INGRATE! :

ALL FOR GORE IN 2004 : We'll take Al Gore's populist schtick again if that will prevent the self-righteous, warmongering Joe Lieberman from running for president in 2004. (David Corn, August 16, 2002, AlterNet)

Lieberman, the Senator from Connecticut who was Gore's ticket-mate, has pledged he will not enter the 2004 fray if Gore does. But if Gore demurs, Lieberman is ready to pounce. And who -- except the DLC and Mrs. Lieberman -- wants that?

Let me first note some Lieberman positives. He has tended to have a strong record on environmental matters. He recently joined with Republican Senator John McCain to introduce legislation that would set up an independent commission to investigate intelligence failures related to Sept. 11 -- a move that was a slap in the face of the congressional intelligence committees, which rarely go far enough in investigating and overseeing the intelligence agencies. He can, at times, be a sharp opponent of the Bush Administration. (He called Bush's recent photo-op economic confab "more of a valley than a summit.") And he has kept the flame of Enron alive -- though barely -- as chairman of the governmental affairs committee, which is investigating the Enron mess (but not as quickly as many Democratic partisans would prefer.)

Yet none of that compensates for Lieberman's negatives. There's his self-righteous and quasi-censorious opposition to explicit music, movies and television shows. There's his self-righteousness about most things. There's his warmongering. (He recently called for Congress to grant Bush the authority to remove Saddam Hussein and leave it to Bush and the Pentagon to decide how to do that.) And there's his coziness with the DLC. But what moves me to alter my position on a Gore sequel is Lieberman's ingratitude.

One would imagine that two years ago at this time Mr. Corn was writing about what an ingrate Al Gore was being by running away from the Clinton record. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 20, 2002 11:20 AM