Al Gore should have won comfortably in 2000, enough so that Bush couldn't steal the election...

[Ardent15]

Yet it was close enough for Bush to steal.

Gore should have campaigned as more of a liberal. Instead of picking a DINO like Lieberman in an attempt to distance himself from the popular Clinton Administration, he could have easily picked Paul Wellstone or Russ Feingold-both strong liberal Senators of integrity and neither connected closely to Clinton. That way, more of the Nader voters would have been inclined to vote Democratic.

Also, Gore could have spent more time on places like Tennessee and Arkansas, Ohio and West Virginia. He shouldn't have lost these states. Yet he did. He bet it all on Florida, and the Republican machine so desperate to get Bush/Cheney into power won by way of cheating.

[SIMPLYB1980]

1. Yawn.

Naderits and those that believed that Gore was no different than Bush are to blame.

[Ardent15]

2. Well, Gore didn't help by running a "moderate" campaign

Do you deny that Gore distanced himself from the accomplishments of Clinton?

[Deja Q]

5. Yeah, like the funky fresh blow job he got from Monica...

Public impressions and stigma - inescapable. Not to mention, since politics is about about a song and dance (being a showman), the only person, more robotic than Alin presentation, was... Ralph Nader.

[omega minimo]

11. So, you fell for the bogus impeachment strategery?

[Ardent15]

12. Clinton left office with higher approval ratings than Reagan

He was popular in spite of the shit that the GOP gave him. Most of the people who wouldn't vote for Gore because of Monicagate wouldn't have voted for Gore with a gun to their heads.

[blm]

31. Rove wiped out 20% of that popular rating in a few months. Rove's 'Clintons Trash White House' lie

helped Bush's numbers to rise in the months after the election while Clintons' were diminished.

Apparently, Clinbton's war room didn't care much about refuting that lie at the time. Very benevolent of Clinton to do that for the Bushboy.

[omega minimo]

7. Yes Democrats have no responsibility for the campaign they ran

or considering the points made in the OP.

[demmiblue]

8. No...

The people who were involved in the stealing of an election are to blame, including the Supreme Court.

[Ardent15]

10. +1

[Cha]

41. That's right...it's stupid to blame it on Al Gore.

[lpbk2713]

3. Gore wanted to conduct his campaign like a gentleman.

But much to his detriment, BushCo was using every dirty trick they could think of, even if it was blatantly illegal. Al would have made a great President, but he should have been more ruthless on the campaign trail.

[omega minimo]

13. Good point. Not inconsistent with the OP mention

of VP choice.

[gopiscrap]

53. See that's where we lose

Almost every time we act with grace and dignity we get our asses kicked..we need to be cut throat and dirty just like the gop. This time was an aberation, the country was so sick of Bush and the McCain campaign made so many mistakes that I think just about any Dem. would have won.

[Selatius]

63. You don't have to be ruthless to win. You just have to have guts like FDR and stand up for labor.

The Democratic Party cut its reputation on the New Deal and for standing up for the downtrodden. The days where Democrats are made to be afraid of being called liberals needs to come to an end.

[tularetom]

4. Yes and I should be 40 years younger and 50 lbs lighter

What's your point?

This issue has been beat to death and buried, then dug up and beat to death again. And on and on.

Of course he should've done everything you say. But he didn't. And the country got all fucked up as a result.

But now its over. Too late to do anything about it now.

[Pyrzqxgl]

6. Don't you think it's time to quit dwelling on what ifs?

We can't change what happened and now it's enough to
remember what happened and see to it that it doesn't
happen again.

[GodlyDemocrat]

9. Gore should have ran closer to Clinton

That would have won him the election.

[mod mom]

29. Let me guess....he should have courted the powerful corporations not the people:

ge Theory on Why Gore Lost



The so-called Democratic Leadership Council has decided that Al Gore should have acted more like a Republican in order to win the 2000 presidential electoral college vote in addition to his nationwide popular vote victory. This strange finding has drawn some attention, including coverage by the Associated Press and the Environmental News Service -- we have a few excerpts from their reports for you here.
Al Gore, the self-styled environmental candidate in the 2000 Presidential election, lost his bid for the White House because he campaigned on an outdated "populist" platform that was too liberal for most Americans, according to a new report drafted by the Democratic Leadership Council.

The 40-page report, titled "Why Gore Lost, And How Democrats Can Come Back," concludes that the Democratic Party must move towards the political right -- towards the Republicans -- if it wants to regain control of Congress in 2002 and the White House in 2004.

Al From, the DLC's founder and CEO, opened a freewheeling discussion forum by arguing that Democrat Al Gore made a huge tactical mistake by continually emphasizing that he would "fight for the people and not the powerful" as the nation's first president of the 21st Century.

-snip

http://www.progress.org/goredlc2.htm


FYI...GORE WON & THE ELECTION WAS FRAUDULENT!

[GodlyDemocrat]

32. Did I say that? Bill Clinton was the most popular modern Democratic President leaving office

Because of the Lewinsky scandal, Gore ran away from Clinton. This is what cost him the election. Regardless of the moaning and groaning about the recount process and Bush v. Gore, the net result was that because of Gore's poor campaign strategy, Bush was President for 8 years.

However, I guess on the flip side, you could argue that Bush becoming President led to Barack Obama becoming the Democratic President instead of Joe Lieberman.

[mod mom]

45. Gore abandoned the DLC corporatists & became a progressive. Here-read this:

Published on Sunday, August 20. 2000 in the Boston Globe
Thank You, Al Gore
by Robert Kuttner

A funny thing happened to Al Gore on the way to his surprisingly effective acceptance speech. He became a liberal.

The speech was as liberal as anything FDR or LBJ or Jesse Jackson or one of the Kennedys might have delivered. It was built around a commitment to fight for ordinary people, against large and powerful interests. This, of course, is precisely what made it effective.

The emotional heart of the speech, Gore's honoring of four ordinary American lives, did not just salute the struggles of workaday families, the way Ronald Reagan often did. It identified who was dishonoring their struggles - corporations. He singled out heartless HMOs who pressure a family to sacrifice a child; drug companies that force a pensioner to choose between food and medicine; corporate polluters; corporations that pay workers inadequate wages.

And he identified the solution: strong, reliable public Social Security; better Medicare; welfare reform that rewards work rather than punishing the needy; higher minimum wages; and more investment in public - not voucher - schools, so that working families don't have to send kids to crumbling classrooms.

What is the evil? Corporate power. What is the remedy? Effective government.

-snip
http://www.commondreams.org/views/082000-105.htm

BTW, Clinton got elected with a big thanks to Ross Perot as a 3rd party, but it didn't really matter to corporate power whether H.W or Clinton got in. Either way they got what they wanted 1. control of the media 2. banking deregulation and free trade.

Clinton 43%, HW Bush 37.4% and Perot 18.9%

[sam sarrha]

14. chads were a cover for computer frauds

[Initech]

15. I still do not believe Bush won 2000 or 2004 legally.

[earth mom]

16. FYI: Gore won. The announcement was delayed because of 911.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3281271

[omega minimo]

20. Yeah, it's Nader's fault Gore won.

[Kaleva]

26. Too bad Gore didn't fight to have every ballot recounted.

Even if the recount as ordered by the Florida Supreme Court been carried out, Bush would have been declared the winner.

[Name removed]

28. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Kaleva]

30. He fought for a recount in certain counties.

A recount that would have resulted in a Bush victory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_election_recount

[earth mom]

34. Did you even read the article I posted? Probably not.

:eyes:

[Kaleva]

36. Yes I did and it's still true that Gore didn't fight for a statewide recount.

[uppityperson]

46. You mean the article in "deleted" post? You probably have me on ignore though

which, all in all, may be a good thing.

[MineralMan]

17. And he would have won comfortably had it not been for

the Naderites, who did not have the sense to abandon their campaign in Florida when it appeared that it would be close.

At the risk of annoying some of them who come here, I say that it was the Nader campaign in Florida that gave us GWB, even taking the fraud in Florida into consideration. Since that time, I reject all of the edge arguments. We cannot succeed in our long-term goals unless we win elections.

[omega minimo]

18. "even taking the fraud in Florida into consideration"

:wow: :rofl:

[MineralMan]

21. The fraud could not have worked with the margin Gore would

have had. It's so simple. But, you laugh...go ahead. Run a third party candidate again.

[omega minimo]

22. Gore won.

[MineralMan]

24. Yes, he did, but by too small a margin to prevent the GOP

from corrupting the results and gaming the SCOTUS. Had he received an additional 50,000 to 90,000 votes, that would not have been possible.

It's facile to say he won, since he did not take office in January. His winning is irrelevant at this point. He could have taken office had it not have been for the Naderites. You may disagree. It's my opinion, and I will hold whatever opinion I wish. I'm not the only one who holds it.

[Kaleva]

33. More Dems in Flordia voted for Bush then for Nader.

And Gore would have easily won if even a small percentage of Democrats who were properly registered but did not vote had bothered to go to the polls and caste their vote for Gore.

[Zoeisright]

38. Got a link for that?

[Kaleva]

44. CNN exit poll data for the 2000 election and other sources

"Twelve percent of Florida Democrats (over 200,000) voted for Republican George Bush"
-San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 9, 2000

Even if none of the factors mentioned above had happened, the votes of Florida voters themselves show that Ralph Nader was not responsible for George W. Bush’s presidency. If one percent of these Democrats had stuck with their own candidate, Al Gore would easily have won Florida and become president. In addition, half of all registered Democrats did not even bother going to the polls and voting."

http://www.cagreens.org/alameda/city/0803myth/myth.html

[Thothmes]

49. Florida would not have mattered if Gore had won his home state

of Tennessee

[Kaleva]

50. I've yet to see a good report as to why Gore lost his home state.

[gopiscrap]

54. Didn't Gore lose NH that year also?

[Kaleva]

56. Yes

[gopiscrap]

61. That little state alone would have tipped the election to

Gore

[quaker bill]

51. More republicans in FL voted for Gore than Nader

what does that prove?

Mostly that Nader was a waste of ballot space.

[Kaleva]

52. Nader wasn't the factor some claim he was.

[quaker bill]

62. It is this simple

77,000 is greater than 573. There is no need for further speculation.

The Republicans in the Florida Legislature "liberalized" ballot access for 2000. A bill that was quickly signed into law by JEB. This is why there were 8 (eight) tickets on the ballot for President. Post 2000 election reform in FL eliminated this.

There was the Green Party, Reform Party, two different socialist parties, the Libertarian Party, the Communist Party, and the Constitution Party all running slates on the ballot. The options on the left for a "protest" vote were numerous and varied (as if anything one could do at the ballot box in secret could remotely qualify as a "protest". - get real) This was no mistake, it was part of the Republican plan, along with various other misdeeds, that were intended to lock up FL for Bush by 9:00 eastern. Some fools were taken.

The actual shocker, was that the Unions showed up in the I-4 corridor and drove turnout up in a way the republicans did not expect. They were expecting and did their best to fix a +/-100,000 vote republican margin, but if the truth were ever told, they likely lost by about 20 to 40K. Without Nader on the ballot, it is entirely likely that Gore would have held a slim margin over Bush through the entire night, and the State would never had been called for Bush. 10 percent of the Nader vote would have put the matter to bed.

I was on the ground in FL working for Gore on election day 2000. We knew where the action was. We started the day 5 points down in the polls and all but pulled it off, and perhaps (truth be told) we did.

[Zoeisright]

60. +1

[Zoeisright]

37. +1

[Selatius]

64. Gore won despite Nader. It was the fucking douchebag Republicans who fucked us all over.

Nader wasn't Katharine Harris or Jeb Bush. Those two purged about 50,000 Black voters from the rolls down there in Florida.

[JVS]

19. Forget campaigning as more of a liberal, the party needs to deliver something useful

The party hasn't done shit for most Americans since LBJ.

[Kaleva]

23. How could have being more liberal helped him in the states you listed?

[subcomhd]

25. two words

ralph nader

[mod mom]

27. Are you uninformed? There was much rigging going on & not only in FL!

[LaydeeBug]

35. sh*t. I hit the wrong rec button. nt

[pipi_k]

39. George Washington should have used his power to become King...

C'mon people...if we want to argue about the past, let's go back to the beginning...

:7

[Cha]

40. It hurt us tremendously that the corporatemediawhores were pushing

bush+cheney and calling Gore a Liar.

They were on Gore's case because fucked up little w got a DUI.

[MasonJar]

42. Al Gore is a great citizen of the world. It is America's bad, not Gore's

that this country had the temerity to elect a loser instead of a great leader. It also says a lot about the Democrats like you and I that we allowed it to happen. Now seeing the present Democratic president and the Democratic Congress acting as perpetual lapdogs, it is even clearer why Gore did not win. We, the Democratic Party, will not stand and fight.

[elocs]

43. I am reminded of the words of a Florida NFL coach after his team lost in the final minute

on a bad call. He did make excuses or cry about the bad call by the officials. He said that his team had numerous chances and the score should never have been so close that they would lose at the end on a bad call. The 2000 election should never have been even remotely close with a strong economy and the country at peace.

Also, enough people bought into the tale that there was no difference between Democrats and Republicans (I wonder what they thought of the next 8 years?). Some of them probably simply did not vote and some voted for Nader because they figured they were safe in doing so because there was no way Gore was going to lose. If they only knew.

[JI7]

47. Gore had to move resources out of Tennessee and Arkansas because Nader was lying about him in Oregon

and other states.

[JI7]

48. Nader told voters that Bush was not that bad by saying he was the same as Gore

that way people thought they could get something new after all the "scandals" fromt he Clinton administration but would still have something that was similar.

[Fire1]

55. .

:boring:

[Autumn]

57. I love Al Gore , but he

ran the crappiest campaign I have ever seen. and Lieberman:puke: First time I ever had to hold my nose to vote for a Dem. Of course now we know Lieberman is not even remotely a Democrat.

[gmoney]

58. NOW you tell us!

Not sure why nobody thought of that before... win by a LANDSLIDE!

end :sarcasm:

Yes, Lieberman was a horrible choice for VP, and Gore ran a pretty lame campaign, even distancing himself from Clinton's record of peace and prosperity.

As someone pointed out, it was a case of BOTH parties nominating the only person they had who couldn't beat the other guy.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28784

[BlooInBloo]

59. Ah - you're still here.