olitical experts say third parties cannot win the White House. Those experts have been on another planet.
The past eight years have seen the White House occupied by the Republicratic Party, the party of genetically engineered Democrats who preach compassion on Monday, deliver the death penalty and the developed world's highest incarceration rates on Tuesday, promise education on Wednesday, proliferate weapons on Thursday, bask in a boom economy on Friday, eliminate welfare on Saturday and rest on Sunday, smugly celebrating their diverse cobweb of optionless black and brown voters, fickle white voters, flourishing corporate donations, and unfettered free trade with a regard for human rights that is good only if you compare it to the Republicans, who have none at all.
This was the world Bill Clinton gave us for two elections, and now Al Gore wants America to vote Republicratic a third consecutive time. As if being Clinton's vice president was not enough, Gore made sure we all understood the deal by choosing as his running mate Joseph Lieberman.
On Monday Lieberman supports Democratic core issues like abortion rights. On Tuesday, Lieberman supports the vote by white Californians to kill affirmative action and was prepared to vote Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court until the Anita Hill story broke. On Wednesday, Lieberman appears before labor groups. On Thursday, he chairs the Democratic Leadership Council.
The centrist-to-conservative council has sought now for a decade to distance the Democratic Party from social issues - particularly those even remotely identified with black people - and toward an Alan Greenspan obsession with money markets. Since Lieberman became the chair of the DLC in 1995, the organization has received, according to this week's Newsweek, $500,000 from cancerous Philip Morris. Last year, oil giants ARCO and Chevron and drug baron Merck gave the DLC between $50,000 and $100,000. Chevron is under charges of using the Nigerian military to flush poverty-stricken protesters off a rig in 1998. The military shot and killed two protesters.
With Gore's family holding between $500,000 and $1 million in Occidental oil stocks, any debates between the camps may be less about polluting Republicans vs. nonpolluting Democrats than between the interests of Texas oil vs. the interests of California oil.
We all know that Gore picked Lieberman to avoid being attacked for Clinton's moral failings. But the notion that the Republicrats would extend an olive branch this sweet to fence-stradding voters in the form of Lieberman carries centrist politics to a laughable extreme.
While a lot of ultra-loyal and optionless Democrats - black folks and women - had to smile through gnashed teeth over yet another white-male ticket, arch-conservative Jerry Falwell, who supported apartheid in South Africa, said Lieberman was an ''excellent choice.'' Republican New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who swears he has never seen a case of police brutality in his life, said Lieberman is ''a very, very good man.'' Senate majority leader Trent Lott, who has a dubious history of homophobic statements and alliances with racist political activists, said Lieberman is ''among our favorite Democrats.''
None of this is to suggest that Lieberman is kinfolk to these vile politicians. For instance, the Republicrats would make far better appointments to the Supreme Court than Bush and Cheney. But the problem for Gore and Lieberman is, after expending so much time and energy trying to grow this particular olive branch of acceptability to conservatives, whether they have enough fertilizer left to excite the average voters across the board.
Clinton had enough for two terms. With his ambidextrous charisma, he booted out a successful Republican Gulf War president while implementing economic policies no Republican is actually ashamed of, and implemented them even as convinced core Democrats he was doing the best he could on social issues.
Gore and Lieberman so far have displayed no such charisma. That will make it very tough against a Bush who, by merely uttering the words ''education'' already has a stunning lead among white suburban women. When you play the politics of similarity, rather than difference, you need a trump card.
Clinton had one. Unless Gore and Lieberman find one, what they want is improbable, if not impossible. On Monday they call themselves Democrats. On Tuesday, they are trying to out-Republicans the Republicans. The Republicans know what they are about. What happens on Wednesday, Thursday, and beyond depends on whether Gore and Lieberman can do what Clinton did, convince the nation they have a soul, while selling out large chunks of the soul of the Democratic Party all the while.
Derrick Z. Jackson is a Globe columnist.
