Despite his graceful concession speech after the 2000 election was decided, Al Gore has proven himself to be one of the most classless politicians in the United States today. He rants against the man who defeated him and badmouths his policies abroad. He subscribes to some of the looniest theories of the angry left.
In 2003, he joined those on the angry left in endorsing Howard Dean, then surging in pre-primary Democratic polls — and quite possibly helping promote Dean’s subsequent implosion. It was that very endorsement which made clear what a classless man the former Vice President is. Joe Lieberman, his 2000 running mate, whose presence on the ticket helped account for Gore’s strong showing that year, said that he would wait on his former running-mate’s decision before entering the 2004 presidential contest. If Gore ran, he said, he wouldn’t.
Only after Gore decided not to run did Lieberman throw his hat into the ring.
Gore did not even offer Lieberman the courtesy of a phone call to tell him that he was endorsing Dean, leaving the Connecticut Democrat to learn about it from the media. Now, he’s refusing to back Lieberman in his former running mate’s primary contest against Ned Lamont. (Via–The Corner via Instapundit.)
It seems Gore’s 2000 concession speech was a rare moment of class from an otherwise petty and ungrateful man.
Classless, he may be.
But who else is there to warn us of the dangers of Manbearpig?
You keep mentioning “Gore’s 2000 concession speech” as gracious… I disagree. Remember its context: 40-odd days of Gore harming the fabric of the nation and deliberately fanning the paranoid fantasies in the left, which they still haven’t recovered from.
Great observation, Calarato! I hadn’t quite thought that the seeds of the Hatist Left began with Gore’s sore loser attitude.
Peter, ROFLMAO!
How dare you speak ill of the man who invented the Internet!
I’ve always wondered which half of manbearpig is most dangerous.
Manbearpig doesn’t care who you are. He just wants to get you!
Guys! I’m totally serial!
Quit talking smack about Al Gore. I feel kinda bad for him. I don’t think he has any friends.
How is it classless to not endorse a candidate who agrees with?
#3 – Thanks Bruce.
I have to say, it took me awhile to admit it. Because at the time, I was one of the paranoid lefties thus “fanned”.
I voted for Gore in 2000. (I never cast a vote for anything but Democrats before 2002.) At the time, in 2000, I defended Gore’s conduct to friends and co-workers.
I was wrong. I might have been right, if Gore had been truly interested in knowing who the people of Florida voted for that day. He wasn’t.
He should have called for a single, statewide (Florida) recount under a uniform standard. And he should have allowed overseas military votes (if postmarked by the right date) to be counted. He did neither.
Gore went for the most non-standardized, manipulative recounts he could – just to get the result he wanted; reality be damned. SCOTUS said 7-2, yes 7-2, that Gore’s manipulative, nonstandard recounts were a major Constitutional violation. Their 5-4 split was only on the remedy.
A consortium of major MSM papers found afterwards that, even under Gore’s unconstitutional and manipulative ways of recounting, Bush still won Florida that day. (That report finally changed my mind.)
But to this day, the Angry Left keeps its myths and canards about the 2000 election. The fantasy movie _Fahrenheit 911_ opens with them.
The contrast with Nixon’s statesmanship in 1960 – when there was real and massive vote fraud in Texas and Illinois in Kennedy’s favor, yet Nixon instantly conceded to spare the nation any painful recounts – could not be greater.
#2
which they still haven’t recovered from.
Don’t you have to recognize there’s a problem before you recover from anything?
As long as they blame everybody else for their miserable failures, they’re NEVER going to “recover”.
TGC, “victims” never admit they might have been at fault… to do so requires a repudiation of victimhood… something the Hatefilled GayLeft and BDS people can never, ever do. You’re right; no recover for them.
If they did, only their tin foil hats would survive the implosion.
Dan, good post! But I think the race for Most Classless Politician would be a tie between Gore and JimminyCricketCarter. It’d be a photo-finish, too close to call in my book.
Agreed, Michigan-Matt. Jimmy Carter is just as classless as Al Gore.
The best way to sum up Algore’s sad life is something that Tipper said (when her mouth wasn’t full of Al’s tongue) that was quoted by PJ O’Rourke:
“The best Halloween we had was when the kids were little and Al dressed up as a carrot. They said it was the best costume he ever wore.”
Sharp kids, those Gores. Must have inherited Tipper’s brains.
Regards,
Peter H.
Gore hasn’t had any class for a long time. Some people forget that in 1988 it was Gore who first raised the Willie Horton issue against Dukakis, long before Bush 41’s campaign was unfairly trashed by Democrats about the Willie Horton ads produced by an independent committee.
And in one of his convention speeches (I think when he was first nominated for vice president) he brought the crowd to tears when he talked about his sister’s death — but never mentioned how long he and his father were in the tobacco business.
Look at it this way, Trace: A politican must stink something awful, if even NIXON of all people is more gracious than them and a greater statesman.
#17 Trace Phelps — June 20, 2006 @ 9:03 pm – June 20, 2006
Some people forget that in 1988 it was Gore who first raised the Willie Horton issue against Dukakis, long before Bush 41’s campaign was unfairly trashed by Democrats about the Willie Horton ads produced by an independent committee.
As to the first, the contention that Gore was the first to raise the Willie Horton issue against Dukakis is hotly contested (apparently, the only known reference was to the Dukakis administration’s prison furlough program, and did not specifically mention Horton), and, as to the second, you aren’t seriously going to contend that Roger Ailes, who was media consultant for the Bush I campaign, and who actually did push “Willie Horton,” was not working for the Bush I campaign, are you?
That would be about as silly as the MSM, following the Republican spin, claiming that Gore said that he had discovered Love Canal and that he invented the Internet. Neither of which he said.
#11 Calarato — June 20, 2006 @ 12:12 am – June 20, 2006
He should have called for a single, statewide (Florida) recount under a uniform standard. And he should have allowed overseas military votes (if postmarked by the right date) to be counted. He did neither.
Some of us have actually read the FL state elections statutes, and the state court and US supreme court opinions in the Bush v. Gore election. I did that while posting on a generally conservative message board during the recount issue. There was nothing in the statutes that required the Gore campaign to request recounts in all of the FL counties–the FL recount statutes are on a county-by-county basis. And there is nothing in the FL statutes that gives a candidate the power to determine which ballots are to be counted, and which are not.
The last FL Supreme Court decision authorized recounts using the standard required by the then-existing FL statute regarding counting of the vote. The US Supreme Court, in its infinite lack of wisdom, determined that there was some “equal protection” issue regarding the standard espoused by the FL Supreme Court. Of course, if the FL Supreme Court had ordered a different standard to be used, they would have run afoul of a federal statute that essentially said that the rules are not to be changed after the votes have been cast. In addition, the US Supreme Court, also in its infinite lack of wisdom, ordered the FL recount stopped on the basis that it might sully Bush’s victory. I’m paraphrasing, but that’s essentially the result.
A consortium of major MSM papers found afterwards that, even under Gore’s unconstitutional and manipulative ways of recounting, Bush still won Florida that day.
This might be interesting if and when the FL state election statutes grant MSM papers the power to count ballots and determine election results. Until then, no.
I voted for Gore in 2000.
That’s nice. I voted for the Libertarian candidate. It was, of course, a protest vote.
The US Supreme Court, in its infinite lack of wisdom, determined that there was some “equal protection” issue regarding the standard espoused by the FL Supreme Court.
Of course. Since leftists like you, Raj, were saying that wholesale election fraud had taken place, the Supreme Court rightly pointed out that it would be reasonable to assume that it had taken place in every county — and thus recount all of them.
But leftists like you didn’t want that; nor did you want ballots from overseas military voters to be counted, nor did you want anything done about the Panhandle counties in which the media, in connivance with the Gore campaign, had spread false stories about Gore winning the hour before the polls closed, or any changes to the Democratic local election boards’ decisions that blank and double-punched ballots constituted votes for Gore.
#20 raj baby, do you even believe some of that nonsense you wrote or are you just trying a page from Ian S’s and lester’s playbooks on baiting?
Is this the same SCOTUS “…with an infinite lack of wisdom” that you and the angry GayLeft want to use to overturn voter decisions on popular initiatives? Gheez, I thought only GrampaGryph played the double standard game here.
Raj baby, your comments come across as parodies and jokes these days –and that’s something any 1-L student could tell you.