Both Gore and Lieberman are pandering to religious and moral conservatives, again ignoring the secularists and social liberals who are the backbone of the party. Of course, one need not be secular to have been offended by Lieberman's persistent implications that members of organized religions were more moral than everybody else or that certain political positions are mandated by religion. Similarly, Gore and Lieberman's distancing from Clinton was ham-handed and unnecessarily insensitive to the deep feelings of revulsion a large chunk of the Democratic base had to the invasiveness of Kenneth Starr's prosecution. It was as if the campaign mavens had totally blocked out the fact that the more embarrassing the revelations about Clinton were, the more his support rose in polls. Clinton fatigue did not mean a revisionist enthusiasm for impeachment.
Young people are particularly sensitive to issues of personal privacy.
Six weeks before the election, at U.S. Senate Commerce Committee hearings on the marketing of violent entertainment, Lieberman was the highest-profile witness. In a particularly nauseating moment for people who had been appalled by the behavior of the House Republicans, Congressman Henry Hyde, Clinton's impeachment nemesis, made a point of saying what close friends he and Lieberman were and quoted from Lieberman's book In Praise of Public Life . Lieberman referred to his friendship with Hyde and cloyingly thanked him for the book promotion. Although intellectuals sometimes deride this kind of populism as shallow packaging, effective political leadership during campaigns as well as in office requires the ability to communicate. If people think that a political leader looks down on them, they become deaf to important policy distinctions.