Did Gore "shoot" himself in the ballot box?

Great Debates
1

Or is the U.S.A. Today full of it?

From today’s U.S.A. Today (print ed.):

Democrats Back Off On Firearms

I find it difficult to believe, especially as Gun Control was a relative, I might almost say deliberate, non-issue during the campaigns (at least the televised bits; live speeches to local constuencies may have contained any sort of message).

However, if it is true, is this the beginning of a sea-change of attitude towards guns, gun owners and gun control? Or is it merely realpolitik on the part of Democrats, to court an electorate they think may be single issue voters? Consider A.G. Ashcroft’s shift of Justice policy towards enhanced enforcement while recognizing and respecting gun owners rights.

Politically, I favor centerists, whether they call themselves Democrat or Republican, and anyone with a healthy dose of the libertarian philosophy applied to their political stance (strict Libertarianism is, IMHO, unfeasible and unadvisable). I feel that V.P. Gore/Sen. Lieberman may have actually been a better pick than W/Cheney, but after 8 years of incessant attacks and innuendo concerning guns, gun owners and the 2nd Ad., I had had enough and voted single-issue (some of y’all here on SDMB share a dose of the blame, as well. If you care.)

Was I a part of a larger trend? Or did V.P. Gore simply lack the charisma to garner the votes?

Personally, I feel actions speak louder than words, so I will be watching the Dems. like a hawk for any waivering or backsliding. But, if they do “stick to their [new] guns” and seriously recognize gun rights and respect gun owners, might this not spell serious trouble for the Republicans?

I mean, if the Dems. can muzzle or expunge the loony left and claim more of the center, how could the Reps. counter? Or might the Reps. move even further right?

Sorry for all of the thoughts (and questions) to ponder, but it’s a complex issue.

2

Lordy, how quickly history is re-written…

Hate to mess with your head or anything, but about half a million more Americans voted for Gore than for the shmuck in the White House.

stoid

3

Hate to educate you on the electoral system, but raw numbers don’t necessarily count. The red-blue divide tells the tale. And this ain’t (necessarily) a debate on the relative merits (or lack thereof) of the electoral system, unless by implication that the article is misinterpreting electoral process (Electoral tail wags Popular dog).

This wasn’t intended to be a Democrat- or Gore-bashing topic, but a discusiion of the article I linked to, and possibly some intelligent speculation/extrapolation of a possible change in the makeup of the political topography of our two-party (dominated) system.

You can now go bury your head in your fundament for another 3 years, 2 months and some-odd days. Go suck up some more bandwidth in the Pit, I can still access the board without being able to take a nap.

4

Well, if that’s all they have to do…

…then I’m not losing any sleep.

I mean, can you imagine muzzling Stoid?
:slight_smile:

5

Issues that get campaigned on are selected to attract undecided voters to one’s camp. On gun control, I doubt there are many undecideds left (could be wrong). Campaigning for greater gun control wouldn’t have won Gore many more votes than he already had, but would have interfered with the other issues he did use.

It did seem, I’ll agree, that he could have run up Bush’s negatives by greater use of the NRA claiming it would be able to work out of the Oval Office.

6

Al Gore didn’t campaign on a gun control platform, but then he didn’t have too. Gun owners were mightily sick and tired of the Clinton administration’s consistent anti-gun position. By the time the election came around, most of us would have voted for ANYONE other than a person who had come from that same administration, and presumably would continue with the same policies.

So while gun control may not have been an overt factor, I believe it certainly was significant.

The other thing that may have seriously affected Al’s chances wasn’t related to guns at all. Every time I heard that man speak, I instinctively reached back to guard my wallet. I never heard one person promise so much to so many without any spoken word about how it was all going to get paid for. (But WE know, right?) In the end, Al’s biggest enemy was himself.

7

From the article:

I think that’s the liklest case. Why go after Bush on gun-control issues when democrats have easier targets that won’t cost them votes?

I also note that, according to the article, Senators McCain and Lieberman are working on a bill together. I find that interesting, and a little promising.

8

Aren’t you forgetting Katherine Harris and the supreme court ? It seems like The GOPs ability to inject partisans into positions of trust might have had something to do with poor Mr. Gore’s debacle. Say what you will about Clinton’s assinine position on gun control, but Gore stayed away from it even better than George stayed away from the environment, Global warming and stem cells.

9

Fer cryin’ out loud…Talk about single issue.

Give it a f-ing rest, Stoid. Your horse lost. Accept it and MOVE ON! Whether you like it or not, the Constitution doesn’t change just because you bitch and moan.

And keep in mind the lesson the Republicans learned about dicking around with the Constitution after Amendment XXII ("no person shall be elected to the office of President twice…).They got it passed because they were upset about having a Dem serve 4 terms. A couple years later, their guy (Eisenhower) could have been elected to a 3rd term, but they had shot themselves in the foot by getting XXII ratified.

Anyway, I’m sure I am not the only one sick of hearing you bitch about the election, and sick of hearing your partisan, anti-everything-republican venom. Get over it.

10

Yes, by all means. Who are we to attempt to prevent the victors from rewriting history ? Stoid obviously needs to be sent off to a Gulag for his antitraditionalist leanings, but gun laws were never even close to as large factor in the election as the republican control of the election offices and the court system.

11

<hijack>
I will respond only to the title of the thread… I know how, in the course of one hour, Gore lost up to 7,000 potential votes(and probably just pissed off an equal number of people who did vote for him) Picture it if you will, a hot sunny day late May of 1999. Al Gore stands at the podium and emphatically states his postions on gun control, school violence, women’s rights, the enviroment and Christian faith/family. Picture also a sea of unhappy faces belonging to young adults clad in black. Try to imagine the outraged muttering as Al Gore delievers, word for word, the same speech at a university commencement as he will give for his campaign bids- which we titled “Since you can’t vote for God, vote for Gore.” Even the students who were democrats were calling him an asshole. I will never forget my graduation…
</hijack>

12

There’s no history to rewrite yet.

And keep in mind that all the arguments you used in this thread can just as easily be used against you.

13

Rewriting history? How so? The election followed the rules set out in the Constitution. If you don’t like the electoral college, then get a Constitutional Amendment. Otherwise, get over it.

Gore made a laughing stock of the entire nation by filing suit after suit to get recount after recount after recount. “Oh, I still lost? That can’t be right. Count them again.” B.S. He forced Bush to respond in the way he did, to prevent the theft of the election. Now, I happened to vote for Bush, and I’m glad he won, but let’s not kid each other over who is trying to rewrite history. I had gained a lot of respect for Gore based on the way he ran his campaign, but it all went in the garbage based on the way he conducted himself during the election.

14

The question is whether or not Gore shot himself in the foot. I don’t know exactly what he did wrong but it must have been something. The man couldn’t even carry his home state.

Marc

15

Well, now, seems to me he DID. The Gore-bashers spent a fair amount of time telling us how he was really from Washington, not the “real” America. Gore took the District of Columbia by a much larger margin than Bush had in Texas.

Can’t have it both ways, amigo.

Now, what does that have to do with either candidate’s use of gun control as a campaign issue?

16

Once more, this time without the ugly bolding:

ExTank, my friend, you asked, “Was I a part of a larger trend? Or did V.P. Gore simply lack the charisma to garner the votes?”

Stoid correctly, if somewhat derogatorily, replied: “about half a million more Americans voted for Gore than for the shmuck in the White House.”

IOW, he did garner the votes. They may or may not have been in the wrong places, depending on how one interprets Florida. But there’s no question that Gore won a plurality of the votes in the 2000 election. So you really needed another way of phrasing that question.

Getting back to the issue at hand, there were indications that the gun issue may have hurt Gore in traditionally Democratic West Virginia. And of course New Hampshire was close enough that a few thousand votes shifted there for any reason could be said to have made the difference. NH is gradually moving toward the Democratic column; you could say that guns might’ve held that off for one more cycle, or you could blame it on the Naderites.

The problem, IMO, is that the effects of the gun issue in the 2000 election get swamped by Gore’s failure to campaign on the successful Democratic stewardship of the economy and the elimination of annual Federal deficits, the disastrous rift between Gore and Clinton that resulted in Clinton’s extraordinary ability as a campaigner being wasted, Bush’s ability to pass himself off as far more centrist than he actually was, and of course the Florida story. I’d argue that all of these had more effect on the EC count than gun issues did. And we’ve already discussed the popular vote.

So guns may have cost Gore some electoral votes. But far less than a considerable number of other things, IMO. And that begs the question of whether gun issues helped him rally the party faithful, helping Gore win many of the states he did win? I’m not sure how one can successfully balance all of this.
[/QUOTE]

17

I think Ex-Tank is onto something, here. Al Gore’s willingness to alienate midwestern moderates is one of many things that cost him the election.

I would suggest that had Gore been a pro-second amendment candidate, he probably would have won at least ONE close state in Bush country–Arkansas, maybe, or Tennessee, or West Virginia, and the election. I don’t think there’s any doubt at all that it cost him Florida.

I don’t believe he would have lost any states that he won for being anti gun rights.

18

Gun control is one of a few major reasons why I voted against Gore (although Bush wasn’t my candidate. I would have voted for a different democrat or a goat if it was running against Gore. So far I’m really pleased with Bush’s presidency, but that’s neither here nor there).

Another major reason is that, like the Democratic Party is doing in the post mentioned in the OP, he’s like a blade of grass: He bends whichever way the wind blows. He’ll take a stand on something, and if he doesn’t get votes, he’ll reverse himself and say, “Now I’m against X. Forget what I said before.” If that doesn’t work, then he takes a firm stand in the middle. He has a history of shifting his beliefs and his positions based on public opinion and what gets votes. Clinton was the same way. And that is the mark of somebody who simply wants power, whatever the cost. Neither of them seems to believe in anything, beyond votes and reelection.

Oh, and re: the article, this offends me:

Since when is the Constitution a “special interest”???

19

Ironicly enough, the aforementioned ill-fated commencement address he gave that angered so many people- was at University of New Hampshire. You know, when thinking of what you’ve said about NH, it makes me feel better about the whole thing. If it contributed to him not winning my state and the election, well, it was worth listening to a terribly inappropriate speech.

20

…up until the conservative majority of the United States Supreme Court decided to stop Florida’s state-legislature-mandated hand recounts, stalled out the clock, and then called the election for Bush because there wasn’t time to finish the recount. As I’ve said before, read The Betrayal of America for a thoroughly supported dissection of why the USSC ruling was wrong on so many levels.

(And no, I don’t see why I should just “get over it”. We’re talking about a court ruling that’s even more wrong-headed than Dred Scott, and so blatantly partisan and self-serving that even conservative jurists like Robert Bork say it stinks. It’s only because the USSC judges aren’t subject to judicial review that they got away with their crime at all.)

As for the original point, bashere is probably closest to the truth, IMO – there’s no real incentive to go after gun control at this time, because it would not currently reap a lot of political award. And putting Florida aside, Gore didn’t help himself in his campaign by trying to simultaneously distance himself from Clinton on character while embracing the bounty of the last eight years. He wanted to have his cake and eat it, too, and that back-and-forth swinging muddled his message.