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HenchPAC NewsNews The Democrats' Dirty Little Secret August 17, 2000
They won’t be caught trashing their ticket in public, but Voter.com’s
Jack Germond discovers that behind closed doors, many Democrats don’t give Al Gore a
fighting chance.
By Jack W. Germond Exclusively for Voter.com
LOS ANGELES -- Behind the façade of cheering delegates waving their signs for
the television cameras, there is a deep sense of unease among the most politically astute
Democrats who have been meeting here this week. Their doubts about whether Vice President
Al Gore can win are widespread.
The enthusiasm for the ticket of Gore and Joe Lieberman is limited, if only
because the vast majority of the delegates here are probably a few degrees to the
ideological left of the ticket. But there have been reservations about other Democratic
nominees in the past among them Jimmy Carter in 1976, Michael. Dukakis in 1988 and even
Bill Clinton in 1992. Each of them was viewed as something of a risk because none of them
had a long history of fighting in the trenches with their fellow Democrats on such
defining issues as civil rights and the war in Vietnam.
This time, however, the doubts are about a candidate who is considered a quasi
incumbent and who is running at a time of unparalleled national prosperity, ordinarily an
assurance of success. So if the problem is not the context in which the Democrats are
trying to hold the White House, it has to be about the candidate himself.
And that is the core of the concern throughout the party. Too many people don’t
like Al Gore. And candidates who are not liked are not usually successful. The dirty
little secret about this convention is that no one has figured out how to make the vice
president more likeable and, by so doing, make him more electable.
The reservations about Gore are not being expressed openly, of course. Loyal
Democrats don’t want to be caught trashing their ticket in public. The only visible
signs of distress are oblique and indirect. When Jimmy Carter suggests Gore needs some
gaffe by his Republican opponent, George W. Bush, to win, the implication is that he lacks
the positive qualities to defeat the Texas governor. When Bob Kerrey, the outspoken
Democratic senator from Nebraska, loudly advises the vice president to put more distance
between himself and President Clinton, you don’t have to be a political genius to
understand that Kerrey is not bursting with optimism about the ticket.
The opinion polls are a more objective gauge of the Gore problem. They have
consistently shown Gores negatives -- meaning those who disapprove of him personally -- in
the 40 to 45 percent range, a level that ordinarily is toxic for a candidate. The latest
Los Angeles Times survey, for instance, gives Gore a 40 percent disapproval and 54 percent
approval rating, compared to 33 and 59 for Bush, a significant difference in the judgment
of those who understand the data. Another current poll finds that 47 percent of the voters
claim they can never vote for Gore. Even if some of them are blowing smoke at the
poll-takers, that is a frightening number for any candidate.
What makes these numbers particularly unnerving to these Democrats is that Al
Gore is not one of those candidates who polarizes the electorate by taking extreme
hard-line positions while also displaying both ignorance and insensitivity to the common
concerns. On the contrary, as the convention speakers have been reminding everyone ad
nauseam, Gore has had a public career that has equipped him for the presidency far better
than the vast majority of candidates offered by either party. And the vice president's
positions on issues are -- with only a few exceptions such as capital punishment --
identical to those of most Americans.
But Gore doesn’t get any credit for these conventional credentials. On the
contrary, the opinion surveys consistently find voters consider Bush, after only six years
as a state governor, the equal of the vice president on one important issue after another.
So the operative question is what, if anything, Gore can do to change the
dynamics of the campaign beyond, of course, waiting for Bush to blunder. Ordinarily, the
answer would be for the candidate to settle on a message and refine his technique for
delivering it to the voters in the three months left in the campaign, more than adequate
time to change perceptions.
What worries the most astute Democrats, however, is their feeling that Gore has
a tin ear for the politics of this year and a heavy hand as a political player. There is
almost universal agreement, for example, that the vice president made a serious mistake in
coming down hard on Rep. Loretta Sanchez because she planned to hold a fund raiser at the
Playboy Mansion. The notion that those working families he is always addressing would be
offended by the occasion speaks volumes about how out of touch he is with popular culture.
And there were snickers all over the city when Gore decided to personally
provide the advance spin on his acceptance speech by assuring the Los Angeles Times, among
others, that he was willing to take the risk of talking specifics and substance, the
implication being that this would be a contrast to Bush and the Republicans. This is a
candidate who can’t even pander well.
The Democrats are not giving up on Al Gore at this point, by any means. They
believe his resume will finally impress itself on the voters. And they believe that in the
prolonged exposure of the general election campaign, the vice president will wear better
than the amiable Republican from Texas. They know that Gore can be charming and
quick-witted rather than a pedantic politician talking down to his constituents. And it is
indeed quite possible, as Carter suggested, that Bush will stumble in some debate in
October when the competition will be most intense. In the long run, they keep assuring one
another, the golden condition of the economy will become a factor in the campaign weighing
heavily in Al Gore's favor.
Right now, however, they worry about enlisting in a campaign behind a candidate the voters don’t like. That’s doing things the hard way.
HENCH adds: Germond is a lifelong Dem, and if he's grumbling you can bet lots of old timers in the party are. Gore is toast.
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