Joe Lieberman sometimes seems to want to ride into the White House by donning an elephant's suit. To his critics, he's coming awfully close to selling himself as Bush Lite. According to Joe, the way to get America back on the right track is to vote for Lieberman, the man who's not Bush, but who's also not one of those extremist democrats. On Monday, he told a recent National Press Club audience:
"I share the anger of my fellow Democrats with George Bush and the wrong direction he has taken our nation <...> But the answer to his outdated, extremist ideology is not to be found in outdated extremes of our own. That path will not solve the challenges of our time and it could well send us Democrats back to the political wilderness for a long time."
But Lieberman's frustration is significantly less focused than say, Howard Dean's. Lieberman's campaign strategy is pretty straight-forward: play it relatively conservative, say as little about the lack of WMDs as you can get away with, and criticize the other Dems for being too liberal. It seems this strategy was working for a brief period, but the latest polls show Lieberman lagging behind the other top candidates. The most recent Iowa poll shows Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt leading the pack with Joe trailing in fourth place, four points behind John Kerry.
John Nichols of the Nation writes that we shouldn't be too surprised that Lieberman's technique is failing him. He argues that Lieberman's rush to the center is exactly what drove Democratic voters away in 2002.
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http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2003/32/we_522_03b.html