In my mind, Gore shot himself in the foot not by failing to appeal to the center but by failing to appeal to the left. If he’d been willing to take a strong liberal stance on just about any major social issue then I probably would have voted for him. But as things were I felt that he was perfectly willing to sell the true left down the river, and damned if he was going to get my vote as thanks for it.
Speaking for myself, I can’t say it’s likely I’d have voted for Gore had he espoused (what I would consider) a reasonable gun policy, but I can say his stated stance guaran-damn-teed I’d vote against him.
However, if this is felt to be a watershed issue in a Democratic turn towards the center, the Republicans could very easily counter it with a realistic abortion policy. They are way out of step on that. This, in my view, would be better than moving farther to the right. There’s only so much room over there to occupy before banging your head up against the cold, hard wall of public opinion. Abortion rights have the advantage of Libertarian support, too.
I am so supremely (heh) confident that upon re-reading what you wrote here you will retract it that I am not going to comment on it until you have had a chance to do so.
Fine. Start a thread. The merit of the actions of the Supreme Court in the most recent presidential election is not the topic here.
For an excruciatingly detailed discussion of that, click this and it’s linked predecessors. There’s no room left afterward for the kind of faith in the ruling that you’re demonstrating.
Joe_Cool asked, “Since when is the Constitution a ‘special interest’???” Feh. I’m not taking this bait. Try harder.
RTFirefly—Good observation on the failings of the Gore campaign. It’s impossible to say just what it was that ultimately cost Gore the crucial states that would have put him over the top no matter what happened in Florida. We’ll never know for sure, but his unwillingness to associate himself with Clinton is what ultimately hurt him. Hiring on a bluenose like Lieberman wasn’t the sharpest move, either; he would have been better off with someone more dynamic, like Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, for example.
When it comes down to electoral votes, Gore did as well in the Midwest as Clinton did, save his loss of Ohio and Missouri, either one of which would have secured a victory. Either state could arguably have been lost on the gun issue, or the so-called morals charges against Clinton, or heaven-knows-what. Gore also lost West Virginia, which is typically Democratic country. (Of course, Bush snagged West Virginia by promising harder penalties on the dumping of Japanese steel, and also by appealing to fundamentalist Christians there. So far, he hasn’t done much for the steel industry, except keeping a fossil-fuel-based economy thriving.)
All told, Gore’s strategy did a fair job of solidifying the faithful, I’m sure. He nailed down the northeast very well, and most of the Midwest, and of course the Pacific coast. His mistake was probably in shutting out Bill Clinton, which is something I guess he calculated would help him dent the Bushite moralist crowd. His loss of Tennessee is something I don’t view as a big deal. The south has been increasingly Republican ever since the onset of national civil rights legislation. Some parts of the south aren’t as solidly Republican as others; Florida, North Carolina and Louisiana are more of a mixed bag, and I predict that at least two of those states will cast their electoral votes for the Democratic candidate in the next election (yeah, I know, it’s a bit early, but it’s never too early :)…)
Unfortunately, guns will not be a real issue for a while. There simply isn’t enough political will to effect any changes to this jurassic element of the United States Constitution. But hell, if we can change the Constitution to let blacks and women to vote, we can change it to enforce more sensible gun laws. I believe that’s just a matter of time. Not a matter of any time soon, but give it a few decades, and the gun laws will change. (Better not open this can of worms here, though; this clearly has the makings of another, very lively, thread.)
What southern moderate Democrat will be our next president? Who knows? John Edwards, maybe? Probably not Al Gore. It will be a long time before another northeastern liberal gets the nod. Do you think John Kerry will get the Democratic nomination in 2004? Yeah, yeah, I know: dream on, Chance…
Joe_Cool asked, “Since when is the Constitution a ‘special interest’???” Feh. I’m not taking this bait. Try harder.
RTFirefly—Good observation on the failings of the Gore campaign. It’s impossible to say just what it was that ultimately cost Gore the crucial states that would have put him over the top no matter what happened in Florida. We’ll never know for sure, but his unwillingness to associate himself with Clinton is what ultimately hurt him. Hiring on a bluenose like Lieberman wasn’t the sharpest move, either; he would have been better off with someone more dynamic, like Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, for example.
When it comes down to electoral votes, Gore did as well in the Midwest as Clinton did, save his loss of Ohio and Missouri, either one of which would have secured a victory. Either state could arguably have been lost on the gun issue, or the so-called morals charges against Clinton, or heaven-knows-what. Gore also lost West Virginia, which is typically Democratic country. (Of course, Bush snagged West Virginia by promising harder penalties on the dumping of Japanese steel, and also by appealing to fundamentalist Christians there. So far, he hasn’t done much for the steel industry, except keeping a fossil-fuel-based economy thriving.)
All told, Gore’s strategy did a fair job of solidifying the faithful, I’m sure. He nailed down the northeast very well, and most of the Midwest, and of course the Pacific coast. His mistake was probably in shutting out Bill Clinton, which is something I guess he calculated would help him dent the Bushite moralist crowd. His loss of Tennessee is something I don’t view as a big deal. The south has been increasingly Republican ever since the onset of national civil rights legislation. Some parts of the south aren’t as solidly Republican as others; Florida, North Carolina and Louisiana are more of a mixed bag, and I predict that at least two of those states will cast their electoral votes for the Democratic candidate in the next election (yeah, I know, it’s a bit early, but it’s never too early :)…)
Unfortunately, guns will not be a real issue for a while. There simply isn’t enough political will to effect any changes to this jurassic element of the United States Constitution. But hell, if we can change the Constitution to let blacks and women to vote, we can change it to enforce more sensible gun laws. I believe that’s just a matter of time. Not a matter of any time soon, but give it a few decades, and the gun laws will change. (Better not open this can of worms here, though; this clearly has the makings of another, very lively, thread.)
What southern moderate Democrat will be our next president? Who knows? John Edwards, maybe? Probably not Al Gore. It will be a long time before another northeastern liberal gets the nod. Do you think John Kerry will get the Democratic nomination in 2004? Yeah, yeah, I know: dream on, Chance…
Sorry about the double post. Just run it by Katherine Harris; I’m sure it’s cool with her.
RT: how’s about this then:
If the lack of electoral votes wasn’t due to a rift among traditionally Democratic voters in rural areas over the Clinton-era Gun Control stance, what did he lack that cost him those electoral votes?
Note that I dropped the insinuation, unintentional on my part, that he merely lacked the charisma. Although he isn’t the glad handing back slapper Pres. Clinton was. And I’m not knocking Pres. Clinton for that; it’s a trait of all politicians, and Pres. Clinton was exceptionally good at it.
Sorry if I offended you; I hope Stoid got a case of the flaming ass over it. As I understand it, in a nutshell the lower population states have electoral votes disproportionate to their populations, which is how Mr. Gore won popular votes, but lost electorally (whatever the individual take on the FL situation may be.)
Re: Bashere’s analysis: If the U.S.A. Today’s analysis is off base, why would the Democrats feel the need to court alienated gun owners? They could just as easily leave gun control on the back burner for a few years while potting away at W. But the Dem. leadership at least perceives that gun control issues have cost them, and I’m fairly confident that they have the polling apparatus to ascertain which way the political winds are blowing.
Personally, I welcome it, if they stay the course and truly moderate their stance. And the anti-gun Dems. toe the party line.
Not asking for much, am I. 
Maybe they’re recognizing what us pro-gun types have been saying for a while: it (gun violence) ain’t just about guns.
FWIW: I feel that the NRA, for all of their talk of being behind law enforcement and all the law-and-order types, is shooting itself in the foot by attempting to obstruct the F.B.I. and A.T.F’s use of NICS records in helping to spot trends of criminal gun flow. The NRA, the new “600lb. Gorilla” among lobbying groups, has more than enough muscle to keep a wary eye upon this process and to cry foul (and make it stick) if there are any abuses of the system.
But I also distrust people like Schumer and Fienstein to leave the system the hell alone; to not try to lever tighter restrictions and confiscations using these NICS records.
If I can pick a nit or two here, gun control was a fairly significant point of debate in the Democratic primaries. I seem to recall Gore and Bradley getting into a tiff in print after one of the debates because Bradley favored registering all handguns, while Gore supported only the licensing of new purchases. Bradley’s stance was that Gore was soft on gun control, if you can imagine that. It’s like someone saying Pat Buchanan is soft on immigration.
Anyway, I think the reason this didn’t make it into the general election debate was that both sides’ positions were fairly well understood and that their stances weren’t really going to have much effect on “swing” voters, UncleBeer and Joe_Cool notwithstanding.
RTFirefly said:
I have to agree with this–neither guns nor any other single issue was the tipping point for the election. Had the issue been more prominent, I think Gore’s stance would have hurt him more than helped him; as it was, I suspect it mainly reinforced votes that would have been cast anyway. Even in West Virginia there were other factors–mainly Clinton Adminstration coal policies–that were just as important if not more so. Perhaps it was more significant in New Hampshire.
Pennsylvania is one of the most pro-gun states in the Union–there hasn’t been a full-term Democratic US Senator elected here since the last one voted for the Gun Control Act of 1968. In November we reelected three statewide Republicans–US Senator, Attorney General, and Treasurer–and gained a Republican US House seat; we have a Republican Governor, a Republican State House of Representatives, and a heavily Republican State Senate. But while the GOP and the NRA did a lot of campaigning around here for Bush specifically on the gun issue, Gore won the state. Granted that we have some odd politics–Gore, like all winning Democrats, won only on the strength of the Philly and Pittsburgh metro areas–it still shows that the gun issue didn’t carry Bush the rest of the state by enough.
I would welcome the Democrats becoming more pro-gun–it would certainly make me more likely to vote for their candidates at the state and national levels. (Local Democrats around here are virtually all pro-gun…and anti-abortion. For this area, I’m a flaming liberal.) But I wouldn’t have voted for Gore if he offered to buyme guns–it just wasn’t gonna happen.
You’re kidding, right?
That was the closest thing I’ve seen to a populist-left campaign since McGovern - and it’s not likely we’ll see another like it for awhile, since Gore cut it just close enough that he’s not in the White House.
When I thought Gore started letting it slip out of his hands was the week before the first debate. He decided to pick on a different group of corporations every day of the week.
Many of you know where I stand on such things: I’m far less worried about the the big, bad government than I am about the powers of corporate America that pull its strings. But Gore’s attack on the corporate world was sufficiently heavy-handed to make me cringe, and if it did that to me, I’m assuming it had the same effect, or worse, on a lot of swing voters.
That may have stayed off the radar screen enough so that it didn’t hurt him too bad. But then in Debate #1, he leaned on “the richest 1 percent” enough times that I was cringing again. And everybody saw that.
Don’t worry, friend, you didn’t. Just wanted to get everyone on the same page, and quell the argument about the peripheral issue. We’re doing fine now, I think.
Well, Gore certainly does lack charisma, and I’m sure that hurt him last year. I think the last time the candidate with less charisma won was 1968 (1988 doesn’t contradict that; Dukakis and Bush Sr. didn’t have a dime’s worth of charisma betweent them).
But I think the things I’ve described in my response to Lamia just now hurt him big-time.
In my previous post, I was talking strictly about presidential candidates and campaigns.
Not kidding so much as poorly spoken. I really should stay out of threads like this.
But the rest of you, please, carry on!
So it’s okay to bait people with baseless allusions to “special interests”, but references to the Constitution are a strict no-no?
That’s what this whole “beard” thing just might be about! Al “ALBERT GORE!” Gore just might be going for the NRA vote! I think he sort of looks like Dan’l Boone; don’t you?!
You know, here’s our EX-VeeP that reads the polls and discovers that lo and behold, there ARE voters that like their guns.
Next thing we know Albert Gore will be playing a minor role in something like… hmmm … a fundraiser for “the preservation of antique firearms of the American West” (or another politically touchy but neutral issue); all with the aim of luring borderline NRA members to his fold.
Ain’t politiks great!
Hunh? When did I ever say that it’s okay to make “baseless allusions to ‘special interests’”? That’s wrong, too. You’re implying that the American right has the market cornered on the Constitution—a ridiculous, naïve claim to make. If you’ve got a problem with someone else making “baseless allusions to ‘special interests’,” fine. But if you’ll check your math, you’ll see that two wrongs don’t make a right. (By this I mean that two wrongs don’t make something that is right. The political right frequently has more than merely two wrongs in its midst.)
OK, what exactly was “bait”? And what does “right” or “left” have to do with it? Does your definition of right mean people who think the law of the land should be obeyed by the people we pay to enforce the laws and who take oaths to defend the Constitution “from all enemies, foreign and domestic”?
Gun rights activists are being unfairly characterized as a Special Interest Group, when the 2nd Amendment is as much a part of the Constitution as the 1st and 5th Amendments are. If we demand what we are entitled to and what is guaranteed to us in the Constitution, does that make us squeaky wheels and Special Interests?
Bullshit. Special Interests is one of those words that are widely perceived as negative politics words, and used to elicit in the audience a negative emotional response to whoever you apply it to. In this case, it’s used to prejudice the population at large against those right-wing extremists who value our rights and the Constitution above the convenience of the State and the desires of the police. If Freedom of Speech or Religion were under attack the same way the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is today, then would its defenders also be a “Special Interest Group”?
Please elaborate on your point. Tell me first how my statement is “bait”, then please show me how defending the 2nd item of the Bill of Rights makes one a Special Interest.
Chance, I didn’t really answer your post like I meant to.
I see you didn’t defend the claim that gun rights activists are a special interest, so I apologize for railing on about that.
The point is that, regardless of whether it’s currently in vogue or not, the 2nd Amendment is as valid as any other portion of the Constitution, and just as binding. And when we defend it, we are only opposing with manly firmness an invasion on the rights of the people (to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson).
The founders of our nation took liberty, including (especially!) the right to be armed, very seriously. Patrick Henry said “Give me liberty, or give me death!” Not really any way to claim that he meant something else. He also said “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.”
There are always good reasons put forth for every new gun control law. Public safety. Crime prevention. The children, the children!! And we’re always accused of being callous and heartless and selfish for valuing individual liberty above public safety. That’s nothing new.
Daniel Webster said:
and William Penn had this to say:
That’s pretty strong language. Damn right-wingers. Always complaining about their rights.
Damn straight we are.
**
I agree … and disagree.
Gore certainly lost the far-left to Nader. And he probably lost the far-right-center because of guns. (Think heartland, where guns aren’t used to kill innocent people in cities, they’re used for fun and to hunt.) But I think that lost right-center vote over guns is negligible at best.
But if you will recall, either the media was sandbagging the public and the Republicans (which I don’t believe), or the Democrats had an amazing, unexpected day-of-election turnout for Gore. Many precincts across the country had record turnouts, or turnouts they hadn’t seen in years.
Gore essentially pulled it from a 4- to 9-percent deficit (depending on which poll you believed) to a dead-heat, on election day.
Whatever disagreements I have with Democratic ideology, they do know how to get the base out.
Should Gore have said “screw the left” and pushed even harder to the middle? Maybe. Undecided voters are as turned off by far-left liberals as they are by far-right conservatives. And in this balancing act, Gore would have lost too much to the center and not gained enough Nader converters if he had gone left, IMO.
And I am of the opinion that Gore’s hammering on “the richest 1 percent” thing turned people in the middle off. Misguided or no, they see it as a matter of fairness that if tax breaks are to be had, everybody who pays taxes is entitled to receive them – not just cuts targeted to the Democrats’ favorite groups.
If you don’t want to get into months of debate (again) over counting votes that weren’t legally cast, Nader is the reason Gore lost Florida, and hence the election.
And any Democrats that want to give Nader-voters grief about it are off-base. He had a right to run; people had a right to vote for him; and if they didn’t want to vote for Gore for some reason, of course they shouldn’t have.