At the end the 1990s, the Left's purist vs. pragmatist split resurfaced again. Many on the Left were furious with President Bill Clinton over his timidly liberal or pro-business policies that he had promoted in the face of the Right's ferocious efforts to humiliate and impeach him.
To his surprise, Clinton also had found the mainstream press nearly as hostile to him as the right-wing news media was.
During Campaign 2000, that animus shifted to Al Gore, as the New York Times and Washington Post misrepresented Gore's words and intentions almost as enthusiastically as did the Right's New York Post and Washington Times. The news media's "war on Gore" peddled apocryphal tales, like Gore's supposed claim that he "invented the Internet," and made Gore out to be a delusional braggart. [See Neck Deep.]
At the time, some leading progressives told me they were determined to "teach the Democrats a lesson" by supporting Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, who claimed to detect "not a dime's worth of difference" between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush.
The Nader backers brushed aside concerns about the kinds of Supreme Court justices that Bush might select as well as my warnings that Bush though selling himself as a "compassionate conservative" would restore neoconservatives to power over U.S. foreign policy.
Having dealt with the neocons during the Reagan-era bloodbaths in Central America, I was keenly aware of their skill at manipulating information. But Nader backers assured me that Bush would surround himself with "realists" from his father's presidency, not Reagan-era neocons.
The Naderites' ultimate dream was for Nader and the Greens to cross the five percent voting threshold, thus qualifying them for federal election funds, while still hoping that Gore would slip past Bush.
On Election Day, when I was standing in line to vote in Arlington, Virginia, two young Nader supporters were discussing exactly this scenario when a disgusted middle-aged woman turned on them and seethed, "You better hope Gore wins." It was the old division between the purists and the pragmatists.
As it turned out, Nader fell short of the five percent threshold, but his vote total in the key state of Florida did leave that tally in a virtual dead heat between Bush and Gore.
We now know that if all legally cast votes in Florida had been counted, Gore would have won narrowly as he also did in the national popular vote but Bush clung to a 537-vote lead in the official Florida tally overseen by Gov. Jeb Bush's allies, including Secretary of State Katherine Harris.
Turning Point
At that historic turning point, the Republicans benefited from having a powerful media apparatus which quickly defined the recount battle as Gore's trying to "invent votes." Meanwhile, the mainstream news media continued tilting toward Bush under the notion that his ascension to the White House would "put the adults back in charge" after eight turbulent years of Clinton.
On the Left, there was almost no media to fight back against Bush's brazen tactics and no timely protests to match what the Right was able to generate overnight through its national media. I also continued to encounter disinterest among some on the Left who still insisted that it really didn't matter whether Gore or Bush became President.
Amid this climate of an active Right and a disengaged Left, it became a relatively easy call for five Republican partisans on the U.S. Supreme Court to twist some legalistic arguments into an excuse to hand the White House to George W. Bush. [For details, see Neck Deep.]
Not only did the Supreme Court reverse the electoral judgment of the American people regarding who should be President, but the five Republicans guaranteed that any Court vacancies would be filled by a Republican President, not a Democrat.
After Bush prevailed, Nader and his followers refused to accept any blame for the outcome, claiming instead that it was Gore's fault for not winning his home state of Tennessee, or having a lousy recount strategy, or any number of other excuses.
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