11/27/00

A Swing and a Whiff

Monday night Al Gore swung for the fences, and the breeze from his whiff cooled American faces all the way up to the nosebleed seats. The most important thing Gore needed to do on this night, given the sixty percent of the American public opposed to further vote challenges, was to convince the citizenry of his sincere desire to do good for the country. To do that, he had to avoid what has been the soft underbelly of his entire campaign: his reputation for outright fabrication. Instead he fed the public saccharine platitudes and unbelievable whoppers.

Gore and his minions have said time and time again that their only goal is to count every vote, without regard to the outcome. Al Gore wants us to believe that he is taking a stand to preserve our democracy, without the slightest consideration of any benefit to himself. Al Gore, defender of democracy, would fight to have every ballot counted even if there was no hope of winning, because Al wants to make sure that we can teach our children that every vote counts. Of course, this is why Al Gore, defender of democracy, has called for an investigation of the smokes-for-votes scandal in Milwaukee, demanded hand recounts in every precinct nationwide that used punch-card ballots, and called for United Nations observers to oversee the recounts. Wait... you mean he hasn't done these things?

Maybe that's because Al Gore doesn't really want to count every vote - he only wants to count the votes he thinks will help him. The crux of his legal challenge - the math that shows him triumphing by nine whole votes statewide - would require Florida courts to throw out almost two hundred ballots which have already been counted, besides adding scores of invented votes from pro-Gore enclaves. In addition, Gore operatives are feverishly working in Seminole County to trash over fifteen thousand absentee ballots for technical reasons - despite William Daley's condemnation of election technicalities - which ballots favor Bush by a 4,800 vote margin. One fork of Gore's tongue rasps praise for counting every vote, while the other fork issues commands to his agents to trash fifteen thousand votes. I guess "every" vote means every vote which favors Gore.

Gore could and should have come right out by saying that he believed the vote was wrong and that he probably won Florida - at least that would have been the truth. Instead he reverted to the worst partisan rhetoric we've heard all season - the good Democrats want the people's voice to be heard, while the wicked Republicans want to stifle the people's voices. When the majority of Americans already believe in the outcome, as they do, Gore's continued efforts to challenge the results don't strengthen the legitimacy of the eventual outcome, they undermine it by calling it into continued doubt.

Gore is saying one thing - uphold the process and count all the votes - while doing exactly the opposite, and Americans know that. Ironically, his speech Monday night not only made it much less likely that he will ever see the inside of the White House after January 20, but made a clear case why he deserves it less than ever.