The vice president said the boy should be given permanent residency status in the U. Gore's position later evolved when he said the whole dispute belonged in family court.
In the end, many Cuban-Americans were committed to getting back at the Clinton administration by voting against Gore. The vice president got 70, fewer votes in Miami-Dade than Clinton did in Gore might have picked up a few votes with the help of Alex Penelas, the popular mayor of Miami-Dade and the most prominent Hispanic Democrat in Florida. But the timing was bad. Penelas was busy with his re-election campaign.
Sensing strong undercurrents in the Cuban community from the Elian Gonzalez episode, he literally ran from the Democratic ticket. In October, he missed an important Gore event in Miami, choosing instead to go on a day trade mission to Spain. There is little debate that Ralph Nader's candidacy, which captured 90, left-leaning votes in Florida, was the biggest single factor in Gore's loss.
But Gore might have hurt his cause in a state teaming with committed environmentalists. He refused to take a position on one of the top environmental issues in Florida: a proposed reliever airport that would be sandwiched between two national parks in South Florida. Nader came out solidly against the project, as have others in the Clinton administration. Who says a minor party candidate can't make a difference?
In Palm Beach County, supervisor Theresa LePore resorted to the now-notorious butterfly ballot, a well-intentioned move she thought would make it easier for seniors to read. Instead, it spawned mass confusion, leading many to mistakenly vote for Pat Buchanan, whose name was situated almost directly across from Gore's. Even Buchanan conceded that many of the 3, votes he got in heavily Democratic Palm Beach County probably belonged to Gore.
Meanwhile, Duval County voters were confused by a two-page presidential ballot that inadvertently instructed them to mark a vote on each page. Many did just that, resulting in 22, disqualified or "overvoted" ballots. The critical group, however, was the majority who thought the economy would remain stable--in this group, Gore trailed slightly by 47 to 49 percent.
Gore failed in the election because he failed to convince this swing group that continued prosperity depended on continued Democratic governance. Gender may also have played a role in undermining Gore's inherited advantage on the economy. Although voters who emphasized this vital factor did favor the vice president 59 to 37 percent , he gained far fewer votes a percent gain on the issue than Clinton had four years earlier 34 percent , even though the economy had strengthened during the period.
Here, too, as on issues generally, Gore emphasized the "female" side of his policy positions, such as targeting tax cuts toward education or home care of the elderly. He offered little for men who would not benefit from affirmative action in the workplace or who would use money returned from taxes for other purposes.
As a result, he gained far less from men 57 percent than from women 68 percent who gave priority to economic issues. In theoretical terms, the vice president turned the election away from an advantageous retrospective evaluation of the past eight years to an uncertain prospective choice based on future expectations. As the academic literature might have warned him, even in good times "there is still an opponent who may succeed in stimulating even more favorable future expectations.
And he may win. More generally, Gore neglected to put the election into a broader context--of the administration's record, of party, or of the Republican record in Congress. All of these elements might have been used to bolster his chances, but he, along with Bush, instead made the election a contest between two individuals and their personal programs.
In editing his own message so severely, Gore made it less persuasive. If the campaign were to be only a choice of future programs, with their great uncertainties, a Bush program might be as convincing to the voters as a Gore program.
If the election were to be only a choice of the manager of a consensual agenda, Bush's individual qualities might well be more attractive. The Democratic candidate had the advantage of leadership of the party that held a thin plurality of voters' loyalties. His party was historically identified with the popular programs that were predominant in voters' minds--Social Security, Medicare, education, and health care--and the Democrats were still regarded in as more capable to deal with problems in those areas.
Yet Gore eschewed a partisan appeal. In the three television debates, illustratively, he mentioned his party only four times, twice citing his disagreement with other Democrats on the Gulf War, and twice incidentally.
Gore neither challenged this argument, nor attacked the Republicans who had controlled Congress for the past six years, although promising targets were available. The vice president might have blamed Republicans for inaction on his priority programs, such as Social Security and the environment.
He might have drawn more attention to differences on issues on which his position was supported by public opinion, such as abortion rights or gun control. He could even have revived the impeachment controversy, blaming Republicans for dragging out a controversy that Americans had found wearying and 17 The public had certainly disapproved of Clinton's personal conduct, but it had also steadily approved of the president's job performance.
That distinction could have been the basis for renewed criticism of the Republicans. Yet Gore stayed silent. Gore's strategy was based on an appeal to the political center and to the undecided voters gathered there.
At the party convention and in his acceptance speech, he did try to rouse Democrats by pointing to party differences--and the effort brought him a fleeting lead in opinion polls.
From that point on, however, moving in a different direction, he usually attempted to mute those differences, and his lead disappeared. If there were no important differences, then Democratic voters had little reason to support a candidate whose personal traits were less than magnetic. Successful campaigns "temporarily change the basis of political involvement from citizenship to partisanship.
Turnout may have made the difference in the election results. Nationally, there was only a small increase over the last election in voter participation, to 51 percent of all adults, although there were considerable increases in the most contested states, particularly by union household members and African Americans.
Usually, the preferences of nonvoters are not much different from those who actually cast ballots, [19] but the election may have been an exception to that rule. CBS News polls immediately before and after the balloting suggested that, if every citizen had actually voted, both the popular and electoral votes would have led to an overwhelming Gore victory.
A stronger Gore effort to explain these differences and to bring those uncommitted citizens to the polls might have made the election result quite different. A greater emphasis on the economic record of the administration might have been particularly important in spurring turnout among lower-income voters, who voted in considerably lower proportions than in recent elections.
Issues and Character in the Campaign. In the campaign was sharply contested, but reasonably civil--until the postelection period. Attacks abounded, but they focused on real issue differences between Gore and Bush, as each contestant worried over the public's declared aversion to personal, negative campaigning. Bush is credited with a skillful campaign, but this judgment may be nothing more than the halo effect of eventually being the winner. Actually, Bush was criticized for his campaign both at its beginning and when he faced defeat during the recount.
Moreover, the exit polls indicated that those who made up their minds later in the campaign were more likely to vote for Gore, despite his defective strategy, than for the presumptively better campaigner, Bush. Overall, in fact, the campaign seemed to have had very little effect. Once the nominating conventions concluded, Bush and Gore were tied at the outset of the active campaign on Labor Day, and they remained tied on the day of the balloting--and beyond.
The lack of substantial change is seen in the track or tne polls, in shown in Figure 2. Specific events, such as the television debates, probably changed opinion from day to day, as indicated by the incessant polls, but they are probably given exaggerated importance.
Bush made some errors in language, and Gore was not a model of etiquette. Gore could have been more vivacious in appearance, and Bush could have been more humble in demeanor. In the overall campaign, however, voters focused on the central decisions--the direction and leadership of their nation in the new century. No single issue dominated the campaign.
Education, health care, Medicare and Social Security, defense, the federal budget, and taxes were among the priority issues for the voters, but none focused the voters' minds in the way that the economy had done in the Clinton elections. Both Gore and Bush talked about these issues and each gave considerable attention to the same issues, enabling the voters to make a reasoned choice between the two candidates see Table 3.
Bush apparently won on important elements of the issue debate. A slightly greater proportion found that he shared their general view of government 51 percent compared to 47 percent. More specifically, voters tended to prefer the Republican's plan for across-the-board tax cuts and his proposal to allow individual investment of Social Security taxes.
When voters evaluated the candidates on Election Day, they took two different approaches. On most issues, Gore was preferred. On seven possible issues, Gore won the votes of more voters who emphasized five of them.
Bush was seen as better only among those who were primarily concerned with taxes and world affairs, the latter reflecting men's concern with military defense. When it came to individual character traits, however, Bush was deemed superior on most traits, particularly honesty and strength of leadership.
He was also viewed as less likely "to say anything to get elected" and less prone to engage in unfair attacks. These individual characteristics are relevant to the conduct of the presidency, and voters should not be denigrated because they used these standards at the ballot box.
On the other hand, voters gave little stress to Bush's greater "likability," a criterion of little relevance to government. Ultimately, his perceived character traits carried the day for the governor see Table 4. The vote showed significant shifts from see Figure 3 , working to Bush's advantage. There was more party switching by former Clinton supporters than by former Dole supporters, and previous backers of Perot also moved more heavily toward the Republicans.
The Clinton scandal probably had some effect on these patterns, giving more prominence to character traits and providing more reason for party switching. Although most of the country gave little weight to the Lewinsky affair, a fourth did find it "very important. A particularly important group was made up of those who combined these two attitudes, a fifth of the electorate.
Although these voters strongly supported Gore by 63 percent to 33 percent for Bush , that was still a smaller vote harvest than Gore might have reaped in an electoral field unsown with Clinton's wild oats. Among these ambivalent voters, Gore lost 15 percent of former Clinton supporters, not a large number but enough 2 percent of the national total to be the decisive difference in the electoral standoff.
The election carried implications for the parties beyond the confusing and close results of Both could read the returns as encouraging portents for the future. The Republicans had won control, however narrow, of all branches of the government.
The congressional revolution of , which ended four decades of Democratic control, was maintained into a fourth Republican term. They would hold the White House for four years, and could fill the three likely vacancies on the Supreme Court. The public was more conservative than liberal and more supportive of the party's call for reduced government.
If prosperity held, the ranks of upper-income voters and the entrepreneurial spirit would grow. Democrats could also find comfort. The taint of Bush's minority victory and the ballot recounts might enfeeble his administration and provide an immediate platform for the Democratic party's return to power in and The population was increasingly diverse ethnically, and the demographic growth among Latinos, African Americans, and Asian Americans was likely to bolster Democratic ranks.
Its modernist cultural values, including gender equality, were increasingly shared throughout the nation. The nation was divided in , but Democrats could hope to revive and thrive in the future.
Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Already subscribed? Log in. Forgotten your password? Want an ad-free experience? Gore has since become a foremost climate advocate. He was the creator and subject of a Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth , about the climate crisis. Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!
In Atlanta on December 13, , Manon Rheaume becomes the first woman to play in a regular-season professional hockey game. In the Atlanta Knights' loss to Salt Lake City, Rheaume enters at the start of the second period with the score tied at 1 in the International Hockey The Swedish climate activist became the first Person of the Year to be born in the 21st century and the youngest ever to receive the honor.
Thunberg took to activism early, convincing
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