Today In Bad Pundit’s Fallacies: “Joe Lieberman Cost Gore the Election”

Almost anytime either the 2000 election or Joe Lieberman come up in comments, someone will proffer their theory that Gore picking Lieberman was why he lost the election in 2000. Just so I have something to link to so I don’t have to go through this every time it comes up, here’s why this is a very silly argument:

• First, let’s start with actual evidence. The political science literature shows that vice presidential selections generally have no discernible impact on election results, and 2000 was no exception. If either party had an advantage, it was the Democrats, but the effect is negligible. Reaction to the pick of Lieberman was more positive than is typical for a VP pick.
• Yes, social science is far from perfect. But the stories told to justify the idea that Lieberman swung the election to Bush are massively implausible. The election came down to Florida. So…we’re being asked to believe that Lieberman was a net negative in a relatively conservative southern state with a large population of elderly people and a relatively large numbers of Jewish people? Please. Or you could also see the election coming down to New Hampshire, and, again, I don’t see how a New England Democrat who was immensely popular in his own state at the time was a net drag on the ticket there.
• There’s also another important point, which helps to explain why Gore picked Lieberman although he didn’t particularly like him. The media, which was engaged in an all-out war on Gore, loved Lieberman. Picking Holy Joe earned Gore pretty much the only positive media coverage his campaign generated. I don’t know how much this helped but it couldn’t have hurt.
• But “LIEBERMAN WANTED LABELS ON VIDEO GAMES” is one of the more hilariously solipsistic pundit’s fallacies I’ve ever heard. You will be unsurprised that exit polls do not find evidence that this issue drove voters in 2000.
• Yes, Lieberman was terrible in the VP debate. As for how much vice presidential debates affect election outcomes, ask President Michael Dukakis.
• We should also remember that while at the time Lieberman was an irritating squish, in 2000 he was bad like Dianne Feinstein, not bad like Zell Miller.
• One thing that a lot of people have forgotten, willfully or otherwise, is just how much “Bill Clinton shouldn’t be impeached, but what he did was horrible” was a consensus position among the Democratic caucus during the impeachment. Lieberman has come to symbolize this just because he’s such an insufferable blowhard in general, but on this issue he was the rule, not the exception. Paul Wellstone, fer Chrissakes, called for a censure vote while going on about “the disgrace which those lies have placed upon his Presidency for all time” and “the President’s behavior was shameful, despicable, unworthy, a disgrace to his office” and “we all condemn the President’s behavior.”
• As the consensus among even liberal Democratic officeholders suggests, the idea that using Clinton was a completely straightforward question for the Gore campaign because of the former’s good approval ratings is an anachronism. There were many people who approved of Clinton’s performance in general while believing that he had engaged in troubling, immoral behavior that also reflected badly on history’s greatest liar, the man who claimed he invented the internet Al Gore. Look at those exit polls again. Choosing Lieberman to try to diffuse this line of attack was not irrational.
• Does this mean that Lieberman was a good pick by Gore? Well, no. Precisely because vice presidential picks don’t affect electoral results very much, the most important thing is to choose someone who would be an acceptable president if that is necessary and who could make a useful contribution as a vice president. Lieberman obviously fails both tests, and hence I think Gore shouldn’t have picked him. But did Lieberman cost Gore the election? It’s overwhelmingly clear that he did not.
• …oh, and I forgot to mention this, but even worse is the idea that Lieberman cost Gore the election by calling for military ballots to be counted.  First of all, Lieberman was not the relevant decision-maker.  And second, “we should use an ‘intent of the voter’ standard for every ballot except those cast be people in the military” would be a massive political loser and the Florida courts would have rejected the argument anyway.  So…no.