Al takes one for the team. Thank goodness. Having known several people involved in Iowa and New Hampshire during the last cycle, I’ve been a bit puzzled at the notion that Al Gore is a good guy and that he should win the nomination. Al Gore is everything I hate about the Republican Party.
To digress for one moment, the man ran one of the worst campaigns I’ve ever seen. We can wring our hands over the press and how much they hate him, but ultimately that is because he is a loathesome fellow. The campaign was a mish mash of ideas that avoided the key principles of the Democratic Party and seemed to forget that the last 8 years had been pretty damn good.
However, back to the loathesome character, Al Gore. Gore played hardball with Bradley in Iowa and New Hampshire in a manner Shrub would have been happy to have done. In Iowa, his minions sent out labor to disrupt Bradley campaign events. If it weren’t for how human of a person Bradley was this could have been a disaster. Instead of getting upset, Bradley rolled with it. At one event, a bunch of union guys stood along the aisles making it hard to get through for supporters. Bradley went up to every one of them held out his hand, told them he was Bill Bradley and he wanted their vote. Every one of them shook his hand and most had a story about how he was their hero back when he played for the Knicks (a character flaw of Bradley’s I overlook). Gore’s people ignored having anything to do with this garbage, but is one to really believe that?
In other instances they had guys follow Bradley around to every event. Finally the political director broke and swore at the clown and the NY Times picked up the story. The Political Director was fired, but the press ignored the ties to Gore.
The most despicable act came when Bradley had a surrogate in New Hampshire. Bob Kerrey was speaking when he started getting heckled with shouts of "cripple". Gore’s people made sure they weren’t directly tied to the garbage, but who else sent out those people?
Gore would have been better than the current twit occupying the oval office and I would have voted for him again if he had won the nomination. However, his bowing out should be cause for celebration amongst those of us who believe our party should be a party of principles and not cheap knock offs of Republican Dirty Tricks campaigns. Al Gore is a political hack who forgot what was important. I won’t miss him in the least. Now back to the right wings discussion of Clinton’s genitalia.
But wasn’t that Lott skit sweet?