McCain picks Lieberman

There is a revolt on the floor of the Repulican convention. After two ballots with no majority, Lieberman withdraws. McCain picks Palin, his back up. Many social conservatives do not forgive McCain for endorsing a pro choice liberal. There are enough Republican stay at homes that Obama carries GA,MO,SD,ND and MT for 35 extra electoral votes. Obama wins 400 to 138. Republican Senstors Mitch McConnell and Saxbe Chamblis are defeated. There is a filibuster proof Democratic majority in the Senate from 2009 - 2011. There is a public option in the Affordable Care act. The Bush Tax cut expires. The Dream Act is enacted. The ban on gays in the military ends six months earlier.
 
Well, that would certainly be interesting, although since Lieberman has a reputation as being a conservative Democrat (note his involvement with anti-video-game-violence causes and support for Israel), the SoCons might be THAT upset.
 
The title is misleading. Besides, I don't think that Lieberman would have failed necessarily. His people might have been able to convince a lot of them that Lieberman was conservative enough to not be a problem (after all, he's not the most liberal senator in the nation anyway). Besides, the idea of a "national unity" ticket built off of both of them having decades of experience and actually being ready to lead on day one could give meaning to McCain's slogan "Country First", meaning he put politics aside and chose someone from outside his own party in order to make sure that the US had what it needs.

Lieberman would have had a slight tumble in the convention, with the far-right opposing him till the end, but the leadership would eventually decide that it's not worth a prolonged convention fight and give in. Granted, a walk out of the far-right could occur (which might not be such a bad thing for McCain because it further distances him from Bush), but they'd still vote for the McCain/Lieberman ticket on election day. Their own leadership would try to justify it as McCain still being in charge, so it's technically a Republican adminsitration. As much as they might have disliked McCain, they absolutely loathed Obama.

With the General Election, I still don't see how McCain could have won. It wouldn't have been as bad of a defeat as he suffered OTL, but it would still have been pretty bad.
 
The vast majority of the delegates to the 2008 Republican convention only agreed with Lieberman on Iraq.He particular fails the all important litmus test on abortion.
 
In so many ways, Obama was a very beatable candidate. The problem was that, by 2008, McCain had lost almost all of the luster he had with moderates (independents) in 2000 by becoming a Bushite Republican loyalist rather than a "maverick". He probably needed to do that to secure the nomination, but it really hurt him in the general election. And them came Palin, of course, which sealed the deal for Obama. Picking Lieberman might have helped him with moderate/independent voters.

America is still a broadly racist nation, I hate to say, and it says a lot about the Republicans that they lost to a man who is not only black (half-way), but who had a funny "foreign-sounding" name. Here's hoping they do that again!
 

yourworstnightmare

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McCain did not have the far right and evangelical Republicans. He needed to pick someone more Conservative. Palin was of course a bad choice, but it did get the Republican far right on his side, and probably gave him their votes on the expense of possible moderate votes. Picking Lieberman would have made him lose the Republican right, and he could very well have ended up with a worse result than OTL.
 
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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.

This might be even worse, because not only did the prospect of a McCain-Lieberman ticket be raised, but McCain caved and went with Palin. No hope of being a maverick, he's now in the category of John Kerry and Mitt Romney: A flip-flopper!

Could be the basis for an interesting Democrat-wank timeline.

I'm not sure further changes to the Presidency would affect Obama much at all; even under the best-case scenario you're talking about adding MO (+11 EV), MT (+3 EV) and GA (+15 EV); that would give Obama/Biden 394 EV to McCain/Lieberman's 144, which isn't materially different than OTL. There just isn't much room, structurally, for Obama to win much more than he did in OTL.

However, you've got two pretty close races in the Senate that the Democrats lost in 2008 -- Saxby Chambliss (R) over Jim Martin (D) in Georgia by 3%, 49.8-46.8, and Mitch McConnell (R) over Bruce Lunsford (D) in Kentucky, 53-47.

As I suggested earlier, with a bad VP pick by McCain, it's pretty easy to envision Obama's coattails (and a suppressed Republican turnout) getting Jim Martin the extra 3.2% he needs to clear the 50% threshold in Georgia and win the Senate race without a runoff. It's a lot harder to envision Lunsford making up six points in Kentucky (where Obama got crushed), but a truly apathetic Republican base might be enough to do it.

In the House, the Democrats won 21 seats in 2008. Depress Republican turnout by 6%, and you add 16 Dem pickups. Most of these are just padding -- in Alaska-AL (Ethan Berkowitz over Don Young, CA-3 (Bill Durston over Dan Lungren), CA-44 (Bill Hedrick over Ken Calvert), CA-50 (Nick Leibham over Brian Bilbray), FL-25 (Joe Garcia over Mario Diaz-Balart), IL-10 (Daniel Seals over Mark Kirk), KS-2 (Nancy Boyda holds her seat against Lynn Jenkins), KY-2 (David Boswell over Brett Guthrie), LA-2 (Bill Jefferson holds his seat over Joseph Cao), LA-4 (Paul Carmouche over John Fleming), MO-9 (Judy Baker over Blaine Luetkemeyer), NE-2 (Jim Esch over Lee Terry), PA-6 (Bob Roggio over Jim Gerlach), and SC-1 (Linda Ketner over Henry Brown, Jr.), for example.

But there are two significant long-term effects here. In WA-8, Daily Kos fave Darcy Burner defeats Dave Reichert and becomes the voice of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

And, of course, the most significant of them all: in Minnesota's 6th district, Elwyn Tinklenberg defeats freshman incumbent Michele Bachmann. (OTL, Bachmann won by just 3% in 2008.)

So there you have it: a perfect Dem-wank. Obama wins a landslide, gets a filibuster-proof majority and then some in the Senate, 61-39, a 273-162 majority in the House, and trades a feisty firebrand of the extreme right (Michele Bachmann) for a feisty firebrand of the extreme left (Darcy Burner).

I've also started a thread discussing how the Senate would play out if McConnell went down. It could be merged with this one perhaps.

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