While they didn’t “do Gore in,” since he only really lost on a technicality, the press was harder on Gore than they were on Bush. This tends to be true in “fresh” election years without a Democratic incumbent. Why?
Because the press is overwhelmingly going to vote for Gore, so in order to appear unbiased they’re harder on “their guy” than they are on “the other guy.” Read some books about the press coverage of McGovern in 1972 for examples of this.
Kirk
Three factors that could prevent a Gore election:
War (presumably with Iraq). Although, it looks like Bush will discharge prematurely and the war should be over by then.
It’s the economy stupid. If it picks up by then (which it might) then Bush would be the unbeatable incumbant with a good economy.
Another terrorist attack (or recent dramatic arrests/events in the ‘War’ on terrorism). Ashcroft, I mean Bush, is running things with a secure (if heavy) hand and people won’t want to ‘change horses in midstream.’
Also, Bush may have a difficult time running again on the promise to end partisan politics and get the job done.
PC
I’ve said this about a million times now - it was hardly Gore’s fault he lost. It’s the fault of the millions of incredibly dumb Americans, including a lot of Democrats, who voted for Bush. There is no excuse for their performance. Gore isn’t perfect, but at least he’s Leader of the Free World material.
—People understand that in light of the economic downtown and necessary expenditures post 9/11, the budget had to suffer.—
Actually, 9/11 and even the related expenditures were fairly minor in terms of actual economic impact, unless one wants to make a case for psychological market effects (which are a little dubious, but possible). The public has that wrong, in no small part to Bush simply lying about it (he knows better) because its a patriotic sounding excuse. The recession is by far the major reason the budget is suffering (drop in revenues) in the short term, while the tax cuts filling out the majority of the long term picture. The first event cannot be attributed to Bush directly (though he’s shown 0 leadership in addressing it, and its arguable that his promise of future tax increases (which are the inevitable flip side of the current tax cuts) are keeping interest rates high). The second can.
Of course “suffering” is very loaded language. The U.S. government is simply not like a corporation, and if there’s a good reason to run deficits, then by all means, run them. There is no inherent wrong in Bush’s chosen policy, provided he explains what the actual purpose of it is. But the Bush administration obviously doesn’t think they can sell honest explanations (which I wish they would, because it would go a long way towards showing what strong, honest conservative leadership can be like): instead it’s simply lying about the resurgence of the deficit, playing the same game they played during the campaign: pretending that they can hand the same dollar bill to several different people at once, to keep them all happy.
**
Say huh?
Would you like me to drag up Wall Street’s performance post 9/11?
Do you think it was not necessary post 9/11 to bail out the airline industry, destroy blatant Al Qaeda training camps in the Taliban-led Afghanistan, create an office of Homeland Security, etc?
All that costs money.
… Because we all know that all intelligent people are automatically liberal… is that it?
—Would you like me to drag up Wall Street’s performance post 9/11?—
Uh, you can, but I’m not sure what you think that would prove. Most people seem to think its performance has to do with the bursting of a nasty tech bubble, explosion of corporate overvaluation, stagnation of productivity, and other such things that have a direct effect on the operation and outlook of the ENTIRE economy (as it pertains to stock investment), not just the loss, however tragic, of the WTC, the wing of the Pentagon, and countless invaluable people and their expertise, which however horrendous as a media event, is a very very small effect from a demographic and economic scale.
—All that costs money.—
Indeed, but compared to the operation of the U.S. economy… and the size of things like the yearly expenditure budget, the yearly tax revenue, the deficit, etc. it’s still a pretty small amount.
Most people don’t even have a sense of the scale we’re talking here: which is one reason some people seem to think that we can drastically reduce the size of government simply by cutting a few social services.
Check here: http://www.cbpp.org/9-3-02bud.htm
Just the technical factors (i.e. projection errors alone) account for more than twice the expected cost of extra proposed military spending insofar as the dissappearance of the surplus. And this is deceptive in several ways. First, a lot of that extra military spending has little to do with fighting terror, but rather is part of the pork glut we experienced mid-season (like financing the development of fighter jets to face off with a next generation of MiGs that will never exist) and is pretty hard to justify in terms of the war on terrorism. A good portion of that is an increase in foriegn aid approved by the Bush admin. Finally, the CBO is required by law to work with numbers that understate a lot of important things.
And remember: these numbers are only talking about what happened to the projected ten-year surplus, NOT the entire ten-year budget, which dwarfs all these things.
And the government budget is itself a lot smaller than the U.S. economy. So, yeah. 9/11 was traumatic, but not a big player as far as economic impact. We were in for this recession long before it even happened, and the real sorts of factors one might look at, from high levels of public debt to overstocked inventories, have little to do with 9/11, or indeed much to do with government action in general.
Kirk! Welcome back
No, no, no, SPOOFE. I’ll use small words, so you can understand, you poor conservative dolt. What barton was trying to say is that the liberal intelligenstia is both smarter and better than everyone else, because we care. In a truly just world, the Constitution would be amended to mandate rule be the liberal intelligenstia.
Sua
Member,
Liberal Intelligenstia,
S. Florida Branch
Id. #523453
Gore and Bush were both incredibly weak candidates. The leaders of both parties should have been taken out back and flogged for giving us two bozos to choose from. Other than die-hard party liners, I know very few people who were comfortable with their vote. Riff or Raff? Did it matter?
Gore in 2004? I think he would be a poor choice for reasons others have explained above. He should have been a shoe-in. He wasn’t. You can’t blame the media for that first debate. Can’t blame the media for his stiff demeanor and Dee Snyder makeup. Did he seem like a world leader? No. IMO that’s what lost him the election.
Personally I hope it’s neither Bush nor Gore in 2004. I would like to see 2 articulate self-made candidates who would be able to address domestic AND international concerns competently. I would like to see someone who is young but seasoned enough to know when to bomb the hell out of someone and when to back off and play the diplomat.
One can hope.
Psst. Sua. Next time you send your letterhead off to be printed, you might want to change the spelling of “inteligensia.” 
gore in '04 what’s the problem?
the problem is it rhymes. seuss speeches.
I kinda like that it rhymes. We used that all the time on Dole’s campaign in 1996:
“Clinton-Gore
out in four!”
And for Bush 2000:
“No Gore years!” (sounds like the oft-repeated “Four More Years”)
“No More Gore!”
It’s fun when your opponent has an easily mockable-by-rhyme name.
Kirk
Sounds like you’re arguing that Gore had it locked up in advance, and nobody of any stature could have taken him on in the primaries. That’s different from saying he lacked serious opposition.
IOW, no cite. Thanks for playing.
“The margin of error”? This wasn’t a poll; this was the vote itself.
But OK, let’s treat the voters as a sample of the electorate, and use some crude statistics on this ‘margin of error’ idea. In binomial probabilities, the sample standard deviation is sqrt(npq) where n, p, and q are your sample size and the probabilities of either result. Let’s round them off to 100,000,000, .5, and .5 respectively. We get sqrt(25,000,000) = 5000. The ‘margin of error’ is roughly 2 standard deviations, or 10,000. That’s dwarfed by Gore’s 537,000-vote margin.
Half a percent is statistically quite huge when your sample’s 100 million people.
There is a margin of error in even electoral votes. Not in the common statistical terms, but in the fact that some votes are miscounted, many votes are cast in such a manner that they aren’t counted at all (think of the infamous “hanging chads”). Wherever you have humans involved there are errors. You cannot, with such a tight margin, state unequivicolly (damn, I mis-spelled that, but its not worth getting off the couch to grab the dictionary) that Gore won.
Officially, Gore won the popular vote. I don’t doubt that he did. I also don’t doubt that he won Florida, per the intentions of voters but due to the “margin of error” we’re speaking of here, Bush was awarded the Electoral Votes.
If there were a massive margin in favor of Gore, then you’d be able to say without question that he won the popular vote. But given that the margin is so close, you can’t. We know without question that votes in Florida didn’t get counted. We don’t know how many didn’t get counted across the country. But its not out of the question to believe that it may be more than Gore’s paltry “win.”
And while Gore had it pretty well locked up, it wasn’t impossible to beat him. If a candidate strong enough to sweep 75% of the delegates had surfaced, that would have been a serious contender. As it was, Bradley was just a token contender. He never had a shot. Someone else might have.
Kirk
“read my lips-no more Bush!”
:o
Don’t say that too loud. Hubby may start crying.
This is a whole new area. Let’s see…
Hey, George Bush,
Kiss my tush!
If it will not trouble you,
Please leave office, W.
that was really good December!
Maybe you should take this up as a hobby.
Too many people are going to remember Sore-Loserman. He should have lost like a grown-up, and left it to his handlers to complain.
Bush’s approval numbers are too high, and the Dems are afraid to attack while there is a war on.
Neither Gore nor Hilary will ever be President. Fortunately.
Regards,
Shodan
No, the president’s approval numbers are high. But much of that is ‘rally round the flag’ effect.
Bush’s re-election numbers (i.e. approval of him in particular, rather than the idea of the presidency). are low. He could win a plurality with those numbers if he ran against two strong candidates. But he can’t beat any single challengers unless his number come up. Hell, Bush won’t even win the nomination unless no-one runs against him for it.
On the other hand, if the press sandbag Gore in '04 like they did in '00. It’s gonna be another close race. It might be better for the Dem’s to pick a candidate that the press aren’t determined to smear at every opportunity.
I see your Sore-Looserman and raise you a Bush-Cheated. Sore-Looserman lost a lot of it’s sting when it turned out that Gore didn’t act like a sore looser after SCOTUS ruled. But we now know for a fact that Bush cheated, while a the time, it was just a suspicion.
Expect to see a LOT of Bush-Cheated and similar reminders of the 2000 debacle in '04. (assuming, of course, that he gets the nomination. )