An auspicious occasion

Talking Points Memo is turning 10 in a few weeks. I'm definitely a big fan of the left-leaning site, which I feel is one of the few popular sites of its kind that isn't run by an obviously insane person. To be fair, most right-leaning sites are run by obviously insane people as well. But TPM is generally a great resource for both breaking news and commentary that has a perspective but doesn't overdo it like Fox.

Since I was a little bored I decided to utilize the Internet Archive to dial up the oldest version of TPM they had, from February 2002, since who isn't nostalgic for the early '00s? And I found a piece that made me laugh:

Are liberals hopeless suckers?

You better believe it.

Back in 1997 and 1998, as the presidential contenders were readying their engines, all Democrats pretty much realized that the nomination was Al Gore's to lose. But liberals were discomfited by Gore's centrism and casting about for some standard-bearer. Dick Gephardt decided he was that man.

Eventually, Gephardt decided that the Gore juggernaut could not be stopped and he stepped aside and endorsed Gore. But until then he pitched himself as the real Democrat, the Democrat who wasn't afraid to admit he was a Democrat (as Jim Fallows put it in this article), the Dem who still believed in the old time New Deal religion. Throughout the latter years of the second Clinton administration, looking toward the 2000 primaries, Gephardt consistently positioned himself as the leader of the party's liberals -- and signaled his stance by bucking the administration on some key votes.

I had just started working at the American Prospect -- the publication of liberal Democrats -- at the time and people had totally taken the bait.

Now, we're getting ready for 2004 and the lay of the land looks a little different. Gore wants to run again. Maybe Tom Daschle (though TPM feels confident this will never happen). And others. Now, Gephardt has decided he's going to run to the right of everyone else, as the one who doesn't believe in the same old tax and spend, who doesn't want to revisit the Bush tax cut, and so forth.

There are two possible explanations here. Either the Democratic party has lurched hard to the left in the last four years or Gephardt is a shameless opportunist...

And they say Bill Clinton's slick willie? That Al Gore's constantly reinventing himself?

I guess it's more hilarious since not only did Gephardt go from New Dealer to conservaDem to Bush's Democratic floor leader on the Iraq War, but since leaving politics he's become a particularly soulless corporate lobbyist. Marshall was even more right than he could have known.