Fuck “charisma.” Bush was obviously an idiot in 2000–even though his speaking skills have nosedived since then. As a Texan, I was well acquainted with his worthlessness.
Gore is obviously intelligent & serious minded. But the media kept calling him “wooden.” And some suckers believed the lies.
I realize some of the Gore-haters really held Tipper’s content-labeling crusade against him. As a non-parent, I didn’t pay much attention. As an adult, I’d been able to buy my own records for some time. Yes, “records”–ever hear of the Fugs?
Look, I listen to Gore speak. I listen to him prattle on about the economy. I was not impressed. Yes, he was not as bad as Bush, but with two bad candidates, it looked like a good time to help the Green Party out.
I liked two serious candidates in the primaries that year, Bill Bradley of NJ and John McCain. They both lost to the party machines. Gore was anointed by the Democrats and Bush by the powers behind the scenes and the evil that is Carl Rove. In 2000, I did not even know who Carl Rove was.
I deeply regret that Bush won. This has been a disaster. But, when the party leaders pick their candidates at the expense of better candidates, why should I choose to support this tired old two party system.
It almost happened this year, but apparently, the public might really be tired of business as usual. Neither Obama nor McCain were the choices of the party leadership. HRC was clearly the choice of the Party leadership despite the fact that she could lose to a Republican. For lack of an electable candidate, the Republicans tried to push forth either Romney or Thompson. Both campaign poorly. Both are gone.
I have hopes, but great doubts that maybe we are seeing a change in this country. Maybe people are going to take back some control of our politics. However, as I dreamed that the Green Party could gain a real voice in the US, I will now dream that we will start doing a better job picking candidates that are not just another cog in the machine.
BTW: You guess correctly, I was a teen of the early 80s and I did and do hold a grudge against her that affected my view of Gore. However, that was only one piece of the puzzle.
This demonstrates your own lack of political acumen. Hell, it shows that you don’t even pay attention.
Gore IS not a Demo-bot.
But the Gore that has been inspiring people with excellent speeches and trenchant political critiques is not the same Gore that WAS running back in 2000.
Gore made a great speech a few years ago about the loss of liberty in America, and about some of the other crises the nation was facing. He’s made other excellent contributions to public discourse since the 2000 election as well. If he had made speeches like that during his campaign, he not only would have won over plenty of the Nader voters, he would probably have also won over a bunch of fence-sitters who ended up voting for Bush.
I know it’s tempting to look at Gore 2000 through the lens of 8 years of failed policies and arguably the worst Presidency in American history, and to argue that Gore 2000 was the same as Gore 2008, but that’s nothing more than 20/20 hindsight at best, and more likely sophistry.
Personally, i think Nader’s current campaign is pointless, and i really do think he’s running from ego a much as anything else, and to gain attention. But anyone who blames Nader voters for 2000 is a drooling idiot.
Blaming Gore’s 2000 loss on Nader is like blaming the refs for a bad call at the end of a football game. Sure, it had something to do with it, but it really shouldn’t have…and if Gore ran a better campaign, it wouldn’t have.
Just like the Raiders with Tom Brady’s ‘tuck rule’ game. So…Bush is like Tom Brady, and the Raiders are like Gore and Nader was the ref…fuck it. Kill Nader! I hate the Pats!!! Goddamn terrible call!!!
Hell, what I said, if we are going to interpret the meaning, was Gore should have run more like Gore. You have noticed what he has spent the bulk of his time on for the last 7 years haven’t you?
The problem I have with this is, first, that it assumes that being entertaining and personable should be a requirement for a candidate to win. This leads to the canidates being sold like laundry detergent, which I think is the root of the problem in American politics.
Also, there was a substantive difference between the candidates that was outlined during the campaign. One wanted to empty the treasury because there was a tiny actual surplus (tiny and recently acquired, actually, since the budget counts social security payments, but not disbursements), and one wanted to continue retiring federal debt. I just don’t see how anyone could pass on the opportunity to vote against the former, in a meaningful way, unless they believed in voodoo economics (Note to conservatives: Please pardon the soft bigotry of low expectations, as Mr. Moto would say.)
I know it must be painful to acknowledge how one’s own voting folly in 2000 may have wrought the last 8 years. Clearly and without a doubt, the votes that people cast for Nader, when they would have otherwise voted for Gore, would have made the difference in the election outcome. It was that close that it did really matter, and it did really make the difference.
Sure, a number of other things would have made the difference. The “Jews for Buchanan” in Palm Beach, the voter suppression efforts… it all would have made the difference, but it isn’t as if Gore would have needed each and every one of them to break in his favor. Any one of them would have ushered in President Gore. I know it may hurt, but that’s the fact.
It’s also more realistic to recognize that than to think that Tennessee would automatically vote for a Democrat for president.
I often hear it said that Gore should have run a better campaign. How so? What specifically did he do so poorly with? Recall, also, that he was up against a national media that focused every bit of attention it could on repetition of stupid, distracting and fictitous claims about Gore while giving scarcely a moment’s pause to what Bridget Burke is talking about: obvious concerns about the suitability of Bush for office.
So what should he have done differently? If you can proclaim that he lost because of what he did, surely you can point to some specifics? He was bad on the economy? How was Nader better? (I damn sure wish someone with the foresight to be concerned about a lockbox would have been in office, since us working Joes are still holding a bunch of paper IOUs instead of an actual Social Security trust fund.)
He sighed during a debate! O heavens! He kissed Tipper too long, or not long enough!
He won the popular vote, and won the electoral vote based on how people would have intended their vote to be cast (e.g. butterfly ballots and voter supression). That’s what a campaign is supposed to do. Nader voters essentially end up saying that he should have won more than enough votes to make up for the ones that they gave to Bush. “Protect me from my voting decisions. Stop me before I miscast my vote again!”
If that’s true, and i believe it is, then why should Nader voters shoulder the blame? I know, because it’s easy to blame Nader voters. It’s something that everyone can get on board with.
Completely disingenuous interpretation.
Nader voters are not, as far as i can tell, asking to be protected from their decisions. They’re simply asking not to be loaded with all the blame for Bush’s victory when they were exercising their democratic right to vote for the candidate of their choice, and when even the critics like you readily admit that a bunch of other factors were involved in Gore’s loss.
If Wikipedia is to be believed, quite a bit more than that. Did he craft a perfect policy in regards to counter-terrorism? No. But would he or a President Gore have ignored a national intelligence document entitled “Bin Laden determined to attack within the United States” the way that Bush and his clown car of an administration did? Would he or a President Gore, in response to 9/11, have pissed away the good will we as a nation received following the attacks and gotten us into this never-ending Iraq war?
I’m not saying that Clinton was a perfect president or that Gore would have made a perfect president. But the notion that either of them was or would have been worse for the nation than the current crop of thugs, buffoons and criminals is ludicrous. Wasn’t it Reagan the Great who asked us to ask ourselves if we’re better off now than we were before? I’m sure as hell not better off after eight years of this shit. My family isn’t better off. The country sure as hell isn’t better off.
When you grow up you learn about things like politics. To win an election you have to appeal to a large segment of voters. Most voters are towards the middle, and the more you move to either end of the spectrum the more votes you cede in the middle. So you wanted Gore to be more like Gore and stress environmental issues. To many Americans, a stress on the environment equals an attack on business and jobs. I think they are wrong, but I understand that a mainstream politician can’t seem “too” green at the presnt moment. Once we have someone like Gore elected we’ll see that being green can make the economy stronger, but until then it’s a tough sell.
Anyone with two lobes to rub together can see that between the two parties, the Democrats are more sympathetic to the environment than the Republicans. Are they perfect?, no. But give the choice, Gore was a much better bet than Bush to support green causes.
If Gore had come on strong on AGW he would have been labeled a kook, and lost more centrist votes than he would have gained at the left/green end of the spectrum. I support Obama, but I can see that the pro-military rhetoric of Hillary is a necessary act to look tough enough to be elected. It would be the right tactic in the general election, but in the primaries she missed the center of the Dem voters by not coming out against the war earlier.
If you ever get a girlfriend (surfing Suicide Girls with your pants around your knees doesn’t count) you’ll learn that a little politics is important when you get asked “does this organic cotton, tie-dyed skirt make my ass look fat”.
As much as I wish Gore had won in 2000 (it pains me to think how much better off the country and the world would be right now), I think it’s flat out idiotic to blame Nader for his loss. Those voters are no more or less to blame than those who voted for Bush or didn’t vote at all. Speaking of which, why is it assumed that all the Nader votes would have gone to Gore? People making Nader protest votes may have simply stayed home had Nader not been on the ballot.
Gore was unable to persuade enough people to come out to vote for him over Bush, Nader or the pleasure of sitting around one’s house on election day to overcome the other issues surrounding the election. That’s how democracy works – if you can’t persuade people to vote for you over a fringe candidate and a moron, you don’t get elected.
The people who voted for Bush are clearly reponsible for him getting elected, but they got what they wanted. Nader voters got what they didn’t want. So Bush voters were evil and Nader voters were stupid (and now apparently too stubborn to admit it).
Asshole. Do you continually miss the fact that I was a Republican on purpose or are you really this dumb?
Further, I am married with two kids. Probably more successful than you are, based on national averages and fairly astute politically.
I am not a liberal, I am not a hippy, I am not a kid. Do you actually know how to craft an intelligent argument or do you just make assumptions and run with them all the time?
Now to much more intelligent posters on your side of the debate.
Hentor the Barbarian & saoirse:
I understand your point, but if a candidate does not inspire, are they a good candidate for the job of President. Our best Presidents inspire those around them. They can give stirring speeches. The can sell themselves. This predates modern (TV) times by plenty. Lincoln & both Roosevelts sold themsleves exceptionally well. They inspired the voters.
Gore should have attacked Bush’s record as Governor, attacked his ties to big business and especially big oil. Maybe attack his dodgy military record. He should have acted more natural. It turns out he is a fairly good speaker. He did not show this in 2000. I think showing his passion would have done him far more good than harm. To this day he still gets remembered as robotic on the campaign trail.
Otto, you never answered my question. Was fear of terrorism actually a major concern of yours in the 2000 election?
How so? I equate Nader voters with people who didn’t vote at all – they didn’t care who got elected, so they voted for neither of the two mainstream candidates.
While I agree that anyone who prefers one mainstream candidate over another should (obviously) vote for the one they prefer, I don’t think it’s bad to vote for a third party candidate when you don’t, particularly if the choice is between that and abstaining altogether.
The only problem with this is that you’re assuming Nader voters didn’t care who got elected. If they truly had no preference, that’s fine, but the alternate assumption is that most Nader voters would have voted Democrat, if Nader didn’t run. I think it’s reasonable to think that most Nader voters would have been Democrat, because Nader’s line more closely fits with the “tree hugging anti-corporate” Democrat line than the “corporate loving, gas guzzling, little-guy hating” Republicans.
Under your conditions, Nader voters would have voted equally Dem/Rep, because they didn’t care which one got elected. Change that assumption to one where Nader’s voters liked Gore more than Bush, would your thoughts on them change?
Again, Gore not only had to persuade people to come out and vote for him, he also had to persuade people that the narrative others were developing about him was wrong. That’s not something to simply shrug off. I saw its effect on a lot of my Democratic peers - the bigger the lies were about Gore, the more it sapped people’s enthusiasm about him. I’m sure he could have done things differently to respond, but you and I and we all know full well how difficult it is to dislodge a meme once it gets planted.
The Nader voters that I knew were not particularly politically savvy people. They bought into a different meme in addition to the ones disparaging Gore, that the two parties aren’t any different. Even though Gore would have been a good representative for their beliefs on the whole, they were convinced that Bush and Gore were the same. Nader was responsible for that in part, but I think that meme is like motor voter laws and so forth - the Republicans are happy with anything that suppresses voter turnout.
Does it matter if Nader voters own up to what the actual effect of their vote in 2000 was? Perhaps not, but I think history will repeat itself. Once the Democrats clean things up and get them on the right track, people will be more easily distracted by “values issues” and who’d be a good drinking buddy. It’ll be harder to get people to focus when things are better. I don’t want people who will actually vote to lose sight of the potential consequences of their votes.
Of course, if things don’t go well, hold the Democrats responsible. I believe we need more Democrats, but I also believe we need better Democrats, too.
I never said Nader voters were equally likely to vote Republican as Democrat, I said they were equally as disinterested in the outcome of the election as someone who doesn’t vote at all, by virtue of the fact that they knowingly chose to vote for a candidate who was certain not to win rather than cast one if favor of either of the two mainstream candidates.
As for what would have happened had Nader not run, I agree that it’s more likely that Gore would have won. So what? There are a million things that could have tipped the scales in an election that close. Picking one fringe candidate and blaming him for the whole election is stupid, in my opinion. Nader voters are no more to blame than every single person who didn’t vote, and far less to blame than every single person who voted for Bush.
Was it a major concern? No. It was a consideration, as a lot of things were considerations to greater or lesser degrees. The overriding concern for me in 2000 was that George W Bush would make for a disastrous president. In my most fevered dreams I had no idea just how big a disaster he would be.
