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Believe it or not, presidential wannabes are at it already
In the final days of the Gore recount battle, some of his senior staffers hatched a Doomsday Plan that would go into effect if Gore lost: They would mount a "We Wuz Robbed" ticket in 2004, using the anger over the recount to stage a Gore/Lieberman rerun--and they would run in the primaries as a team! It would be without precedent. And even though the Democratic Party is hardly kind to its losers--Adlai Stevenson in 1956 was the last person to be nominated again after losing--the Gore/Lieberman team would simply squelch opposition. The plan was so audacious that the Gore people were almost giddy. "It was going to be `The Rumble in the Jungle II,' " one Gore staffer joked. "We were going to get Don King to promote it."
But after September 11, anger over the recount seemed a trivial issue and some in the campaign assumed the secret plan was dead. Yet a longtime friend and supporter of both men, Martin Dunleavy, the political affairs director of the 200,000-member American Federation of Government Employees union, says there is plenty of current talk about another Gore/Lieberman ticket. "Lieberman's own people are divided on whether he should run with Gore again," Dunleavy says. "I have heard a number of party leaders advocate the idea to Gore. I think the members of my union would be extremely thrilled with it. Our attitude is that they won the first time." When asked by U.S. News if he is considering such a ticket, Lieberman smiled and said Dunleavy's remarks were "unauthorized" and that he, Lieberman, hadn't "thought that through."
Conflicting messages. But the possibility of a joint primary ticket depends on Gore's entering the race. Because nobody (including Gore) knows if he will, Lieberman is trying one of the toughest tricks in politics: running for president as his own second choice. He has pledged not to run for president if Gore does run but will almost certainly run if Gore does not. Still, Lieberman will not follow the Gore/Lieberman game plan of 2000 if he does run. He now disagrees with Gore over the issue of populism. Critics of Gore, most notably the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, to whom Lieberman is very close, say that Gore's 2000 "people vs. the powerful" message was divisive and lost him the election. In a speech at the DLC convention in Indianapolis last July, Lieberman repudiated the Gore strategy by saying that people vs. the powerful was "too subject to misunderstanding." Lieberman also says he was prevented by the Gore campaign from talking more about faith and values and that was a mistake. When asked by U.S. News if Gore blew an easily winnable race, Lieberman replied: "How do I answer the question? I felt good about my own contribution."
Not that Gore did not make contributions of his own. One thing Gore does have that many other candidates lack is an understanding of farm policy. And farm policy is disproportionately important in presidential politics simply because the Iowa caucuses precede the New Hampshire primary by eight days. It is the first time anybody votes for these guys and it gets huge media coverage. The dirty little secret of politics, however, is how sick some candidates are of Iowa. The only policy acceptable to some Iowa farmers seems to be some version of "give us all the money in the Treasury and we'll return what we don't use" and candidates are tired of the pandering they have to do.
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