Yes, that's what he said; John Stewart just said he would've voted for McCain over Gore in 2000...

[iiibbb]

... in his interview with Kristol.

[liberalpragmatist]

1. Lots of people would have

Obviously, we now know that McCain has exposed himself as being shameless, hypocritical and erratic.

But back in 2000, lots of well-intentioned people thought he was a good guy. Remember how many Dems used to love him?

[Essene]

41. yup

[krkaufman]

43. Well, perhaps... but we never got to see a "general election" McCain ...

... so he may have been just as incompetent as this one.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

2. Stewart is distinctly the less cerebral of the Stewart / Colbert duo.

[DJ13]

3. Many would have, but the current McCain isnt the same McCain

He's become a windup Bush clone who is obviously not the person of honor so many thought he was back in 2000.

[Cha]

14. I would have voted for Al Gore over mccain who

has always turned me off..something bullshitty about the "straight talk express".

[rebel with a cause]

28. I would have voted mccain over bush, but Gore

over either one of them. But then I found it hard to stomach lieberman so if mccain had ran a clean campaign and been a lot different than he is, I can't say for sure. I really did not like lieberman, I called him a snake oil salesman. Now I have more reason to dislike him but my feelings are about the same as they were in 2000. In my mind he was Gore's palin.

[Cha]

30. You were smart on lieman..he had

me fooled for awhile 'cause I wanted to like him for Gore's sake..

In retrospect though..he was a slimeball from the getgo.

And, I was a total newbie to politics in 2000.

[EastTennesseeDem]

4. 2000 McCain was quite different from 2008 McCain

I still would've voted for Gore, but McCain used to come across as genuinely friendly. I disagreed with him, but he seemed like a nice guy.

Plus, McCain and Stewart are friends. I think McCain's been on the show more than any other guest.

[springhill]

42. McCain lies because of his sense of honor, Jonathan Chait now proclaims

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh092508.shtml

As he starts, Chait spends several pages listing McCain’s many recent lies. Quite literally, Chait asserts that McCain’s degree of lying is without modern precedent. (“McCain's untruths, in their frequency and their audacity, defy any modern historical precedent.”) Chait is puzzled by this, of course, for the predictable reason:

CHAIT (10/8/08): How could McCain—a man widely regarded, not so long ago, as one of the country's most honor-bound politicians, and therefore an unusually honest one—have descended to this ignominious low?

McCain was “widely regarded” as being “unusually honest.” How then, the schoolboy wonders, could he be lying so much?

One possible answer doesn’t enter Chait’s head. It simply doesn’t occur to Chait that the reputation McCain enjoyed (among Chait’s colleagues, of course) may have been undeserved or mistaken. That would mean that Chait and his colleagues had been wrong in a basic assessment—and clearly, that isn’t allowed by the rules. Let’s face it: Getting these robots to relinquish a narrative is like pulling a pit bull from a large leg of lamb. Instead, we quickly reach Chait’s thesis: McCain has been lying his keister off because of his vast sense of honor:

[gravity]

5. McCain 2000 was a moderate

He was one of the few republicans I respected, until he sold out for the 2008 election.

[Forkboy]

8. Actually, he wasn't, but the maverick thing was sold better then.

His record has never been moderate.

Not knocking anyone who thought so, mind you. Like I say, the image was more believable then than now.

[Crunchy Frog]

6. Oh noes!

We'd better all hate him and stop watching his show now. :grr:

[tularetom]

7. IIRC we had an open primary in CA in 2000

and I think I did vote for him in order to keep bush from winning. Knowing I'd vote against him in the GE if he was the candidate.

[NancyG]

26. Yup. In 2000 voted for McC in CA to fuck with the Republican open primary ...

But voted for Gore in the general.

[Left Is Write]

9. I wouldn't have, but as others have said, McCain was a different man 8 years ago.

Look how many of us voted for Joe Lieberman for vice president 8 years ago. Would any of us do so now?

[Occam Bandage]

20. Gore was, too. He was far more restrained, awkward, and artificial.

I still think that Gore would have made a fantastic President, but the Gore of 2006 was not present in 2000, just as the McCain of 2000 is nowhere to be found in 2008.

[Forkboy]

10. If Hillary had run in 2000 I would have voted for her over Gore.

Gore 1.0 is not the Gore 2.0 we see today, and Lieberman was a horrible VP choice.

[Danger Mouse]

11. Big fucking deal. I would've too. I didn't like Gore. I liked McCain,.

[GreenPartyVoter]

12. I considered it myself. I am not usually a single issue voter but

if I had thought he would make positive sweeping changes to campaign finance reform and other election issues, I _might_ have done it.

[mwei924]

13. Bill Maher says that too. I'm not sure they would've actually done it.

Because clearly, both are not Republicans and in 2000, they had only seen him in primary mode. McCain in the primaries is kind of normal. I assume that in the General Election in 2000, McCain would've gone just as nasty if he started losing.

I think they like to say that they would've supported McCain in 2000 to show how he's totally sold his soul. Whether or not they would've actually voted McCain over Gore is a little suspect.

[Occam Bandage]

15. That does not surprise me.

Stewart, more than any ideology, wants a government and a media that are efficient, straightforward, transparent, pragmatic, and dedicated. When he mocks someone, it is for failing to meet those criteria. McCain in 2000 appeared to be all of those things.

[Versailles]

16. First major rift with my parents in my adult life...

I voted for McCain in the 2000 primary and told my parents that if McCain were in the final race, he had my vote. My parents and I argued about it constantly and it got ugly. He was my senator at the time and I felt that he was a very upstanding man. He was, at that time, willing to buck party lines for what he felt was right. Since then he's become nothing more than a extreme rightwing shill. I sincerely believe he'd like to regain his honor and integrity he once had, but he's been corrupted by his quest for power and the radicals of the GOP.

[Cha]

17. mccain has always been a pissass..he just hid

it better back then.

[zulchzulu]

18. I was a Bradley man...

Many didn't mind McCain in 2000 until he lost in South Carolina. That's when his "maverick" soul died.

[vixengrl]

29. I will always maintain that it was how he was beat in that contest

that warped him. He must have just kept those dirty tricks and those phone calls about his family in his mind, and it bent him.

I thought McCain really meant to be a straight-talker, too, and kind of hoped the GOP was shifting away from the Gingrich "Contract on America" types to be competitive against what was a really successful Democratic administration with Clinton. (I actually expected people to be more dissatisfied with the Republicans in congress for forcing/letting the impeachment go down.) McCain wanted to appeal to the moderates, but Bush just figured out where all the Reagan coalition were, and kicked his butt.

I suspect McCain focused on the negativity, and thought the Rove/dirty tricks were what did it. That and he decided to pull more conservative--I hate to think anyone would vote against their conscience in the Senate to create a political image for a campaign--but maybe he did. I dislike how he didn't stand up like he could've on torture. (The Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Commissions act have some concessions he should have stood up against, with his experience, he could've pulled a much more resounding moral voice. He just didn't. And that would've been a leadership opportunity. Missed.)

The death of a maverick in SC is just a piece of his problems, this campaign. He didn't have party discipline, didn't define himself so much as undermine himself, and he also started the negativity early enough for the false bits to be seen as bullshit, and for most people to get tired of what sounds like constant complaining.

It's a shame that he let the crap from this campaign be done to his reputation. I think he wasn't necessarily a great national candidate, and maybe the executive race was something he should've stayed away from. But he owned that seat for Senate and if he had wanted to, could've done good things with it. It was secure--who's beating him in AZ? and he could've done things in the Senate. Like his job.

Instead, even a guy whose brain just about exploded in his head voted a little more than him this past year. McCain didn't dare make a mark for fear of making a mark. Making enemies in his own party--couldn't win a primary that way. So he reckoned?

Won a primary--lost an election (so the best polls and projections say--and I want to believe them so I will), and a reputation.

If he looked to himself better, without ambition, "Maverick" would've been a better title than "president" anyway. He could've led his party away from some of their excesses. Could have been a famous, outspoken, leading senator. Instead of a punk. Which is what his campaign has made of him. And that will hurt worse than 2000 SC did. I surely think it will.

[AtomicKitten]

19. Stewart is to the right of Colbert politically, but I can't see anyone voting for a Republican.

[MattP]

21. We only had half a primary to get to now him so if he would have got the nom who knows?

The real McShame never go exposed.

[seabeyond]

22. i would have too. BUT something no one is considering. 2000 we only heard a bit of mccain

and mainly it was people focusing on who was gonna win the dem and/or waiting until things shaked out before seriously taking a look at the candidates. for us to say we could have voted for mccain in 2000 is not necessarily true. after he spent the time campaigning against gore, we may have the same reaction back then that we have watching mccain thru this shit.... no fuckin way

also you didnt have him voting with bush fuck up for 8 yrs

coming off clinton, he did do a lot of damage to the nation and dem party with his own fuck up. there was a whole thing going on in 2000

[seabeyond]

23. dupe

[jobycom]

24. Gore got the same treatment in 2000 that Clinton got this year. A lot of Democrats

hated him back then, and believed all the lies about him. Up until he announced he wasn't going to run again, there was an anti-Gore faction here on DU as strong as the anti-Clinton faction during this year's primaries. Many of my first posts here were debunking all the lies people believed about him.

Funny thing was, back then the "leftists" all hated Gore as a DLC sell-out and DINO and all the usual bullshit, but the day after he announced he wasn't going to run in 2004, the exact same posters who had blasted him as DLC began blasting the DLC for forcing him out of the race, and began proclaiming that Gore was the last true liberal. I mean, the very same posters, sometimes just a few days apart, went from blasting Gore to blasting the DLC for "forcing Gore out of the race."

Michael Moore did that. Michael Moore spoke against Gore during the 2000 election, spent a lot of the next couple of years defending his opposition to Gore, and then in recent years expressed regret that Gore wasn't running in 2008.

So yeah, there were a lot of people who claimed to be Democrats and probably thought of themselves as Democrats back then who would have voted McCain over Gore, and some of them did vote Nader over Gore. A lot of people here did that.

Then I watched it again this year with Clinton. History rhymes, oh yes it does. Watch for it against Obama in a couple years. Then I'll be defending him and I'll get called names for it then, too.

[Curtland1015]

25. I remember reading about McCain and seeing interviews with him years ago and liking him quite a bit.

Nothing like a Presidential campaign to prove what a person is REALLY like.

[Two Sheds]

27. If John McCain had stood up and fought back against the people who smeared him in 2000

if he would have led a principled opposition within the GOP to insane economic policies, an illegal war, inhumane practices in that war, and an unprecedented trashing of the Constitution, then most of the people I know would be voting for him for President and he'd be cruising to election. He did not do those things.

[nyccitizen]

31. I might've too. But it wasn't the same McCain OR Gore...

Gore found himself and McCain lost himself. Back in 2000 they were very different people.

[grantcart]

32. well Gore found a way to convey himself to a larger public and McCain was revealed before the public

[Two Sheds]

37. no foolin'

Al Gore vs John McCain.
Gore is one of the most respected men in the world.
McCain is running a campaign so inept and nasty that his obit might not make the front pages in Flagstaff.

[democracy1st]

33. Better question is why is he interviewing this guy ?

[blogslut]

34. Johnny McSame has been on TDS many times

My guess is that Jon favored him then because he knew him socially. I bet you ten to one there's nobody more saddened to find out what a worm McCain turned out to be than Jon Stewart.

[chollybocker]

35. I hear Stewart is a comedian and says things that are sometim...

oh, fuck it. never mind.

[StrictlyRockers]

36. Stewart sometimes says stupid shit for a laugh or for ratings...or maybe both.

[Blue For You]

38. McCain has always sucked bigtime. Who the hell would have

been his VP choice back then, Victoria Jackson?

[Hippo_Tron]

39. McCain of 2000 was less scary for the same reason Joe Lieberman of 2000 is scary

McCain in reality doesn't believe most of the right wing Republican bullshit on social or fiscal issues. Not that he's a liberal by any means. It's simply that he doesn't really give a shit one way or another on domestic policy. McCain wants to be President so that he can have control over the military. He wants to fight wars and that's all he wants to do.

Of course in 2000 nobody realized this because it was peacetime and nobody was proposing fighting more wars. This is why Joe Lieberman didn't seem so bad at the time as well.

[texasleo]

40. Ditto, maybe.

[Johonny]

44. McCain 2000 was too stupid to beat Bush in the primary

Who would vote for a guy that couldn't out smart Bush? Al Gore actually Beat Bush. Give me the guy that beats Bush any day.