if al gore had been allowed to take office in 2001...

[WalterMitty]

...vice president lieberman would likely be the democrat nominee right now.

thinking of that even makes me wish i would have voted for gore.]

president lieberman would be fantastic!

[Duke 🇺🇸]

I wouldn't mind Joe either, though I didn't like him in 2000 like I do now.

[Reluctant Republican]

I have my doubts he would have gotten the nomination. Then again, there would likely have been no Iraq war under Gore, so maybe he'd still be acceptable to Liberals. I just can't see the Democrats nominating Lieberman though.

[Frodo]

As far as the environment and global warming is concerned, Gore would have been a vast improvement on who we have now. 

That said, I am not entirely convinced that he would not eventually have invaded Iraq, though I am certain that he would have done a far better job than this current administration had in the critical months immediately after the ouster of Saddam Hussein's regime. 

[Lief 🗽]

Well, he wouldn't have a war to support, and as the Democratic Vice President, I doubt he'd go around trashing Democrats constantly, so he wouldn't be as horrible as he is today.

But he might very well have lost the nomination, especially if Gore had been defeated in 2004.

[Boris]

I doubt he would have won the general election. Lieberman has worse charisma than Michael Dukakis and the odds of the Democrats winning five elections in a row is very unlikely.

[Nym90]

...vice president lieberman would likely be the democrat nominee right now.

thinking of that even makes me wish i would have voted for gore.]

president lieberman would be fantastic!

If we presume that Gore becoming President means that the war in Iraq is never waged, then I would agree with you that Lieberman would be a good President.

But after 16 years out of the White House the odds would favor the Republicans finally winning back control. It might've even happened in 2004 depending on how well Gore did.

[angus]

lieberman would be fantastic!

Are we talking about the Joe Lieberman who was an outspoken supporter of school vouchers in 1999 but who suddenly stopped supporting them and started saying he was against them in 2000?  Are we talking about the Joe Lieberman who, in 2005, said "I want Democrats to be back in the majority in Washington and elect a Democratic president in 2008" or are we talking about the Joe Lieberman who endorsed John McCain three months ago?  Are we talking about the Joe Lieberman who said on the senate floor "Affirmative action is dividing us in ways its creators could never have intended because most Americans who do support equal opportunity, and are not biased, do not think it is fair to discriminate against some Americans as a way to make up for historic discrimination against other Americans," or are we talking about the Joe Lieberman who, after being selected by Al Gore as running mate, said "I continue to say, when it comes to affirmative action, mend it but please, don't end it."  Are we talking about the Joe Lieberman who, in 1992 voted to preserve an amendment that would prohibit the District of Columbia from using money to extend health insurance benefits to "domestic partners" of D.C. employees.  Or are we talking about the Joe Lieberman who likes to point out his strong support for gay rights, promising to work for legislation to extend to domestic partners of all federal employees the same benefits provided spouses of their colleagues?

One can never be sure which Joe Lieberman we're talking about.  I don't mind people who disagree with me.  I vote for such people often, if I respect their integrity.  But I'd at least like to know where someone stands.  Joe Lieberman ought to get with Mitt Romney and form a political party.  And they can call it the "Stick your finger in the wind and see which way it's blowing" Party.

[King]

<blockquote>And they can call it the "Stick your finger in the wind and see which way it's blowing" Party.</blockquote>

I'd support that party.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Gore would have been defeated in 2004 because it's very difficult for the same party to win 4 elections in a row: ppl just get sick of them. Lieberman would be running for the nomination, but he wouldn't get it.

[Mr. Morden]

Gore would have been defeated in 2004 because it's very difficult for the same party to win 4 elections in a row: ppl just get sick of them.

Not really, at least historically.  Once your party has won 3 straight, your odds of going 4 straight are no worse than 50/50.  Of the 7 times that a party has successfully won 3 consecutive terms, they've successfully extended that to 4 or more consecutive terms 4 times.

[falling apart like the ashes of American flags]

If that had happened President McCain would be preparing to run for his second term now, with the 2008 race being the 2004 one minus Edwards and plus Hillary.

[Duke 🇺🇸]

Gore would have been defeated in 2004 because it's very difficult for the same party to win 4 elections in a row: ppl just get sick of them.

Not really, at least historically.  Once your party has won 3 straight, your odds of going 4 straight are no worse than 50/50.  Of the 7 times that a party has successfully won 3 consecutive terms, they've successfully extended that to 4 or more consecutive terms 4 times.

I don't think the same party has held the White House for more than three terms since FDR was President. Gore would've probably lost in 2004. We also cannot assume he would not have invaded Iraq. The Clinton Administration was talking about such a plan before they left office.

[falling apart like the ashes of American flags]

The funny thing is Congressional elections wouldn't have been much different. Republican gains in 2002 and 2004 and Democratic gains in 2006 (though not as massive. GOP probably still controls Congress.)

[Lief 🗽]

If that had happened President McCain would be preparing to run for his second term now, with the 2008 race being the 2004 one minus Edwards and plus Hillary.

Minus Obama too, probably. Edwards might have run for re-election in North Carolina in 2004, where he may or may not have won (depends on McCain's margin of victory). If he had won, he'd be very well situated to take on McCain.

[Robespierre's Jaw]

I doubt Vice President Lieberman would have gotten the Democratic Nomination in 2008, had Al Gore been elected in 2000 and managed to be re-elected in 2004. All I know is that in this scenario that Hillary Clinton would have ran, no so sure about Obama.

[Mr. Morden]

Gore would have been defeated in 2004 because it's very difficult for the same party to win 4 elections in a row: ppl just get sick of them.

Not really, at least historically.  Once your party has won 3 straight, your odds of going 4 straight are no worse than 50/50.  Of the 7 times that a party has successfully won 3 consecutive terms, they've successfully extended that to 4 or more consecutive terms 4 times.

I don't think the same party has held the White House for more than three terms since FDR was President.

Right, but there's only been one time since FDR-Truman that a party managed *three* consecutive terms (Reagan-Bush).  If you look back throughout all of US history, we've had 7 times when a party managed at least 3 consecutive presidential election victories.  In 4 of those 7 times, they then went on to win a 4th term.  So once you win 3 terms, there's no reason to think you have a particularly bad chance at winning a 4th term.  Thus there's no reason to think an incumbent President Gore running in 2004 would be at a bad disadvantage because of historical precedent.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Gore wouldn't have attacked Iraq. It's pretty hard to predict what over 7 years of alternate history would have resulted in for 2008. My guess is that if Gore failed to prevent 9/11, he'd get destroyed in a landslide by Bush in the 2004 election.

[Ben.]

Gore wouldn't have attacked Iraq. It's pretty hard to predict what over 7 years of alternate history would have resulted in for 2008. My guess is that if Gore failed to prevent 9/11, he'd get destroyed in a landslide by Bush in the 2004 election.

Your probably underestimating the extent to which folks within a Gore adminisration would have been influenced by neo-conservative attitudes, it was apart in both parties and while he'd probably be less likley than Bush to go after Iraq I'd still say there would be a fair chance of a President Gore attacking Sadam Hussain.

[WalterMitty]

even if gore would have been defeated in 2004, lieberman would likely be the frontrunner for the 08 nomination

[perdedor]

I find it unlikely. It's quite possible that Lieberman would have resigned as Vice-President after disagreements between himself and Gore in regards to his handling of the 9/11 situation. Lieberman has always been a war mongering hack.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

The only issue where Lieberman is at odds with the Democrats is the war.  If we had never gone into Iraq, then Lieberman would still be loved by liberals everywhere.

[Mr. Morden]

For those who think that Gore might have actually gone to war with Iraq, or that the Clinton administration "had plans" to do so before they left office, or even that Lieberman might have resigned as VP if Gore had failed to invade:

I think you're misreading history.  The Clinton administration's policy might have been called "regime change", but that just meant that they were looking at doing everything they could think of that undermined Saddam's regime **short of war**.  They were basically hoping for a coup.  I don't think there's any evidence to suggest that anyone in the Clinton administration seriously considered an actual invasion of Iraq.  They thought Saddam was a problem, and that something more serioius might have to happen eventually, but that's about as far as it went.

After 9/11, it was hardly inevitable that the focus would have shifted to Iraq after Afghanistan.  I don't see why one would necessarily think that President Gore would have shifted to Iraq after Afghanistan.  In fact, I don't even see why one would think that President Hillary Clinton or President Joe Biden or President John Kerry would have shifted to Iraq after Afghanistan, even though they all voted to authorize the war.

In fact, honestly, I'm not even sure if President John McCain would have shifted to Iraq after Afghanistan, or if President George W. Bush would have done so if he had had Vice President John Danforth and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates rather than Cheney and Rumsfeld.  While there was a small group of people (the "neoconservatives") who had advocated invading Iraq for a long time, it wasn't the obvious thing to do.

The aforementioned people (aside from Gore) ended up supporting the war once Bush put it on the table and pushed for it hard, but that doesn't mean those people would have done the same if they had been president, or that someone like Lieberman would have been moved to resign if Gore hadn't decided on war with Iraq.

[Rococo4]

why would Gore have been allowed to take office?  He lost the election.