No, this is not a bad homophobic joke from the 60's that your dad would hear at a 'stag party'.

Actually, it's a bad joke from campaign 2008.  

Why do John McCain, Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham always seem to be traveling somewhere together?

Seriously, every time McCain gets on a plane, it seems he's with both of the two other Stooges.  

I can't help but wonder what they'd each shout as each one in turn put on their parachutes and jumped off the plane.  

Vice Presidential speculation is a lot of fun, mostly because it's so harmless, but we've got to remember the political role of the Vice Presidential nominee. All the discussion of ideological or geographical balance is a distraction from what we're really talking about, which is surrogacy. The Vice President's job -- aside from their Constitutional responsibility -- is to work as the President's number one cheerleader in whatever forum they're best suited. The hard part is picking the forum where you need help.

The President cannot be all things to all people and cannot be in more than one place at one time. They need help. They need surrogates to extend their presence and talk to certain audiences. They need surrogates to compliment and extend. A surrogate talks to specific audiences by specific mediums about specific topics. Vice President Cheney does Chris Wallace and Rush Limbaugh. In other words, he's the President's top surrogate for Southern White men (his base) and the GOP's corporatist wing. Al Gore took a different approach in 2000. He picked Joseph Lieberman to speak to moderate values voters that we're supposedly wobbly on the Democrats.

When we talk about the Democratic nominee for Vice President, we need to know whom they'll be expected to speak with. Simply picking someone because they're from the South or they're moderate doesn't make much sense if it isn't in the context of a political strategy. The strategy might mean shoring up and turning out your base. Or it might be peeling off a few thousand moderate voters in an obscure district in a crucial swing state.

Some say the first rule of picking a Vice President is trust. Others say it's to play foil as the attack dog. In my mind, those are obvious prerequisites that don't mean anything if they can't be translated into electoral politics. Dick Cheney isn't Vice President just because the President trusts him. It's because he plays the modest but critical role of keeping the base happy.  The winner of the Veepstakes has to mean something in the context of the electorate and the Democratic coalition.

This all might be obvious, but it's worth saying. I'm not exactly sure why, for instance, John Edwards was the Vice Presidential nominee in 2004. He wasn't a surrogate for the stoutly anti-war wing of the party. He wasn't a surrogate for Southern white men (the campaign didn't even try in the South). It seems the logic was that he was charming and charismatic and inoffensive. His selection was based purely on tactics -- he would make the ticket more electable -- without actually making the ticket more electable.

This week Joe Lieberman introduced S. 1257, the Senate version of the DC voting rights bill (the House version, H.R. 1905, passed last month). So far he's got seven cosponsors, and it's good to see that they include two of the Democratic presidential candidates, along with other Democrats from across the political spectrum, and the two senators from Utah (both Republican):

• Robert Bennett (R-UT)
• Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY)
• Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
• Edward Kennedy (D-MA)
• Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
• Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
• Barack Obama (D-IL)

Ok, I am starting to get a little worried about the Lamont Lieberman race. I asked a bit back what was going on, and why we were losing the momentum, and I was told that it was because we had taken a month off.

So I read Chris's piece on the Survey USA polling data.  I'd like to highlight a few weird and interesting pieces regarding Lieberman.  I noted last month that Lieberman's numbers were not cracking.  That trend changed in April, he's now sinking in response to Lamont's candidacy and the negative press coverage.  What is very interesting is that he's taken a hit among Democrats, with a drop of two in approvals and a rise in six of disapprovals, but that's not where most of the damage has been done.  Among independents, Joe's has just been crunched, with a ten point drop in approval rating and a twelve point rise in disapprovals.  That's a net approve/disapprove change of eight points among Democrats, and twenty two points among Independents.  Wow.

The second important nugget to draw out is that liberals have crossed the threshold against Lieberman.  Last month, approval among liberals for Lieberman was forty nine, and disapproval was forty one.  Now forty nine percent of liberals disapprove of Joe, and forty six approve.  And yes, liberals are the ones who vote in the primary.

I think Joe's going to jump.  The problem for Joe is that the independents are running away from his even faster than the Democrats.  That's really interesting, and I could posit a few guesses as to why this is going on.  Jerome has blogged about the 'indycrat' phenomenon, where it turns out independents trend very closely to Democrats.  And Chris has written about how the progressive netroots actually track closer to popular American opinion than the Democratic base.  Now, take this with salt, but that's what I think is going on in Connecticut.  When I registered to vote, I strongly considered registering as an independent.  I felt that the system wasn't something I wanted to be a part of despite my progressive leanings.  Psychologically, the netroots is probably more similar to the apathetic voter and their distrust of 'the system' than perhaps we might think.  I mean, yes, we're politically junkies, and independents aren't, but there is a mutual dislike towards insiders like Joe Lieberman.  That might explain the killer drop among independents.  

Regardless, it's a big problem for Lieberman, because it means that even if he does run as an independent, it's going to be very tough to win.  It looks like his popularity was an inch thick and a mile wide, and it's cracking.