Misery Loves Company

We presume that confusion loves company as well. The Man Without Full Understanding is puzzled by the recent John Ellis piece describing the strategy behind the Al Gore endorsement of Howard Dean:

I understand that now that Al Gore has endorsed Howard Dean, that if Dr. Dean wins the White House in 2004 then Mr. Gore will be in a good position to claim various goodies. Check.

But I'm having a little trouble with what happens if Dr. Dean steers the Democratic Party into the political equivalent of an airliner collision with Mount Fuji in 2004, losing the White House and more seats in Congress - thereby weakening or eliminating the ability of Senate Democrats to block Republican judicial nominees....

John, explain to me again how by endorsing Dr. Dean and helping cause such a gigantic, historic wreck, Al Gore puts himself in a better position to pick up the pieces and claim the Democratic nomination in 2008. I think I must have missed the explanation the first time.

Hmm. My own puzzlement began a bit sooner in the Ellis article:

...It's a very shrewd move. Start with the least likely outcome. If Governor Dean defeats President Bush in 2004, Al Gore becomes Secretary of State or a Supreme Court Justice or whatever he wants, the day after the election is over. That's how much Dean will owe him.

Supreme Court Justice? After Florida 2000, and "No controlling legal authority"? Hmm, maybe it is a clever ploy to balance the budget by selling tickets to Supreme Court oral arguments - Scalia versus Gore, film at eleven. President Dean could nominate him, but would a Senate with at least forty one Republicans ever let him be confirmed?

And would the public object to a Republican roadblock? Sandra Day O'Connor was a (minor) elected official; Al Gore is known as a visibly partisan politician, not a judge - would the public really want him on the bench, pretending to apply the law impartially?

Ridiculous.

Comments

[....a moment with Easycure]

I qualify as one voice of the public.

The answer is, of course not.

I wouldn't want him judging the next Miss Girls Gone Wild contest......

[TM]

Hey, we're talking about Al, not Bill. Maybe you meant "Girls of the Internet Gone Wild"

[Jeff J.]

The fact that Gore flunked out of Vanderbilt Law School (after smoking way too much marijuana) presumbly would disqualify him from being a Supreme Court Justice. But with a President Dean, anything's possible.

[Dean]

GOV Dean could NOMINATE Gore, and if he's held up by the GOP, that's not Dean's problem.

Indeed, it might well be portrayed as GOP obstreperousness (especially if it was characterized as "Dean nominates statesman Gore to High Court" blahblahblah).

IF you believe that the public is tired of the nominee gridlock (as Republicans claim), then the tables could be turned (and w/ a sympathetic media, could be turned relatively easily).

[Mike]

Stop for a moment and think of the sickening and depraved alternate universe you are describing...President Dean and SC Justice Gore! I will boldly predict that if this alternate universe were to become reality, 2008 is of no concern, because this country wouldn't survive that long.

[Alex Parker]

I think Ellis was probably just emphasizing that Gore would have a lot of say in a Dean administration. I think that's overstating it a bit. After all, it's not like Dean "owes" Gore his nomination--Dean was already quite on the way of getting it on his own.

As far as I know, Gore doesn't have any legal training, and thus would be completely unqualified for such a position. My history is a bit rusty, but has there ever been a non-lawyer non-judge nominated for the Supreme Court?

[TM]

I think Ellis was probably just emphasizing that Gore would have a lot of say in a Dean administration.

Well, my own post is a bit of an over-pounce. I was sure I read the idea elsewhere, in which case the meme deserved a bit more of a pounding. However, it was only Friday morning that Howard Kurtz reminded me - the second propagator was Andrew Sullivan (who cited John Ellis, darn it).

Kurtz:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55796-2003Dec11.html

Sullivan:
http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2003_12_07_dish_archive.html#107094752856102854

[Robert Musil]

The well-brought-up and savvy John Ellis responded to my original post.

[TM]

I saw that. And one of his points (which I accept) is that the Dems were in trouble with some Southern Senate seats long before Dean emerged as the front-runner.

Which brings me to a related question - do we really think Hillary! would make a stronger Southern candidate than Dean? I suspect that on balance she might be, depending mainly on how well Bill still goes over down South. But if Dean is an annoying Northeastern liberal, what is Hillary? (OK, Chicago is MidWest, but she is surely not Southern). And I can see Hillary doing better among women and blacks, but Dean, with his rural Vermont gun-loving ways, would do better among the angry white men down South.

It's a puzzle - I am not convinced that Hillary is the solution to Dean's problems.

[Robert Musil]

"[O]ne of his points (which I accept) is that the Dems were in trouble with some Southern Senate seats long before Dean emerged as the front-runner."

Yes, and that's one of his points to which I did not respond. Frankly, just because the Dems were heading south in the South before the Rise of the Deanies doesn't mean the Rise hasn't made things worse for them in the South and almost everywhere else. That is: I agree with John's point, but it doesn't move the main point at issue: Will a Dean nomination substantially increase the risk of a big Congressional Democratic loss.

I think the answer is clearly "yes." For one thing, a big Dean loss will seriously erode the ability of Democrats to win OPEN SEATS in Congress. So Illinois could move from "likely-Dem" to "likely-Rep" all at once - that's not the South. Here in California a BIG Dean loss could be real trouble for Senator Boxer. This is a state in which OVER SIXTY PERCENT of voters voted Republican in the recent recall election, including very substantial blocs of Hispanics and African-Americans. If that can happen here in Lotus Land, focusing on the absence of coat tails effects in '72 and '88 isn't that much comfort for the Dems.

And I think they know that.

I agree that Hillary! is poison in the South - and for her to snatch the nomination from Dean at this point would risk a fissure in the Democratic Party that might create a disaster even bigger than the coming likely Deanergammerung.

But she still might be able to work the snatch - because she would be snatching from within the Democratic Party, whose mechanisms and institutions she for the moment largely controls (read "superdelegates").

Yes, for Hillary! it's just Fun, Fun, Fun until Deanies takes the T-Bird away!!!!

Love yah, love yah, love yah. Merry Christmas and Ciao!