FROM PATRICK'S LIPS TO GOD'S EARS :

IT'S GONNA BE GORE (Patrick Ruffini, 4/15/02)

The trouble with Gore isn't his viability. It's his message. Gore is speaking to an audience which apparently believes September 11 never happened, and as such, he speaks in inchoate, September 10 tones. His main gripes are about the environment and the deficit, and neither issue resonates enough to motivate a large number of voters to defect from Bush. Politicians on both sides — first Republicans, then Democrats — have been huffing and puffing about fiscal responsibility for years, but not once, to my mind, has a major election been decided on the issue of deficit spending. You can't even show that the deficit was the trigger which elected Bill Clinton in 1992, even though the deficit was then at historic highs and it figured prominently in Ross Perot's campaign. Once elected, Clinton made it clear that deficit reduction was something he was doing for extra credit, hence his unexpectedly large tax increase. The Democrats came to love the issue when Clinton showed how it could be easily stolen from the Republicans. But Clinton's strategy was far more sophisticated than Gore's. While Gore means to exploit fiscal probity for its own sake, Clinton was simply out to madden and confound Republicans who thought they owned the issue. His was a defensive strategy to close down every potential line of Republican attack against him, and circa 1995-96, Republicans didn't have much against the incumbent President except for the deficit and welfare reform. All Clinton had to do completely cut off the GOP's oxygen supply was embrace these two ideals, and that he did. He did it even though he could have been re-elected as a big spender. Now that Democrats supposedly "own" the issue, they'll face the same problems the Republicans did in wielding it as an offensive weapon.

I think Patrick is pretty seriously underestimating Gore's viability problem. In the press and in debates he's just going to get pounded for blowing the 2000 election, when he was handed a wealthy nation at peace and couldn't beat a drunk moron (as they still believe him to be). As recently as thirty years ago, Nixon could overcome the same problem, having duplicated Gore's feat against JFK, but in an age where the newscycle is measured in hours, not days, Gore is very much yesterday's news.

He also has the Dukakis/Tsongas problem. Democrats from MA tend to win here in NH, no matter how awful they are as candidates. They enjoy a virtual favorite son effect. This has to make John Kerry the favorite in the NH primary and if Gore loses just once within the party it does tremendous damage to his viability and inevitability as the eventual nominee. Just imagine the questions : you couldn't beat Bush last time; you lost TN, your own state, last time (and you're behind in the polls there now); and now you've lost the pivotal first primary; isn't it fair to say that you are a loser?

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 17, 2002 7:06 AM