberman is a sociopath, so it took me until about three days before the 2000 election before I could convince myself to vote for the Gore/Lieberman ticket. In retrospect, I am even more pissed than I could ever imagine I’d be that I was given a choice between that ticket, Bush/Cheney, and Pat Buchanan, or Ralph Nader.
In the end, I voted for Gore, not Lieberman, and not because I had any affection for Gore whatsoever. It was because he was the only person on the ballot who wasn’t some kind of evil joke. And picking Lieberman to run with him put him right on the edge of that category, too.
about 1st week of October 2001, right after WTC, Lieberman gave a speech saying we should invade Iraq. saw it in print media, iirc was Daily News. can’t find it on internet; saw it in NY print media, not Times, Daily News probably
not that we should invade Iraq but drawing link between WTC and Iraq, i.e. setting up for conflict, iirc
So where’s the line between anti-semitism and saying some Jews have a conflicted concept of citizenship?
This Iran deal is really driving me nuts.
The “dual loyalties” canard is in my mind a form of antisemitism.
Which isn’t to allow Zionists off the hook, mind you. Frequently, Zionists themselves try and use it for their own advantage by questioning where Jewish loyalty lies to leverage support for Israel and war. Antisemitism when they use it, too.
That’s a bit rich. Why aren’t they prosemities? They exist. My background is southern Italian but I have often been asked if I’m Jewish because of my looks and NY Met. Area demeanor. They lose interest in me as soon as I let them known I’m not. What kind of anti-whatever is that on the part of the Jews who asked me that? Or is that ethno-centricity or simple racism against the other? You tell me. A few years ago I was in the Wall Street area of NYC on some Jewish holiday (in October, something about a hut). Groups of orthodox Jewish young me in black with their wide-brimmed hats were actively asking people if they were Jewish because they were hoping to convince lapsed Jews to rediscover their faith. I was told they were proselytizing in the financial district because a lot of Jews worked there. I’d say these guys had bought into the antisemitic trope about Jews and money. But they can say it, I can’t. I guess you can’t win one way or the other.
“Prosemite”? I think you could argue there’s such a thing as Jewish supremacists, but that’s different from the context of “dual loyalty” in my mind.
Were those Rabbis being antisemitic? I’m not so sure. If I’m registering people to vote, I don’t ask their party affiliation when I do so, but I’m not going to go do it at a NASCAR race track or Alabama football game tailgate.
Anyway, if Zionists are questioning Jewish Americans of having dual loyalties in order to leverage support for Israel, I believe they’re being antisemitic. I suppose this is all an inevitable and unfortunate consequence of Zionism in and of itself, but that doesn’t mean we should support, encourage, or in any way buy into these tropes.
Actually, they’re called philosemites. It’s just plain backwards behavior running around downtown NY asking people if they’re Jewish. Next gays will go around asking people if they’re gay and want to doubledown on their ‘ethnicity’. Curiously they had set up a kind of hut in Battery Park where Jews who were picked up on the street were taken into to discuss their religious future. A kind of ROTC recruitment center. I don’t find it appropriate to take a piece of public space for only I kind of person. Isn’t that some kind of unlawful discrimination in the public space.? The sense of exclusiveness and entitlement is appalling and does not have an especially American taste or smell, not that it’s ‘un-American’ mind you.
it is inarguably true?
So it being anti-semitism rests on it being untrue; which you casually assume without any evidence or argument. Unless we’re moronically insisting that in order for it to be true, it has to be true of everyone.
Some Jewish people have thoughts about Israel that profoundly diverge from their political philosophies about almost anything else.
This Iran deal is a perfect illustration. There’s a simple reason for Republicans to be against it: they love war as much as they love total compliance to the American imperium (and that’s me graciously excluding the Israeli contribution to that attitude). But Democrats? I mean, what possible good reason does Chuck Schumer have about this except that him — or a sizeable amount of his constituency — is seeing this deal through Likudnik eyes?
And here’s where it gets weird-and-or-interesting: It’s not that the deal is anti-Israel. We’re sort of assuming, based on what Netanyahu says, that it is. If the deal is the best we can do, it’s the best we can do, and Iran is going to bust out of the sanctions because the rest of the world is ready to do business with them. So in normal space, the deal is ‘pro-Israel’ as much as it is ‘pro-United States.’ It’s just the best way to contain Iran, full stop.
So how is the deal being portrayed as ‘anti-Israel’? And why is it being perceived as such?
Because there’s another option that nobody is explicitly discussing and which Netanyahu must be angling for: that the United States go to war with Iran, or bomb Iran continuously for the rest of its existence, or give Israel bombs to bomb Iran.
So in this case, I think it’s very much fair to talk about conflicted loyalties; the implicit choice we’re being given is a diplomatic solution which, like all diplomatic solutions, is imperfect; or: a hugely expensive, bloody and potentially globally catastrophic war fought by the United States on behalf of Israel.
There is no starker demonstration of divided loyalty.
Well in my mind your own argument defeats itself because you just said that the deal is “good for Israel” (and it is).
How can there be a divided loyalty here when the deal is by all objective measures just as supportive of Israel’s interests as it is of the US? You also answered that: because many in Israel (and at home) don’t believe any deal is acceptable, because the goal isn’t to defeat Iran or contain Iran, but keep the specter of the “threat” alive. Whether it be Hezbollah, Hamas, whatever, the goal is endless conflict for the sake of power, and furthering imperial interests.
The US own imperial interests are diverging in this specific instance; for what, I’m not sure. Maybe it’s to draw Iran away from Russian/Chinese influence; maybe it’s because the spread of Wahhabism is becoming too much of a nuisance; or maybe Obama truly wanted this to happen because he believes in his heart of hearts it’s the right thing to do, and he overcame the Permagov’s influence in this arena.
Let’s be frank: the Israeli Lobby doesn’t have some kind of mind control powers with cash and influence that allows it to be powerful and dictate to terms to the US. Obama and Netanyahu may hate each other (and I’m sure they do), but if AIPAC suddenly went away tomorrow our policy in that region would not look significantly different than it does presently.
AIPAC is fed by a lot of forces that would still have influence even if AIPAC didn’t exist. And Sheldon Adelson would still be extracting loyalty oaths to Israel from GOP candidates.
Maybe we should be honest about what Israel is: it’s not a foreign ally so much as an independent colony of the United States. Israel benefits the US because we can station our bases; and Israel will sometimes do some dirty work for us. ‘Pro-US’ and ‘pro-Israel’ positions are often aligned, no question.
Culturally the US and Israel are very closely tied together, almost exclusively through the Jewish population of the United States. There is a lot of back-and-forth, and even secular Jews feel they should visit in a way say, third-generation WASP’s do not feel the need to visit Canterbury Cathedral. American Jews can also have a strong and accurate feeling that they built Israel, and that they have to continue to support Israel for it to exist. A lot of the militant & murderous settlement-occupiers are American Jews.
In some ways I think US policy would be close to what it is now without a specifically Jewish perspective; in other ways the realpolitik is swayed by our particular cultural relationship.
If this Iran vote is close, that little bit of sway away from the United States will make an enormous difference.
I can’t find much to disagree with in this response. The US also benefits (weapons makers, anyway)from our “aid” we freely give annually, and from the general sale of weapons.
Our police also frequently go there for training. Birds of a feather…
Well, we still disagree that “divided loyalties” is a real issue.
I have trouble discussing this without taking a shower afterward. I think I’ll start using “Zionist” in place of “Jews” becuase most Jews (60%) support the deal. But it’s just as hard to talk about the “Zionist influence” without seeming like a holocaust-denying nutjob. And that’s an interesting thing in itself.
I hear you. Plenty of antisemitism try and substitute the two in order to hide their actual white supremacist beliefs. The key is “purging” any of that shit out of any Palestinian solidarity movement. It’s why I’m quick to the draw with respect to “dual loyalties” because it is something people of Storm Front love to invoke even if others casually cite it.
I’d say we agree on 90% of the issues involved here
Excellent article by Phil Weiss @Mondoweiss – Why is DNC chair Wasserman Schultz holding out on Iran deal?.
My diaries on Israel and Iran deal …
○ Islamophobes: Times Square Anti-Iran Rally Invokes Holocaust
The theme of Islamophobes pushes by Israel since the 9/11 attacks is now seen in the anti-Iran nuclear deal lobbying of US Congress.
Just look at the big names at the Times Square rally in New York with slogan: Stop Iran Now.
○ Netanyahu Invests In Burning Bridges …
○ Obama Turncoats: CNN Facilitates UANI Advocate Pro-Israel
American born citizen who is now Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. Now you can certainly argue that Dermer doesn’t represent all American Jews, on the other hand there are any number of Americans who have fulfilled their military duty by joining the IMF.
It is not some deep form of anti-semitism to claim that Americans who join a foreign diplomatic core or enlist in a foreign army do in fact have dual loyalties. The only question is whether these are just the “exceptions that prove the rule”.
And people like Netanyahu don’t help. Because he and his quite openly suggest that Jews that haven’t exercised Aliyah are in some sense traitors to their Nation, which isn’t their current nation. You see this very explicitly in regards to French Jews, they are constantly being urged to abandon France and Return.
Yes, I have noticed that almost any Israel representative or PR official to America has a perfect American accent by virtue of being born and raised here.
The question of anti-semitism starts with if the dual loyalties applies to all Jews. If someone thinks all Jews have dual loyalties, I’d say that’s anti-semitic; it’s judging people merely by their ethno-religion (that strange category Judaism is in).
If someone says, “if you’re Jewish, you must prove to me you love America,” that’s also anti-semitic.
The problem is being “unpatriotic” is such a serious charge in America; having dual loyalties would be tantamount to active treason. It’s an explosive issue that activates some really ugly parts of the American psyche; I think that’s why we shy away from the discussion, even if its wholly warranted.
The discussion is so heavily regulated; as you point out, Netanyahu himself can state Jews have a divided loyalty in France; the Jerusalem Post writes headlines “With Jewish Dems feeling the heat, Obama appears to have enough support for Iran deal,” implying that Jewish Democrats are against the deal merely by virtue of being Jewish. But if someone says, “Some Jews have dual loyalties” suddenly that’s anti-semitic.
Whenever I’m feeling kindly towards Gore and his pathetic 2000 campaign, I remind myself that he chose Lieberman. Since I’ve never voted third party and didn’t care much for Nader before 2000, that wasn’t an option for me. However, I understood why others chose the option and have never denigrated them for doing so.
Unlike many, I do think the VP choice is highly important. It’s often the only point in a campaign where the public can see a candidate’s decision making ability in real time. One of the bad optics in choosing Lieberman was that he would run for both VP and Senate in 2000. If team Gore had decided that it was all about FL, then why pass on Bob Graham (who reportedly was in his short-list)? Of course, it didn’t come down to FL. WV (Jay Rockefeller?) was all that was needed. Or NH.
On foreign policy and banking, Biden isn’t a peach either. But at least he’s likeable.
Speaking of Biden, the whispering that he’s going to jump into the 2016 race has heated up. According to the NYTimes (yeah, I know about as trustworthy as a tabloid)
As Billmon responded:
Echoes of John Edwards.
Billmon is still good for a gutsy reaction. All credit to him.
VP choice: Just before the 1960 election cycle, Lyndon Johnson arranged to have TX law changed so he could run for both the vice presidency and to retain his senate seat. LBJ after the election even wanted to keep his Majority Leader position, an unprecedented and never duplicated power grab attempt which his senate colleagues were none too happy about. (LBJ got the message and never followed up on keeping his senate leadership position. That was the moment he uttered his Caucus-Cactus distinction.)
Lloyd Bentsen used Lyndon’s Law in 1988 to keep his seat. Not many Dems were put off by that. But his TX CorpDem politics were probably very close to Lieberman’s of 2000, just without the personal sanctimony.
Biden: Where’s the political space for him to operate if he’s a candidate? The Likable Dem? More centrist than the New Warrenized Hillary in a period where the party trend line is to the left?
More honest and trustworthy? Uh, well, there’s that disastrous 1988 race to account for.
Should have noted in my comment that it has been referred to as the LBJ exception. However, it’s state and not federal laws that control this. Don’t know how many or which states prohibit candidates from running for two offices on the same ballot. CT didn’t and that predated Lieberman’s run. KY does and that has been giving Paul fits on how to get around it. FL is like KY and Rubio will decide later which one he’s going for.
As a practical matter, it’s probably not a good idea to have the national ticket candidates also running for re-election in her/his home state or district. Bill Miller and Ferraro didn’t and Paul Ryan did. So, we know that WI doesn’t prohibit it, but don’t know about NY.
Re passing on Graham: Gore supposedly wanted a pick “outside the box” and Protestant BG didn’t fill that bill. Graham also had a very underwhelming and quirky personality. (can’t recall if that minor weirdness about his personal diary was known at that time.)
And perhaps most importantly, by picking JL Gore could say Screw You to Bill Clinton (on the Monica scandal). This was Joe Lockhart’s view anyway, as he expressed it to the Clintons in the WH as the news came over the wires about the Lieberman pick and one of the Clintons asked Joe why he thought that choice was taken.
Lib Dems weren’t pleased, but decided not to organize for a revolt at the convention. I don’t recall there being a name they preferred before the pick was announced. A little later, Bill Clinton said Gore should have picked Barbara Mikulski if he wanted bold and outside the box.
Graham is a bit odd or quirky — but it’s not obvious in his public appearances. Whereas Lieberman appears weird.
Lieberman on the ticket did nothing to distance Gore from Clinton’s personal shenanigans. Team Bush spent the whole election cycle pushing the “Monica = Gore” meme and it did stick. Until “the kiss” wiped it out.
The last person I’d listen to on “outside the box” electoral advice is Bill Clinton. Mikulski would have been problematical on the ticket and MD was blue anyway. Unless there is no way someone is going to win, a “make a statement VP pick” isn’t smart politics. Goldwater could have done that (although can’t imagine what kind of statement he could have made and who would have been available to fill that role). After the Eagleton mess, McGovern was in a great position to make a real statement. Nobody ever would have been able to surpass a statement like Shirley Chisholm as VP. Julian Bond in ’84 would have been a much better statement than Ferraro was.
Gore needed NH, WV, or FL and had to hold on to WI, IA and NM. If he and Bill Bradley had been bigger men, a Gore/Bradley ticket would have won. Barbara Boxer would have been a decent statement if not for the fact that her daughter was married to one of the Rodman bros. Plus, Gore wasn’t in a strong enough position to use the VP choice to “make a statement.”
I think Bill’s rationale for Mikulski was she was authentic and down to earth and no nonsense, and could plausibly tell the voters in an endearing way that no one will be likely to talk about her hairstyle or choice of clothing. She is who she is and proudly stands for a good set of Democratic principles. Good appeal to working and middle class and middle America voters, especially women. Nice potential for backlash support if the GOP or MSM were to be nasty to her on looks.
As for Bradley, not sure but there might have been some bad blood between the two after the short but bitter primary campaign (not that that has stopped a pairing up in the past — JFK/LBJ after Kennedy got wind of Lyndon’s bad mouthing his father and Connally’s rumormongering about his supposed ill health. Of course, by Bobby’s account, probably the real story, this was a major reason JFK actually didn’t want Lyndon, but the pick ended up being a weird backroom scheme by Johnson, a trick that fooled Kennedy.)
I always called him Duller Bill for the fact he was not exactly Mr Electricity. I suspect Gore also was looking strong at the big EC prize in FL, and not sure how Duller would help there.
Bill always has a rationale for whatever ill-advised behavior he engages in or advice he offers. Now remember we’re talking about 2000, and Mikulski would have been a terrible choice. Democrats and liberals would have been supportive of her selection, but she added nothing to the ticket in the competitive states and unfortunately, it would have fueled that whole ridiculous meme about liberal women.
“some bad blood” between Gore and Bradley would be an understatement. Bradley may be dull, but he’s a white guy that could jump — and white guys like guys like that.
There will never be any agreement on why JFK offered LBJ the VP slot and why LBJ accepted it. (It was Bobby and LBJ that hated each others guts, not Jack and LBJ. Recall that Bobby worked for Joe McCarthy wand later as Senate DEM counsel; so as the majority leader, LBJ had some experience with RFK. RFK also voted for IKE in ’56.) Maybe it was a mad moment for both of them seeing it as the best move to defeat Nixon. (Another character that LBJ had some familiarity with.)
Also not to be dismissed is that in 1960, team JFK was looking at the ’56 and ’52 electoral maps. With Nixon as the nominee, that put CA and probably the whole west coast out of reach for the Democrats. Carrying the south plus the TX region was critical. There really wasn’t anyone stronger than LBJ to cover that flank and nobody else that could have added as many electoral votes as LBJ could. So, it’s really silly to delve into the psychology of the two men that ended up putting them together. It was rational and highly pragmatic and JFK should have ordered Bobby to suck it up and get in line.
Ridiculous to think CA — for sure, not a reliably Blue state back then — was out of reach for someone as glamorous and appealing as JFK. And Nixon, favorite son on paper, was rather well-known but not particularly well-liked in the state. Just look at his thorough trouncing a few years later by Pat Brown.
Had the Kennedy team planned ahead earlier (back then it was almost impossible to make last-minute changes to campaign schedules made weeks before) to devote more time to CA instead of spending valuable days trying to win OH and then wasting time in the NE where they already had things in hand (but this was not so clear to the campaign team), then CA would have gone Kennedy. It was only when the late late absentee ballots came in that the tide turned slightly in Nixon’s favor. One of the few campaign mistakes the Kennedy team made.
Lyndon like Nixon was also another pol well-known in his home state but not particularly well-liked or trusted. I think Kennedy calculated that traditional party-affiliated voting would largely still kick in and border-stater Symington with only a mixed record on CR would have sufficient appeal in that region to keep enough of those states in the D camp.
If he had been leaning so strong, allegedly, in favor of a Johnson pick, it sure is puzzling why he didn’t bother to confide in his most important political aide Bobby. And once the (pro-forma) offer was made and accepted, why would he then send Bobby back to Johnson’s suite again and again to try to get him off? The more polite, pro-LBJ story offered by you and the MSM and some historians just makes no sense.
Going by memory, which is fallible, I think JFK was not that glamorous in 1960. There was still a lot of anxiety about nominating a Roman Catholic, and there were still KKK-style rumblings across the country about a President who would be obedient to the Pope. He didn’t really catch fire until the “Ask not …” speech after he was elected. That was the beginning of Camelot.
I know that alternative speculative history can be fun, but on this one I’m not yielding. In 1960, CA was neither red nor blue. In part because traditionally Republican politicians were on average as decent and and publicly minded as Democrats came to be with the New Deal. But CA wasn’t then and isn’t now monolithic. “Red” and “Blue” pockets back then weren’t mysterious. Compare the 1960 county maps to the2008 county maps. 1960 DEM strongholds (excluding SF) flipped in the next two election cycles and the flips from red to blue were slow (but steady).
Nixon wasn’t well liked throughout the state and he did just barely beat JFK. However and regardless of what you want to believe, JFK’s “charisma” that year was modest compared to the mythology that was created around him after his death. There really weren’t more possible votes for JFK and fewer for Nixon to be had. Brown was a popular Governor (and a better Governor than his son). That combined with Nixon’s so-so popularity is why Brown beat him.
What makes you think that Bobby was a trustworthy source on this issue? He was likely the primary source for the rumors that JFK was planning to dump LBJ in 1964 which wasn’t true. JFK needed LBJ in ’64 as much as he’d needed him in ’60. It wouldn’t be a stretch to speculate that JFK wasn’t pleased that it had to be LBJ, but it was his political fortune, not Bobby’s, that was at stake. Plus he was older, more experienced in politics and life in general, and more emotionally mature than Bobby.
For sure CA was not reliably blue then, as I previously noted. But my point stands — Kennedy had he put in a few more days in the state instead of OH and the NE could have swayed enough voters into putting the state in his camp. He was handsome, well spoken with a million dollar smile. CAians also watched the debates.
But there was more prejudice in the state then, mostly on racial grounds, and JFK’s Catholicism was well known (whereas Gov Brown’s same religious affiliation probably wasn’t well known or people didn’t care at that level of governance). By one account, Kennedy’s religion cost him 1.5m votes nationwide.
I already mentioned why Bobby’s account rings true: 1) it is consistent with the account of Symington’s top aide, and 2) Bobby would have no reason to concoct such a story of JFK merely offering a non-serious “offer” in the expectation LBJ didn’t want the job but just wanted to be asked, then Bobby having to go back to Johnson’s suite at least twice to ask him if he wouldn’t actually prefer another position. And the Johnson version — backed by many in the MSM and establishment historians — that Bobby was just out of the loop does not ring true. Kennedy keeping his brother unaware of such an important matter, risking a huge rift with the famously sensitive majority leader, makes no sense. But the pro-Johnson establishment writers have to account for those Bobby visits to the Johnson suite, and that’s the story they came up with, implausible as it is.
As to the source of JFK dumping Lyndon: LBJ sure thought it was Bobby’s doing, and I wouldn’t doubt if RFK played a central role in initiating the process of exposing’s Johnson’s past wrongdoing in order to get him off the ticket. But again he never would have acted except on instructions from the president.
By 1963, per the diary and memoirs of Evelyn Lincoln, JFK was seeing Lyndon only rarely for one-on-ones in the WH, though the deceptive Johnson, using a clever ruse, tried to make the press think it was frequent consultation. By her account and other Kennedy insiders, including Bobby, JFK was tired of having to deal w Lyndon, his sensitivities and perceived slights. Only rarely was his counsel useful. Most times he said nothing, or engaged in backbiting and second-guessing after the fact, which got back to JFK (e.g. the Cuban Crisis resolution).
The Kennedys considered loyalty to the boss important. It’s quite possible they thought the VP was no longer loyal, could not be trusted. That, apart from the Johnson scandals being uncovered in the ongoing senate inquiry, would have been enough to get him removed from the ticket if an acceptable substitute, such as NC Gov Terry Sanford were available, and he was.
Johnson was also not well liked or well known among the public outside of TX. So dropping him for a Gov Sanford would not have had a negative effect on the 64 race as JFK was a very popular incumbent who was going to beat Barry Goldwater easily and no one outside of a few Johnson loyalists cared about the VP staying on the ticket.
Sorry, but both your choices probably would not have been appreciably better. With Duller, the MSM and GOP would have played w the nicknames and come up with the ticket of Duller/Dollar (recall Gore = Bore). Bradley would have energized only the Wall Street liberals and former NBA players out there, all 2,500 of them. Of the two, Graham stood a slightly better chance of making an important difference if he could have undertaken a 2-3 week quiet Charm School makeover of some unfortunate personality traits and quirks along with enhancing his speechmaking ability.
As for focusing so directly and minutely on FL’s EC votes, I’m willing to cut the Gore camp some slack but not all. It was a state notorious for electoral fraud and highly partisan chicanery, with the two most important political figures in the state both being highly biased to favor and act in behalf of Shrub. Probably wiser to look to build a more exciting ticket and get EC votes elsewhere and hope FL would also catch the enthusiasm.
As for the LBJ vp offer, who cares about agreement. Given the circumstances, only 3 people would be able to give an honest accounting, but one died before he could offer his memoirs, one (Bobby) did survive to give us the truth, and the third was never known as an honest truthful person even by his associates.
And while Bobby and LBJ hated each other, JFK didn’t trust him (rightly) but only tolerated his presence. It’s clear from the facts related by Evelyn Lincoln and the fall 1963 senate investigation of Lyndon associates that he was on the way to being booted from the ticket. As for other RFK things, he only worked on the McC committee for a few months and soon quit in disgust. In ’56 he had been allowed inside the Adlai campaign and was shocked at how disorganized and lazy it was. It was that disarray, not for political/ideological reasons that you seem to suggest, that lead him to run from Adlai to vote Ike. Big deal. It was never made public anyway until years later. McGovern said he voted for Gerald Ford in 1976. He didn’t trust Jimmy and was dismayed to see he had few specific proposals in a liberal direction. Another big deal. Neither publicly spoke or campaigned for the Repub.
JFK wanted Stu Symington in ’60. Bobby’s recollection jibes with the memoirs of Symington’s top aide Clark Clifford on this point. The offer had already been made and accepted when Lyndon asserted himself onto the ticket and made it extremely difficult for JFK. If either Clifford or Symington had denied JFK made the offer, it would be more of an open question for me.
Actually, the press liked Bradley. So, I’m not getting where this “Duller” is coming from that you’re positive would have existed had he been Gore’s VP. (Lieberman was whiny which IMHO is worse the dull. And it’s less likely that Bradley would have let Cheney walk all over him in the debate as Joe did.) Bradley (assuming the two of them put their egos aside and behaved like a team for the good of the rest of us) might have lured a few more white men to vote DEM. Enough to flip any red states blue? We don’t know — and I would only put NH in the high possibility category. Of course, NH was the whole game. I also wouldn’t reject the possibility that anti-semitism played a role in WV turning red.
Nationally, Graham would have been no worse than Lieberman. More help in FL? Who knows. But if electoral fraud is so endemic and well known in FL as you claim it is, who better to keep a close eye on that and know what to look for than Graham? Seriously, team Gore and those outside FL didn’t have a clue that the fix was in down there.
Well the last point is one of the better observations you’ve made in this discussion and outshines by far anything you’ve argued for Bradley.
Probably would have been more helpful than JL. But not “outside the box” enough for raging moderate Al, who wanted to show the “raging” side with his VP pick.
Has Gore written his memoirs yet?
about Lieberman is usually made without reference to polling at the time, the reaction to the pick, and his effect on the ticket in South Florida.
It is inarguable that when the pick was made it got positive press. It is inarguable that he did not help immediately in polling. And there is no doubt that he helped Gore in Broward and Dade.
Since the election and 9/11 people argue that the pick cost Gore the election. You can argue that it did. You can make that argument about ANY think Gore did since the election in Florida was so close.
In general the 2000 election has given rise to many myths:
If you take the time to look at any of it from an objective perspective much is bullshit. The Butterfly ballots are the perfect example.
There were 433,215 ballots cast in Palm Beach County in 2000. Buchanan got 3,411. It is impossible to argue that the ballots were so confusing that people didn’t know who they were voting for. It IS true that some people couldn’t figure it out: enough to change the election. But the idea that the ballot somehow was purposely designed to confuse people is nonsense.
In truth in an election decided by so few votes EVERYTHING would have changed the result. I drove through the heart of the African American Community in Tampa on election day. There was ONE guy holding a sign on the main road in 2000. Get 10 more people doing visibility and that might have flipped Florida.
Was it rational to fight for FL with an identity candidate? Or FL at all given that the opponent’s little bro was the FL Governor?
Data that I don’t have that would have been crucial in assessing the merits of Graham for VP to carry FL would have been his in-state favorables in early 2000 compared to that of Jeb’s. Also Graham’s in-state name ID compared to that of Bush. A “favorite son” doesn’t have the same electoral power as it once did. So, it’s possible that Graham wouldn’t have done more for the ticket in FL than Gore did in TN. (btw — how dumb is it not to keep working one’s home state in the years before a presidential bid?)
We tend to assess the quality of a campaign in comparison with the opponent’s in that electoral cycle and not in comparison with other campaigns in other cycles. Now Gore did have some impediments. He was stretched for cash. So, feeding the press on his plane a chicklet and coke while those on Bush’s plane were served lobster and an open bar meant that Bush had media folks eating out of his hand. Gore also didn’t see that huge downside to accepting primary matching funds. Not that his fundraising was strong enough that he was in a position to pass on those funds.
The butterfly ballots was one of those lucky breaks for Bush. But team Jeb was doing everything it could to fix the FL results — they just underestimated how big a fix was required and it didn’t have much to do with a surge in support for Gore based on his VP.
While not well measured, and possibly less pronounced today than in 2000, there are pockets of anti-semitism in the US. WV may have been a state with enough pockets to flip it into the GOP column in 2000. However, after 1988, it was a weak DEM state in Presidential elections. Again, like TN it wasn’t a state that Gore should have ignored while he was VP.
Gore was also so ruthless in the primary against Bradley that there was no healing of the rift. (Not that Bradley demonstrated the grace of a good loser.)
For me, it adds up to Gore did run a terrible campaign.
Fourth Legionnaires Disease Victim Dies in the Bronx
Fourth death? And no national freak-out, panic attack?
All of the victims were older adults with underlying medical conditions, officials said.
There are 65 people sickened with the disease, of whom 55 are hospitalized.
Okay — it’s like a localized influenza.
Legionnaire’s Disease doesn’t come from Africa or Mexico.
True. But, doubt any disease that surfaced, whether indigenous or imported, that had a 50%+ fatality rate and was perceived to be as easily transmitted as influenza wouldn’t create panic regardless of the skin color of the initial victims. iirc, Typhoid Mary was white.
Typhoid Mary was white.?
No.
She wasn’t.
She was Irish.
Y’gotta remember, Marie…in the late 18th/early19th centuries, the Irish were still part of the “illegal immigrants/hispanics” problem of that America. They had been the Po’Ricans of Great Britain for over a century by that time…scullery maids, manual laborers etc…and the potato famine had rafted millions of them to the U.S. starting before the Civil War. Had Typhoid Mary been a Daughter of the American Revolution or Mayflower descendant she would never have been tagged with that “Typhoid Mary” moniker.
Bet on it.
AG
Chill. Obviously my gentle dig that we shouldn’t view issues through our contemporary lens of white-black-latino went over your head. Long history of the “other” in this and most countries.
And so far only in primarily Hispanic neighborhoods inna Bronx. Wait till a couple of middle or working class Caucasians go down Then the shit will hit the media fan.
Watch.
AG
No, not working class, middle class blond girls. TV loves them.
Ugh … I thought he died or went to hide under a rock somewhere. There are very few politicians I hate more.
Foreign policy insanity aside, remember that Lieberman single-handedly killed the “medicare for all” plan that would have been significantly better than Obamacare. There is no hell hot enough for that corrupt bastard.
Yes, that’s what he’ll always be most reviled for on the left. I didn’t see that Joe was a corrupt bastard as early as Booman. I didn’t see it until well after the 2000 election. Reminds me of a time when Democrats and Republicans weren’t always all that different. I’m glad that piece of crap got run out of the party.
He didn’t actually do it single-handledly — he had help, and far too little opposition from Dem “leadership” — but other than that, I agree.
these types of pieces keep me reading here, for which I am extremely grateful, but also keep me . . . . . . . . all the same.
You know it seems almost too stereotypical that hitchbot was killed in in Philadelphia after making it through New York City.
Obama chose Lieberman as his mentor in the senate. That’s Mr. O for you in all his political glory. And if I’m not mistaken one of the Clinton twins campaigned for him in Conn. when he was running against the Democrat Ned Lamont. The Democrat power elite drool over Joe, he’s one of them no matter what.
When Lieberman got bounced by Lamont and formed his own party to get on the ballot his choice of name was all too revealing.
Now he could have emphasized that he was just in the game to serve the people of Connecticut as the humble person his P.R. tried to make him out to be. In which case he would have named his new Party ‘Lieberman for Connecticut’
Instead he revealed his self-absorbed messiah complex by naming it ‘Connecticut for Lieberman’.
Its the small things that reveal sociopaths and psychopaths.
So lovely. So special. So sad.
New Yorker Death of a Young Black Journalist
The 1988 election of Joe Lieberman to the Senate was one of the many “canary-in-a-coal-mine” incidents of those years – early warnings but almost one one saw what was going on nor imagined what was to come.
You see, Lying-man defeated long-time GOP Senator Lowell Weicker by something like 7000 votes out of 1.3 million cast. Weicker was a classic New England GOP Senator, center-left, and the conservatives hated him. But all those decades ago they didn’t have the right wing media power to beat him in a primary, so instead they recruited a Republican-in-Democratic clothing to defeat him – even then he could not have won were it not for a conservative campaign in his favor against the sitting Republican.
The question was whether he’d be a useful idiot for the GOP like Bill Clinton and Joe Biden and Jim Webb or a full blown double agent for the right like Rahm Emmanuel and Tony Blair. It soon became apparent he was the latter – but with a very special flair for verbal Broderism that endeared him to the centrists-for-centristrism sake. Of course, Blair had that too.
But do understand he was chosen for the role he played by the early modern right wing political machine.
I knew life-long democrats who didn’t vote for Gore because of lieberman. I’m always thought Gore would have won handily if he had chosen someone else.
It would be decidedly ironic if he tapped JL for the Jewish vote in Florida, wouldn’t it? I can think of no other reason for the choice. JL didn’t balance the ticket geographicly or in any other way and he didn’t have good name recognition outside the east coast.