down here in Tallahassee...

[RE]

Hello, everyone.  Sorry if this is a duplicate post.
I live in Tallahassee, Florida and have had a number of conversations with Gore
supporters over the course of the campaign.  When I asked about their
conversations with undecideds or Bush supporters, they often would refer to the
“trust issue,” and talk about being kidded as a “yellow dog Democrat” (“they’d
vote for a yellow dog if it was a Democrat”) for voting for someone who would,
for example, “lie about fighting forest fires.”  “We’re in trouble, he’s sounding
like Clinton” was a common theme.  So were winces and other manifestations of
physiomoral discomfort.

Thus, from my loose sampling, for an important sector of the electorate down
here,
this mattered, big time, and Gore simply blew it.  Whether we think of this as
dumb mistakes, or as rooted in a character disorder of the sort Cockburn and
St.Clair speculate about, his failure at this raw, behavioral level  (ego scans
subarticulate speech, recognizes failure in reality testing, anticipates shame,
censors) to maintain a distinction between himself and Clinton cost him.  At this
superficial level, so important when policy differences narrow (not vanish!) and
when you run a campaign of images, whatever mileage Gore might have gotten from
other gestures like  the convention kiss was lost when he couldn’t stop puffing
himself up.  Tripping over his spotlighted boasting, he made it more likely,
inevitable, for people around here to think about the wearying evasions of the
Clinton administration. (I suppose there’s a tragic note to this, but only
because many will suffer; as far as Gore’s concerned, it’s farce. “They see him
as another liar.”  “He just can’t stop bullshitting.”)

This seems to be completely ignored by those progressives now moving in to trash
Nader as a spoiler.  (Yeah, I voted for Nader, sort of, by trading my Nader vote
with a Massachusetts Gore supporter.)  How does it happen that Gore himself, and
the party/electoral system that props up his candidacy, is taken as a constant, a
given, and anyone else is fair game for blame, a responsible actor?   Why not
turn on the Bush-voting Floridians who might have voted for Gore, but wouldn’t
because he lied to them, right to their face?  (“I couldn’t believe that he was
saying that, right there, in the debates!”)  After all, what’s so important about
“trust,” it’s the “policy menu” that counts, right?   On the other hand, why not
grant Nader some structural considerations, even a pardon?   Why not recognize
that there’s some tragedy, non-farcical variety, in Nader’s position and
decisions?   If he asks his supporters to vote Gore, does that risk demoralizing
them, gutting the struggling Green party?  Does it confirm to the Dem elite that,
in the end, the errant will return, and so they can continue to blow off the
party’s left?  Anyone who approaches these questions with the simple answer that
“Ralph did it” either isn’t bothering to think, or they’re intent on a hatchet
job.
Randy Earnest