WI McCain picks Joe Lieberman

What if McCain had decided to not let his party tell him what was and wasn't acceptable and decided to pick Joe Lieberman. Would it have made any difference in the election?
 
McCain is probably sunk to some extent anyways. A combination of the economy and the lack of the surge of enthusiasm that Palin brought to the Republican base probably does that. He may keep it a bit more competititve, but he doesn't have a huge chance.

The repurcussions are most interesting for the republican party in the next few years. Picking Lieberman is a rebuke to the evangelical base, but if McCain loses, they will hound him for not picking one of them and running to liberal a campaign, not to mention to passive one (picking Lieberman suggests a few less of the Ayers type ads ittl). So you probably get some sort of civil war for the republican party's soul, similar to the one shaping up now, but the dynamics and fault lines will be changed. The moderates will have more short-term credence without palin and company being marketed to the nation as a whole, but the far right will contend that that was what lost the election in the first place.
 
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.
 
It probably would have made McCain happier but McCain needed to pick Mitt Romney to at least make the race a bit closer. The economic meltdown probably makes Obama president regardless of what McCain does.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
McCain is still sunk by more or less the same amount. Lieberman would attract more independents (and there would be no Palin to turn them away), but the choice of a pro-choice non-Christian would not go over well with the evangelical base, many of whom would consequently stay home on Election Day.

On the other hand, McCain's reputation as a maverick who follows his own lead would remain intact, perhaps leaving him as a more effective Senator in the post-election era.
 
Lieberman would attract more independents

I'm not even sure about that. Quite apart from how far a VP choice can genuinely influence a ticket, if you get the sort of stuff BlackMage was talking about - and I don't think it's too unrealistic; people in the McCain campaign were genuinely worried about it, which is one reason why a lot of them just wouldn't have Lieberman, and, by extension, how we got Palin - then the McCain ticket is just going to look like one huge mess. My guess is that an image of a candidate who has made a choice which has effectively put him at war with his own party would not, ultimately, be any more appealing to independents than what we got in OTL.

In any case, you would certainly get a more marked drop in Republican turnout and/or what you had before Palin, which was an effective desertion of the committee rooms of the McCain campaign.
 
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It would not have changed the ultimate outcome of the election, but it most likely would have broken the thin threads that tie Lieberman into alliance with the democrats. As mentioned above, it could have strengthened McCain's voice in the senate.
 
McCain is still sunk by more or less the same amount. Lieberman would attract more independents (and there would be no Palin to turn them away), but the choice of a pro-choice non-Christian would not go over well with the evangelical base, many of whom would consequently stay home on Election Day.

Would he even do that, though? I mean, Lieberman's policy positions are basically 'Obama, with the war', and the war is incredibly unpopular amongst independents. In Connecticut, a state he's represented for twenty years, Lieberman won re-election on a vast wave of Republican votes, not so much with independents. It could, I agree, burnish McCan's brand image; I often wondered what would have happened if he'd run as some sort of animatronic version of his own image, the fightin', reformin', maverickin' centrist John McCain, willing to buck both parties for what's right (although not what's Right.) But the real answer to that is: he would have lost, and probably by a bigger margin than he did, because the constituency for that campaign is smaller than the constituency for the Any Republican campaign he ran.

The real problem with the Lieberman pick would be interviews. Question after question: 'Do you still support abortion?' 'Do you still support affirmative action?' 'Do you still support banning drilling in ANWR?' (Mind you, he flipflopped on this in OTL, so...) 'Do you still support repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell?' 'Do you still support ENDA?' 'You've been given a consistent F rating from the NRA -- what do you have to say about that?'

And then, when he answers each question, the punchline: 'And what about your running mate? Do you agree with his position?'

A certain amount of disagreement is acceptable, even good, in a ticket. But where they disagree over virtually every domestic issue, that's bad.
 
Sorry to revive a dead thread, but this has been gnawing at me for some days. (Mostly because a similar situation occurs in my Epic Marvel Politics Fanfiction, to be written never.)

McCain's big problem was that Generic Republican, with Conservative Governor as VP, Tax Cuts as platform and Socialism as key charge against opponents couldn't win this year. If any Republican could have escaped that bind, it was John McCain, but in picking Sarah Palin, regardless of his intentions (which was a corruption-fighting, unpredictable maverick), he merely consolidated the narrative that he was Just Another Republican.

Joe Lieberman allows him to break that hold. The 'four more years' narrative told by the Democrats was repetitive, it was loud, it was more false than true (and I'm a Democrat, I get to say that), and it worked. But if he picks Joe Lieberman, he has a chance of saying 'No, I'm not George Bush -- I'm a centrist, a third-way Republican, a man from no party and both.'

So let's say he can prove that. Next problem: the results of proving that. It may help him among conservative Democrats, but, perversely, only if he can cast Joe Lieberman as a generic Democrat. Lieberman is not popular anywhere. He is boring. He is old. For him to accept being on this ticket he would either have to be so obsessively driven by support for The War to support a man he disagrees with on just about everything, or utterly driven by spite and vindictiveness. Neither option is attractive.

But say the Republican base can accept Lieberman -- it would be difficult, but it's not impossible -- and McCain is in a much-strengthened position. He hasn't blown the experience argument. He hasn't blown the 'centrist reformer' argument. He's guaranteed to dominate the news cycle for a while. Maybe Lieberman even lends himself well to a new McCain line on the economy. This was a year well-suited to a liberal economic message, and Lieberman's always been a party-line Democrat on economics. McCain can run against his own party to a much greater degree if there's a chance people will believe him. (Also, I gotta say this again: in the 108th Congress, Lieberman was more liberal than Biden. That'd be a great debate.)

It's still very unlikely to work, and there's a big chance it'll lead to an electoral massacre. But Lieberman would probably help McCain win Florida. He'd probably help with conservative Democrats in Indiana and Ohio. He may have some lingering ties of affection in New Hampshire (although remember, no one likes Joe Lieberman.) And so it's easier to see a McCain-Lieberman presidency than a McCain-Palin presidency.

But that's all boring, psephological stuff. The interesting story (which I may write one day) starts if McCain dies early next year.
 
I like the way how you kind of just hand-waved the base acceptance. In reality, as you said at the start of the thread, the base would go nuts if McCain picked Lieberman. He would be, in effect, running against his own party - and he'd almost certainly fall on his arse in doing so.

Let's be serious here. McCain was struggling with campaign funds before he picked Palin, and his ground game was, with some exceptions, essentially non-existant. If McCain picks Lieberman, then he's running (in everything but name) a very weird, almost baseless, organisationally bereft*, third-party ticket. In effect, it's Ross Perot Mk 2.0, without any guarantee of Perot's appeal to either side of the aisle.

Unless something very weird happens, I cannot see that even being competitive with Obama, let alone winning. Whatever McCain makes up with in terms of the swing vote, he more than loses with base turnout.

*This, I should point out, against one of the most superbly organised campaigns in living memory.
 
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I like the way how you kind of just hand-waved the base acceptance. In reality, as you said at the start of the thread, the base would go nuts if McCain picked Lieberman. He would be, in effect, running against his own party - and he'd almost certainly fall on his arse in doing so.

Yes, I found that difficult -- but I've been reading about this recently, and I don't think there would be a mass uprising. Patrick Ruffini wrote a post, at the time, that he'd accept Lieberman, and most of his positions are conventionally conservative. Of course, he's not exactly RedState. But in light of the demonisation of Obama, would conservatives really risk an Obama victory just to stick their fingers in McCain's eyes? (Although the intensely negative campaign could face serious difficulties in ATL, since after all many of Lieberman's positions are the same as Obama's.)

Let's be serious here. McCain was struggling with campaign funds before he picked Palin, and his ground game was, with some exceptions, essentially non-existant. If McCain picks Lieberman, then he's running (in everything but name) a very weird, almost baseless, organisationally bereft*, third-party ticket. In effect, it's Ross Perot Mk 2.0, without any guarantee of Perot's appeal to either side of the aisle.

Unless something very weird happens, I cannot see that even being competitive with Obama, let alone winning. Whatever McCain makes up with in terms of the swing vote, he more than loses with base turnout.

*This, I should point out, against one of the most superbly organised campaigns in living memory.

This paragraph, I must admit, is essentially right. And I'll add: I don't see the independent voters of America being taken by a ticket whose only shared ideological position is 'all war, all the time.' If nothing else, this concept highlights the strength of alternate history: for all those who badmouthed Palin, it could have been much, much worse.

But hey: if you view it entirely in terms of comparative VoteView scores, it's a fun concept.
 
Yes, I found that difficult -- but I've been reading about this recently, and I don't think there would be a mass uprising. Patrick Ruffini wrote a post, at the time, that he'd accept Lieberman, and most of his positions are conventionally conservative. Of course, he's not exactly RedState. But in light of the demonisation of Obama, would conservatives really risk an Obama victory just to stick their fingers in McCain's eyes?

The lower conservative turnout would not be the result of conservative activists sticking it to McCain - it would come from conseravtive leaning, usually-voting, sometimes-not non-activists who didn't feel particularly motivated to vote for anyone this year. OTL, McCain suffered from low base turnout almost as much as he suffered from Obama's energized organization. In TTL, that low turnout would, as you said, sink him.
 

burmafrd

Banned
Alternately if he had allowed Palin to run free it could have been a PR disaster; but it could also have worked. Palin did not do well in her first few interviews, but you could see her getting better at it; if they had marketed her as raw but learning and she kept getting better it would have energized the base even more. You look at the numbers and Ohio and Fla were lost by less then .1 percent; several other states were pretty close as well. I think Obama still wins but its a LOT closer both electorally and popular vote; probably only 30-40 electoral and maybe 3 million or so popular. Most of the popular vote edge for obama came in NY, CA and Illinois.
 

JohnJacques

Banned
"Raw but learning" demolished his entire experience argument.

And no one thought she could learn quickly enough.
 
Alternately if he had allowed Palin to run free it could have been a PR disaster; but it could also have worked. Palin did not do well in her first few interviews, but you could see her getting better at it; if they had marketed her as raw but learning and she kept getting better it would have energized the base even more. You look at the numbers and Ohio and Fla were lost by less then .1 percent; several other states were pretty close as well. I think Obama still wins but its a LOT closer both electorally and popular vote; probably only 30-40 electoral and maybe 3 million or so popular. Most of the popular vote edge for obama came in NY, CA and Illinois.

It looks like you believe that in OTL, McCain lost Ohio and Florida by less than 0.1%. Not true. See the results here: Obama won Ohio by 3.7% and Florida by 2.8%. There are only two states that Obama won by smaller margins than OH and FL -- Indiana by 1.0%, and North Carolina by 0.3%.

Since most models that I know of only ascribe the VP pick a +/- effect of maybe 1-2%, that's not a lot of states to shift.
 
Even with Lieberman, there was no way McCain was going to prevent Obama from getting the Kerry States + Iowa + Nevada + Colorado + New Mexico.

And as has been amply pointed out here, Lieberman and McCain agree on the war, and that's basically it. I can't imagine anything that would make the religious right angrier than putting a pro-choice non-Christian on the ticket. Lieberman would have to either repudiate all of his views, or McCain would be saddled with a VP with whom he agreed on essentially one issue. And a single issue campaign on continuing the war in Iraq was not going to be a winner this year.
 
Even with Lieberman, there was no way McCain was going to prevent Obama from getting the Kerry States + Iowa + Nevada + Colorado + New Mexico.

And as has been amply pointed out here, Lieberman and McCain agree on the war, and that's basically it. I can't imagine anything that would make the religious right angrier than putting a pro-choice non-Christian on the ticket. Lieberman would have to either repudiate all of his views, or McCain would be saddled with a VP with whom he agreed on essentially one issue. And a single issue campaign on continuing the war in Iraq was not going to be a winner this year.

That electoral calculus was McCain's problem all along: he needs to win Kerry states. Lieberman might have helped in New Hampshire, and perhaps one of Maine's electoral votes, but his impact in Pennsylvania...not so much. Tom Ridge could have made a difference, if you believe veeps work that way, but you'd have had Lieberman's disadvantages without that crucial, 'Hail Mary' shot represented by the 'bipartisan unity ticket' gimmick.
 
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