In recent weeks, in lieu of anything else to talk about (because our esteemed media think two wars, a financial crisis and torture are appealing only to the NPR crowd), we can see the beginnings of a new myth: that McCain could have pulled it out, IF ONLY he'd done as the beltway media wished and picked their friend, their symbol, their dream, Joe Lieberman himself (LFL-CT).
That's a stupid theory. And it's our role to explain WHY it's stupid. Why explain? Because the MSM hate partisanship, even while revelling in it as a dirty pleasure. They like 'leaders'. They like little men looking for big balconies. Their undying fantasy, the thing that sustains political commentary in this country, is the wish for a 'post-partisan' ticket of socially liberal, economically conservative, militarily insane elderly Washington senators to save the nation. This myth hurts the country: it's the source of the 'centre-right nation' myth, it cripples the careers of genuine Democrats, and it ruins political punditry. It's got to go.
First up: WHY would Lieberman have been a disaster? Here's an extract from something I wrote elsewhere:
I've been doing graphs and figures for a week now on this, and I can honestly say: it would have been an astonishingly bad idea.
In the 108th Congress (admittedly while he was running for President), Lieberman was ranked more liberal than Biden. (Voteview). In the 110th Congress (the one just ending), he voted with Democrats 86.9% of the time. (Washington Post). That's more often than Evan Bayh, one of Obama's top veep choices.
In 2001, the height of his apostasy, McCain got a score of 40 from ADA. In 2007, the height of his apostasy, Lieberman got 70. Lieberman routinely gets 100 scores from Right to Choice interest groups; McCain has a solidly pro-life record. McCain has a lifetime score of 82 from the American Conservative Union. Lieberman? 16.4. (Lower than Evan Bayh -- again, the guy who for about the week seemed to be Obama's pick)
They agree on the war. They agree on nothing else. The Republican Convention would be chaotic; someone like Thad Cochran or Rick Santorum, with nothing to lose, would challenge Lieberman from the floor and pick up hundreds of delegate votes. By the second week, Lieberman's forced recantation of every position on economic and social issues he's ever held would become a national joke. By the third week, the social conservative wing of the party would bring down all hell and brimstone on the ticket. By the fourth week, Georgia would be a toss-up, because of widespread alienation from white evangelicals. By October, Texas would be in play.
A McCain-Lieberman ticket would be an unmitigated disaster.
A bit hyperbolic towards the end, but the figures are the main thing. Lieberman deserved to lose the Connecticut primary, because the war was the overriding issue in that election. But on the whole, he's far more sanctimonious than evil. His irritating moral crusades don't manifest into much more than just another moderate Democrat. His Project Vote Smart rankings rankings tell the tale: on the issues that matter to the base (abortion, taxes, and yes, race) he's a Democrat. And if McCain, a reliable conservative on nearly every issue, ranked consistently by Voteview as one of the most conservative Republicans for the last three Congresses -- if THAT GUY is considered a Republican in Name Only, imagine how Republicans would react if he put a Democrat on the ticket! It would have been a sheer disaster -- outraging the base, completely consuming the campaign, alienating moderates through Lieberman's fanatical support for the war. But hey -- at least the media still would have liked him. Lieberman could honestly have driven McCain below 43% of the popular vote.
So now we come again to: why does this matter? To answer the first comment critique. Well, it matters because the media still believe, passionately, that a moderate Democrat equals a moderate Republican. That belief -- that the two parties are enmeshed somewhere in the Congressional centre -- drives the 'maverick' myth, drives the 'centre-right nation' myth, and worst of all drives a myth of moral equivalency. It feeds into the Naderites' worst fantasies that 'there's not a dime's worth of difference between the parties.'
Again: that's wrong. Really wrong. Case in point: Lincoln Chafee and Ben Nelson. Chafee is pro-gay marriage, pro-choice, anti-Iraq War, anti-Military Commissions Act, and anti-ANWR drilling. Nelson, at least until very recently, was the complete opposite of all of that. Yet in all my searching I've never found a ranked index of Congress that places them more than a few spaces apart. The most liberal Republican of recent years voted, at best, a bit more liberally than the most conservative Democrat. Party loyalty scores tell the tale: both Senators, in 2006, voted with their parties about 70% of the time.
Again: the worst Democrat is still more liberal than the best Republican. The media don't believe this. We've gotta prove it to them. And the best way to do that is to FIGHT THIS MYTH.