OA2: The 2000 Election (#NeverForget), Part 1

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:01:18 Thomas: Hello and welcome to episode 2 of Opening Arguments. And today we're going to talk about Bush v. Gore. And this is going to be interesting because you'll know, listeners will know, I've been going back and forth, even on guest spots I've done, not just the one you're going to mention, but another one where we're talking about, you know, are people to blame if they vote third party to elect Trump, etc., etc. So all kinds of interesting stuff going on. And at long last, let's go and talk about Bush v. Gore. What do you say?

0:01:51 Andrew: Yeah. So first thing, I feel very passionately about this. I think if your listeners haven't heard your guest appearance along with Eli on the Gaytheist Manifesto, which is, it's now either the immediately prior one or two previous, where again, you were talking about President Trump. You had a great episode here on Atheistically Speaking. I don't know what more you can do to, you know, sort of sound the alarm.

0:02:20 Thomas: Yeah, I've done all I can. And now that's why I'm bringing in the big guns. I'm bring you in.

0:02:23 Andrew: Right. Right, so You may have, I certainly have gotten into the argument that there is historical precedent for third parties influencing an election. And the clear example of that is the 2000 election of Bush versus Gore. And I thought it would be fun to kind of revisit that bit of history. A lot of people I find who are in the sort of Bernie or bust camp were, you know, in grade school in, you know, during the 2000 election and um I I lived that um so uh I remember it pretty vividly.

0:02:25 Thomas: Yeah.

0:03:05 Thomas: I just remember endless jokes about hanging chads. Oh, so funny. We've got it. It's a recount. Oh, that's just that's all I remember. I'm only I was like 13, I think.

0:03:13 Andrew: Uh, at Yeah, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you what hanging chads are and why they're important um yeah no and if that's not a teaser I don't know what is um but but before I blame, and let me make this very very clear, I blame Nader voters. OK, I, I affirmatively blame anybody who voted for Ralph Nader in the 2000 election, even in, you know, states that didn't turn out to be close for reasons that that that we're going to get into.

0:03:30 Thomas: Oh, wow. Okay. Coming down hard line.

0:03:46 Thomas: Well, I don't want to throw you off, but do you blame them more? Like I made a point to say, so I went on a podcast called Wayward Atheist. So I might as well announce that here. I was going to announce it at the beginning or end or something, but check me out on Wayward atheists. If you want, we talked about this a lot, actually should be out, I think Wednesday. And I did make the point there that first and foremost, I do blame Bush voters, or in this case, Trump voters, like I do blame, like they are the ones getting that person elected. So are you blaming Nader's supporters even more than, all

0:03:47 Andrew: Yeah. OK. Oh, sure. Right. But but right. But those I mean, I that this would be a very interesting experiment to have anyone who is a patron of Atheistically Speaking, like me, you should be to to go to go into our patron, our patron only area. And if you're a Trump voter, I mean, don't we won't question you. We will not try and argue with you. But post, you know, I'm a Trump voter on the notes on this episode, because I think the answer. I mean I honestly think nobody might rise to that call.

0:04:28 Thomas: Right, round of applause.

0:04:50 Andrew: You might have zero listeners who are Trump voters. Um, and so yeah, I mean it goes without saying, uh, people who are voting for Trump are wrong. People who voted for Bush were wrong, but uh, but I'm not trying to reach that right, like, I'm trying to each the, and I think you're trying to reached the, uh, people who are very very closely aligned with us politically, uh, who are nevertheless, you know, know, angry for good reasons, bad reasons, or, you know, indifferent reasons.

0:04:50 Thomas: Yeah, I think I maybe have like three. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

0:05:11 Thomas: Right. And that's exactly what I said. I said, I'm trying, you know, if I could reach a Trump supporter, I would try. I just don't think that's happening. I think it's far more likely to reach somebody who, and I think what, what likely you're going to go on to say, and that I've kind of said as regards to, uh, I guess it would be Jill Stein or Gary Johnson voters or whatever is like, even under, I think the key is even under their sort of worldview and goals, it probably makes sense to vote Hillary. And I think that's the key. Like for a Trump voter under their worldview, it pro it makes sense about Trump. They're like, Like they probably, their goals are in line with that or that, you know, they believe that Hillary is the worst. But I bet there are people who are somewhere in there contradicting themselves. If we could really argue it out as to like, okay, what are going to be the consequences?

0:05:19 Andrew: Yeah.

0:06:07 Thomas: Why are you voting in the first place? All that kind of stuff. I bet we could find a contradiction. So that's kind of where I come from on it.

0:06:13 Andrew: Yeah, I think that's right. And this was something that just occurred to me a couple of days ago. But one of the things that was really frustrating to me in 2000 about George W. Bush was he ran on a very, very conservative platform in the primaries. He lined up the traditional base of conservative donors. He picked, you know, an arch conservative as his running mate, right? Everything in his circles was sort of hardcore conservative, which is pretty much what we got during his presidency. But he was kind of treated, I mean, he said, I'm the compassionate conservative. And he was sort of treated by the press as if he was far more centrist than he actually was.

0:06:58 Andrew: And that was as as somebody who, you know, was sort of left of center and looking at this going, this is not a race between, you know, a kind of just slightly right of center guy, this a race between somebody who, as far as we can tell, intends to govern from the hard right. The thing that occurred to me was Hillary Clinton is sort of our Democratic opposite of that. If you look at, again, you've mentioned the I Side With, I have linked a bunch of times. There's an article on 538. If you type into Google "538, Hillary Clinton is liberal," you will come up with it. There is an article on Daily Kos. You could do the same thing. But Hillary Clinton has amassed a she's she has amassed a consistently liberal voting record, uh, and and and she has run, uh, a very liberal campaign. She's taken very liberal policy positions. And they've moved sort of even further to the left after the primary.

0:07:52 Andrew: And she has not pivoted back to the center in the, in the general election. Right. Like the entirety of her pitch to moderates and conservatives right now is not, "You'll agree with what I'm going to try and get done from a public policy perspective." It is rather, you know, "I'm a grown up," and I can be trusted with my finger on the nuclear button, which I think is I think that's the right way to pivot back to the center. But, but so my point on all of that is we actually have an advantage. I mean, if you're, if you're a partisan Democrat, all partisan Democrat, we actually have the advantage that usually the Republican candidates get.

We have a very liberal candidate who is being treated as though she's a moderate centrist candidate of it, and I, I think we should treat that as a good thing instead of, you know, getting hung up over the fact that you, uh, know she's sort of perceived as being, uh, you know, more centrist, and she occasionally uses, you know, more centist rhetoric. Like, it could be a lot worse.

And, and, you know, as we're going to find out from, uh, talking about some of the things that Al Gore did, like, it has been a lot less. So, so that's right, that's kind of why I care. But now let's time travel back to 2000. Let's

0:08:09 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:09:02 Andrew: Let's travel back. Yeah, actually, let's time travel back to 1999. So we still, we will still have the Y2K scare.

0:09:02 Thomas: To the year 2000. Party like it's

0:09:10 Andrew: Exactly.

0:09:10 Thomas: 1999.

0:09:11 Andrew: Which you probably never heard the actual song.

0:09:11 Thomas: Okay. And then let me Know when we get to 2000, because I can do "In the Year 2000." And then we can do the, what was that, Conan's bit? It, I think, yeah.

0:09:15 Andrew: Right, right.

0:09:24 Andrew: Yes. That was, yeah, there's great, like, first couple of seasons of Conan. O'Brien where he lit his desk on, on fire. That was spectacular.

0:09:24 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. So We're in 1999, we're worried about Y2K. If You remember, I've talked about this on Comedy Shoeshine, not many people made it alive through Y2K. It was a horrible disaster. Nearly most of the adult population was killed. But we'll, we'll have to not look at that angle of things. We'll just, we're just looking strictly at Bush v. Gore. Yeah.

0:09:36 Andrew: Right. Yeah. We're worried about Y2K.

0:09:54 Andrew: Yeah. And we're, you know, doomsday prepping, you know, storing boxed meals in our garage. You're Al Gore's campaign manager. So first important question to you. Here's your question. You are Al Gore's campaign manager, and you have to decide whether you want Bill Clinton to be an important part of your re-election campaign. So what are some factors, what are Some things you might be thinking about? Yeah,

0:09:58 Thomas: Is Obviously the big thing is, uh, Monica Lewinsky and that sort of thing. And I do, know I have, I keep hearing that Obama will be the first time in like forever that the sitting president is doing some serious campaigning. So, ultimately, I know the answer, but I'm trying to think. Let's see. I was young at the time. I was only 13, but I would say the... Now, but I do know he had a pretty high approval rating toward the end of his presidency. The economy was good. There's a budget surplus, I think, eventually, and so, I don't know. I would think it's tough. I guess if you're paranoid about the blowjob thing, if you really worried about that, then maybe you don't do it, but that's tough. I'm not sure.

0:11:08 Andrew: You're exactly right. Which is to say, the Gore campaign, I think, prioritized their qualitative research over the numbers. And they really bought into this idea of Clinton fatigue. Clinton was a year and a half removed from being impeached. And there was sort of this sense of, you know, this is kind of a looming disaster over us. But when you look at the numbers, Clinton's approval rating, if you look from June 1999 through the election, okay, and they actually get a bump after the election.

0:11:41 Thomas: I want to say it was like 65 or something. It wasn't pretty high.

0:11:47 Andrew: It was essentially 60 to 35, okay. His approval rating never dropped below 55. And his disapproval never went above 40, okay? And from that time period.

0:11:52 Thomas: Right. In his whole presidency or just that time period? Okay.

0:12:03 Andrew: Right. Yeah.

0:12:03 Thomas: Gotcha.

0:12:04 Andrew: So at the time in which you're looking, the snapshot of how voters feel about Clinton is a 25 point margin of positive feelings, with over a hardcore 55 percent of the population always approving. And that number fluctuates from 55, 60, 61, 62. The disapproval always in the 30s, 37, 38, 39. There's one period where the closest it gets is 55 to 40. But basically, it's a plus 25 margin.

0:12:35 Thomas: Let me say this. If it's a good idea for Hillary to use Bill now, I would say it was a better idea for Gore to use Bill back then, because like, as much as it shouldn't really make a difference, it is kind of weird when the big knock on Bill is that he, you know, had an affair, did all this stuff kind of. And that that affects Hillary. You know, that's right there with Hillary. Gore could make the argument that like, look, that has nothing to do with me. You know where, you know, you could, you could imagine he's, he's purely, could come across and and just claim the good parts of the Clinton presidency and really have nothing to do with Clinton's misdeeds.

0:12:35 Andrew: Yeah.

0:13:21 Andrew: And Al Gore was a very active vice president. He had substantive responsibilities during the Clinton administration and could have very easily run on the things he did in the White House that were separate from having sexual encounters with interns. Terms. I would tell you by comparison, Obama's approval ratings right now are the highest that they have been in a year. And if you look at the Real Clear Politics average, they are 52 positive, 45 negative, right?

0:13:41 Thomas: Right. Oh, wow.

0:13:58 Andrew: So in other words, if it is the correct strategy, and I believe that it is, for Hillary Clinton to run on the continuation of the Obama legacy, right, Obama's approval ratings are a third, a fourth of the margin that Clinton had. I mean, it's been plus four, plus three, plus seven. He just, you know, a couple of months ago sort of cleared the 50% threshold. Hold um, and and the important part is that that's enough, right? If you have, if 52 percent of the population approves of the incumbent president, right, and the and and they're running for re-election, they're probably going to win. Uh, and so if you're, you know, running for the Obama third term or the Clinton third term, um, uh, if you know we did not have have uh the constitutional amendment prohibiting uh a president from running for more than two terms, I believe that's a 23rd, but uh that may be something I get called out on for being incorrect off the top of my head, didn't have, didn't plan to answer that one right yeah, please let me know, um but

0:14:09 Thomas: Yeah, if there's any lawyers listening, yeah. I don't know any amendment of any kind. I pride myself on having no idea. You know, when people were saying, oh, maybe the 19th Amendment people can do something about Trump, I was thinking, what is that? Is that people the who drink alcohol? Is that? Yeah, I don't know. Is that something about the state's rights or something? I don't know. Or is that going to factor in? No, I figured it out eventually. But I'm terrible with numbers like that.

0:15:03 Andrew: Uh, right right yeah that was a right yeah

0:15:27 Thomas: I don't know.

0:15:27 Andrew: Um mean the smart money would have have been on Clinton winning, on Bill Clinton winning re-election in 2000. So already, I think, and again, you know, I'm more of a data-driven guy than a qualitative guy. And I just, it was mind-boggling to me at the time that Gore seemed to buy into the narrative about Bill Bill Clinton that was being peddled by, you know, sort of emerging right-wing media news sources at the time.

0:15:31 Thomas: Right.

0:15:57 Thomas: Hmm. That he was sort of like kind of a curse on the campaign or something or just a bad. Yeah. No, that makes sense. So you're saying maybe mistake number one in some some ways. Like, chalk that up as, okay, I can buy that, certainly. It's a good argument, especially given that his approval was so much higher than Obama's is now. I had no idea. That's fascinating. Ooh, another decision. Awesome. Okay.

0:15:59 Andrew: Right. Correct. All right. So next your major decision as the, as the as the

0:16:23 Thomas: I hope I can, is this like a Dungeons and Dragons? Do I get to win this campaign? Is that, how many points? We can, we'll

0:16:23 Andrew: Yeah, there's a, there's an 96 point ball rod waiting around the corner, which would be, which would Be hilarious. If you'd ever played Dungeons and Dragons, which we know you have not.

0:16:34 Thomas: See if I, it'll, it will, oh, okay. Yeah, no, I don't know.

0:16:39 Thomas: But I have watched Stranger Things, so does that count? Oh, you don't, you probably don't know. You need to.

0:16:43 Andrew: I'm about to. It's queued up. It

0:16:46 Thomas: Okay. Separate discussion. So, so we're, so I'm playing Dungeons and Campaigns and Campaign and Dragons, and I am trying to win. Can I win?

0:16:46 Andrew: Is queued up.

0:16:56 Thomas: Let's see. Choice number two. Here we go.

0:16:56 Andrew: Choice number two, you have to prepare and advise your candidate on whom to select as his vice presidential running lead. Now let me give you some factors that go into that. Your primary challenger was New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley He was a long-standing, he's a former

0:17:19 Thomas: Boy, I don't even know that name. That's, that's a bad sign.

0:17:23 Andrew: Professional basketball player. I believe he played for the Knicks and then ran for the Senate in New Jersey. Democracy was considered kind of a budget wunderkind in the 80s was Gary Hart's choice for his likely choice for his vice president had Gary Hart not sat with an attractive blonde woman on his lap on a boat called the Monkey Business, which is a fantastic story sunk his campaign. So, but by 2000, is kind of a jowly senator from New Jersey, sort of rock hard liberal, no longer, you know, I mean, it doesn't surprise me that you don't know who he is.

0:17:49 Thomas: Oh, wow.

0:18:10 Thomas: Right, right, right. Now, how, what was the margin of victory on the primary? Was it pretty

0:18:10 Andrew: Right. Yeah, your candidate, your candidate has gone through the entire primary season, but has won all 50 states. OK, Bradley stayed into the end, but these were mostly, you 65, 35. Some were 70, 30. Some were 60, 40. Right. Not close.

0:18:14 Thomas: Okay essentially not close not really close

0:18:32 Andrew: Yeah. And I believe, right, that Gore won New Jersey. Right? Won Bradley's home state.

0:18:32 Thomas: Yeah, oh Wow. I would have dropped out then.

0:18:40 Andrew: Yeah. But, and Bradley has attacked you from the left, has attacked your candidate from the left. And that was sort of where he positioned himself, a liberal alternative, uh, to Al Gore in the primaries. And now, uh... With that in mind, so you've had a long primary season. Uh... There's clearly some liberal real resentment, but not anywhere near the level of, know, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton.

0:19:03 Thomas: There weren't any uh Bradley or busters? Okay.

0:19:05 Andrew: Correct. Correct. And a large part of that is there just, there was not a lot of policy difference, right? I mean, I've described Al Gore as being, I think, the most progressive candidate that the Democrats have nominated since, you now, in 50 years. And I think that's true. And so what Bradley did was sort of run a little further to the left, but it was hard to draw, you know, policy distinctions because they weren't there, as opposed to, you know, there were some legitimate policy distictions that Sanders could and did draw vis-a-vis Hillary Clinton in the primaries. So with all that in mind, do you go? What kind of, and I don't expect you to be able to name names, but

0:19:13 Thomas: Okay.

0:19:23 Thomas: I was gonna say I don't know any names. I like, uh,

0:19:48 Andrew: Yeah, and look, I'm not going to throw around New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and be like, let's go to an in-depth, no, no. No, no, no. But but what sort of things might you want, you know, as the sitting vice president and before that, a Tennessee senator? And I should add this, that the the liberal knock on Al Gore, I believe, comes from the fact that Bill Clinton ran for the presidency as a candidate of the a new Democrat. There was an institution called the Democratic Leadership Council, and Bill Clinton and Al Gore were both on it. And basically what that group argued was, we've watched traditional liberal Democratic candidates like George McGovern in 1972, Walter Mondale in 1984, and then Michael Dukakis in 1988, just get destroyed. And we think that if you continue to run classic liberal candidates for president, that just don't, the electorate does not support that on a national level. So what Democrats need to do is become more centrist, move more to the middle, give up on certain very unpopular political positions.

0:19:52 Thomas: Hmm.

0:20:44 Thomas: Can You Give me an example that's interesting to hear. What's example of a position that he thought maybe we need to soften on or something?

0:21:07 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. So prior to 1980, prior to 1992, it was in the Democratic Party platform to abolish capital punishment. And that that position that was it was a big issue in the Dukakis campaign in 1988. 1988,

0:21:21 Thomas: Oh, okay. Oh, was that because of, what's his name? Lee Atwater or whatever? Ah, yeah. I know a little bit about that.

0:21:31 Andrew: Yes, yes, yes it was. Yeah, no, good, good. And there was a debate question that Michael Dukakis mishandled, very badly mishANDLED, that's one of these classic of video that I will often give as instruction on how not to answer questions. Essentially, he was asked the question by CNN's Bernard Shaw, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would would you still, you know, be opposed to the death penalty?

And then Michael Dukakis gave a, like, two-minute discussion of the statistics of recidivism rates about, you know, and it was just, you're like, literally every person on, and I was, you know, what, it was 1988, so I was 14 at the time watching this, and, you know, I had a better answer for him, and it wasn't, you know, right, I didn't have a wife to get raped and murdered, but, you know, it's very easy to say, like Like, well, of course. Right. And this is exactly what you know, why we have government and why it's not appropriate to take into account the emotional reactions of one person. But, you know. Whatever. But you've got to be a human being first. And he wasn't. So anyway.

0:22:19 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah,

0:22:42 Andrew: So DLC comes in and says, we can't have this anymore. And I should point out, by the way, that Al Gore also ran in 1988. He was endorsed by the New Republic, and he ran as the Southern centrist candidate in 1988, so there's sort of this legacy stuff of, we don't trust Al Gore because he's been a part of this, organization to push the Democrats to the right, Even though it worked Clinton won two terms as a new Democrat, there was a sense of, you know, he's this kind of imposter, you know, Democrat in name only sort of thing. And his 1988 campaign in which he explicitly ran to the right of everybody else

0:22:33 Thomas: Gotcha. Okay. So, Clinton softened on, yeah, interesting.

0:23:25 Andrew: Lost, obviously. So with all that in mind, what are you thinking about for your vice president? So

0:23:31 Thomas: Boy, this is so tough, I, because I, I'll confess, I don't understand how people pick vice presidents even now, like I couldn't tell you. It's, it's, I think it's realistically, it feels like it's way more based on shit that we don't know about than than anything, uh, personally, that's how I feel, but maybe it's just because I'm ignorant, ignorant on the actual decisions being made, but like I wouldn't have been able to know why, you, Hillary picked a Cane or, I just don't know. I would say, but it's interesting because you called Gore the most progressive candidate in 50 years or whatever. So it's, it's interested that the knock on him is that he might secretly be more centrist or something or trying to pull it Republican. So I don't know. I suppose, I suppose if that is the the main knock on him, you go with a typically, with a more liberal candidate that has, I, more of the traditional Democratic support and ideals or something.

0:24:28 Thomas: I'm not sure. Or you go with a level 48 paladin. Is that in Dungeons and Dragons? I don't know. One or the other.

0:24:35 Andrew: As it turns out, both of those were on Al Gore's shortlist. Now, the person you've just described is current Secretary of State John Kerry. John Kerry was A traditional, kind of unexciting, but longstanding, well-respected Democratic senator. He checked the box of somebody who Al Gore liked and worked with very closely. Doctrinaire liberal up and down on virtually every issue. I mean, in fact, he was sort of hurt as a candidate in 2004 because knowing that he was first in line to be the Democratic nominee in 2004, for. I mean, he just took a number of votes that were, in my view, politically, what he thought would be politically expedient, right? Like voting for the Iraq War, voting to authorize the USA Patriot Act, voting for Bush tax cuts

0:24:36 Thomas: Oh okay interesting

0:25:36 Andrew: And voting for No Child Left Behind. And, you know, it was just, it Was clear political cowardice. And if you remember anything about the 2004 election, Right. The main knock on on on John Kerry was that he was a flip flopper. Right. That he, you know, and he gave this again is another theme. Don't give weird convoluted answers in debates. But he gave us weird convoluted answer in a debate where he said, well, actually, I was I was against the funding of the troops before I was for it. And again, I'm just one of these that, I mean, literally, he said, I was against the $87 million before I voted for it. You know, it was a bizarre moment in electoral politics. But OK, so now assuming you've history Thomas as the Gore campaign chair in Dungeons

0:25:42 Thomas: Right well we'll

0:26:28 Andrew: And Campaigns, you've recommended that Al Gore pick John Kerry. And here's what I think the consequence of that would have been. Al Gore lost the state of New Hampshire by 7000 votes out of 560,000 votes cast. And New Hampshire not only borders Massachusetts, but the Boston, the New Hampshire media market is essentially the Boston market. Market. So the idea that John Kerry, who might otherwise not be all that interesting, maybe doesn't help you shore up your left flank, at minimum, it would be very, very difficult to persuade me that naming John Kerry as your vice president not have gotten Al Gore 7,000 votes in your election.

0:27:14 Thomas: Have to roll the dice to see yeah like where yeah wow So we'll have to stop it there for Bush v. Gore Volume 1, but there's lots more to come in future episodes, so check that out. Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you for part two of Bush v. Gore.

0:27:16 Andrew: Right. Yes.

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