As we all anticipate Barack Obama’s Vice Presidential pick and as we play the veep-sweaps and as some of us, state how certain choices will be great while others will be horrible.  Some have even said that some possibilities might even cause us to lessen our degrees of support for Obama; I want to make a point, using a thought exercise.  Let’s travel through an alternate history.  In this history we elected a person, who for most Kossacks, would be one of the worst possible Vice Presidents.  How would the world have changed?

The fictional Vice President I am referring to is, if you hadn’t guessed, Joe Lieberman.  In my alternate history, I am assuming that the SCOTUS allowed the Florida recount to proceed and as a result Al Gore and Joe Lieberman won the Electoral College and were sworn in January of 2001.  Okay, I think for most of us – Joe Lieberman is far worse than any of the names being mentioned this year as VP.  So if he and Al had been declared the winners in 2000, where would we be today?

John McCain is a racist, sexist bigot.

Born in 1936, the year of FDR's second re-election, the beginning of the Spanish civil war, the publication of Gone With the Wind, and the completion of the Hoover Dam, McCain is a man of the past stuck awkwardly in the present. Here are some unmistakable instances of racial prejudice.

On his campaign bus recently, Sen. John McCain told reporters, "I hated the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live." Although McCain said he was referring only to his prison guards, there are many reasons why his use of the word "gook" is offensive and alarming. Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2000

Does McCain still hate Asians?

I hate to sound like a depressed coward, but at my age, I have seen enough elections to conclude that the Republicans will do and say just about anything to win an election.

I am beginning to see the familiar signs of their offensive (as in appalling, obscene) offensive (as in attack, aggression) take shape.

I knew the storm was coming, but the darkening skies and the thread of nasty weather on the horizon is dampening my mood.

Earlier, I was watching a brand new episode of Mock the Week, a satirical news gameshow here in the UK. It features two teams of three comedians, with another comedian (Dara O'Brian) hosting. It's not always the best format for expert, hard-hitting satire, but it's hillarious and it does inform UK audiences (particularly younger people) about some political events.

I ask this question as a person who is 100% certain that the election was stolen in 2000, and has serious, rational questions about the 2004 election.

If the exit polls and final vote are way off, what is going to be done? Has the Obama campaign mentioned this? Is that even the metric they would use? If not, what is? How do we know that Obama will not wilt in the face of shenanigans, the way a Lieberman-influenced Al Gore did?

This stuff is important to me, and I imagine a lot of you. Without answers, I feel all-too-certain about what is going to happen in November, and it's not paranoia. Fool me once...

I was going to go a whole different way with this diary, but, given some of the responses to my first diary on this subject (which was really more of a rant on those who couldn't wait to yell "extraordinary claim" or "conspiracy theory"), I decided to go back and revisit the election fraud issue itself.

First, for the FAQ on "extraordinary claims":

Diaries on certain topics are likely to generate angry responses. Most of these topics fall under the general heading of "conspiracy theories", e.g., "JFK was killed by Martians". The rule for posting such diaries is "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". The more extreme the claim, the higher the burden of proof that commenters will demand. If you can't provide evidence to back up your claim, it is best not to post the diary. This guideline also applies to recommending extraordinary-claims diaries. If a diary makes an extreme claim with little or no evidence to back up that claim, it shouldn't be recommended, no matter what that claim is.

Now... follow me over the flip...

For many Americans Colin Powell's trip to the UN solidified their support for the Iraq war.  I needed no such reassurance.  John McCain supported the war and so I felt comfortable and confident.  In 2002, it seemed unimaginable that John McCain would follow President Bush blindly.  Those of us who campaigned for McCain in 2000 fought on the front lines of the first battle to stop the Bush regime.  

I don't want to get into the details of the decision to support the war: the influence of September 11th and politics, the capitulation of Democratic critics, or the silencing of dissent by the media.  I was a victim of and accomplice to all of that.  

What I do want to talk about is the tragedy of post-2000 John McCain.  This is not to say that the reality of pre-2000 McCain is as impressive or positive as I felt it was when I supported him, but instead to show how cold heartedly and cynically he betrayed those who eight years ago looked to him for leadership.  

George W. Bush has abandoned us.  Bush has abandoned his conservative principles.  I might not even vote for him.  If Al Gore wins, then that will teach the Republican party to listen to us.  We gave Bush his primary victory, and we deserve him to remain true to us.

I heard of a poll today on NBC that seemed to be saying the election was drawing into pretty much a dead heat here in the middle of summer. A poll is just numbers, saying what they might mean is opinion and that's where I come in. It's no surprise that the electorate, at least those who were "polled", are generally evenly divided. This has been the case for several elections now. But specifically this year, it may be the result of a let down after the protracted Democratic primary and voters reassessing the candidates. This poll seems to suggest that many voters who had been supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton are not just automatically backing the presumed Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

This isn't a particularly substantive diary, but the topic came up briefly in another thread and I thought I'd see how widespread the sentiment is.  I typically love election years, particularly Presidential election years.  Way back in 1984, I remember debating Mondale vs. Reagan on the first grade school bus.  Starting in December 1991, I was obsessing over the Democratic primary field heading into the election 11 months later.  In 2000, I was ticked off when the Gore-Bush race still wasn't generating much buzz as late in the year as, well, July 1.  Hard to believe that the blase public sentiment towards elections at the turn of the millennium was only two short election cycles ago, because I've officially crossed a threshold in 2008 that I never thought I'd cross in an election year....numbness.

Bob Barr candidacy helps Obama.

Donate to his campaign!http://www.bobbarr2008.com/...

Impeachment of Bush has been floated around by many on this site as a moral imperative: support this or be a traitor to Liberals everywhere, and a desecrator of the constitution.

Now is not the time to get sanctimonious.  In case you didn't notice, we've got a problem with this moral imperative of ours.  I would direct all of you to to examine what that document you're defending actually says.  Impeachment we can achieve, by just a simple majority.

It is, however, a case we are unlikely to win.  A Bush appointee will serve as judge for the trial.  And of course the same slim majority that's made getting any legislation of note through the Senate a bitch-and-a-half will cause problems here.  It takes a two thirds majority to convict the president.  We can't win cloture votes, for heavens sake!  Do we seriously expect these people to convict the president?  Impeachment without conviction would be a joke.  But I have a better idea, and the best part about it is that Bush will hang around long enough to enjoy it.

This isn't a confession.  I'm not ashamed of my choice and I'm not going to apologize for it.  But things have changed, and they've changed in ways that I don't know that I can fully articulate, though I think most of us know.  If I'd lived in a swing state, I probably would have voted for Gore, but in Vermont I had the luxury of making a protest vote.   The electoral college map wasn't going to change. Vermont was going to go for Gore no matter what I did.  If I'd lived in Florida, Ohio, New Mexico or New Hampshire, I would have voted for Gore.  I didn't have to make that choice.

After the fold, I'll talk a bit about the decision processes that go into this and why they're relevant to 2008.  For those of you in Vermont, the first few paragraphs will be familiar to you.  For those of you who don't, you'll learn some very strange things about the way we choose a governor.

A majority of Republicans are "admittedly" voting for Clinton during the 2008 Democratic Primaries and yet the Democratic Party continues to act like it is a legitimately close race between her and Barack Obama.  How many stupid people do you honestly think that there are in the United States of America that are actually buying all this crap?  Is it not OBVIOUS that the news media is playing a "shell game" with the people's emotions (and intelligence)?  Doesn't this look like a bait-and-switch operation to you?  Is it not obvious why Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Fox News Channel and The Wall Street Journal, has finally said ENOUGH OF THIS NONSENSE! and is putting his power behind Barack Obama now?

Wake up America, there is a naked emperor running around out there somewhere...

This is another article I wrote in my college paper, the Justice at Brandeis  University that I think might be of general interest to dailykos readers.

I have to tell you, tears came to my eyes after watching the movie 'Recount' on HBO yesterday.  Flipping through HBO again this evening, I saw that it was back on, and I had to really just vent a little bit.  To be honest the last 8 years have really been a big suck-fest of crappitude for the American people.  And yet, it seems like a bell-curve of idiocy.  I'll go into that a little more in a bit.  First I would just like to explain the 2000 election from my perspective.  I was 17 years old, too young to vote, but not young enough that I couldn't be politically active.  It was my senior year, and I had been getting more active in politics, although before that point, I felt myself to be a liberal Republican, along the lines of my grandmother, looking at Gore and Bush, it was an obvious choice who I should choose to vote for.  But there were other issues that drove me to the Democrats.Continue with me over the jump....

Many here have readabout how Hillary Clinton went down to Palm Beach retirement communities and compared the need to count the votes in Michigan and Florida to various epic struggles in American and world history - from the civil rights movement to the recent election in Zimbabwe. But to really push the buttons of these little old men and women, Hillary picked the scab of the 2000 election:

"In Florida, you learned the hard way what happens when your votes aren't counted and the candidate with fewer votes is declared the winner," she said. "The lesson of 2000 here in Florida is crystal clear: if any votes aren't count, the will of the people isn't realized and our democracy is diminished."

This morning on MSNBC actor Kevin Spacey (who stars in the upcoming HBO film "Recount" as one of Al Gore's key players in the mess) was asked whether he felt that Al Gore was cheated in Florida's 2000 recount process. While Kevin doesn't give a direct answer it is clear that from everything he lists that he believes the evidence speaks for itself.

He says that from watching the film, people will be able to draw their own conclusions. This makes me want to see the film even more, since it's focus on accuracy should be damning enough in it's own right to voter purging, butterfly ballots, districts that never were recounted etc.

Even 8 years later this is an incredibly painful experience to re-live. Not because I supported Al Gore at the time (I supported Nader) but because of how disastrous the Bush presidency has been for our country.

Has anyone seen "Recount" yet? Weigh in with comments / reviews below: