Could Al Gore have won 2000 outright had the blogosphere been around?

[Ignacio Upton]

We all know by now that the MSM did one of the worst political hatchet jobs on a candidate in modern history in the year 2000. For example, according to Pew, Bush was twice as likely to get positive coverage than Gore. Do any of you remember how people like Tweety would tell us that voters were tired of Clinton, and how Gore was a "serial liar," while Bush was a "breath of fresh air" and a "Christian man?" The fallating of Bush started as soon as he announced his candidacy seven years ago. I personally became a "Bush basher" when I saw what he did to John McCain in South Carolina (I wanted McCain to be President at the time, but I didn't follow politics as much as I do now.) I felt even then that Bush was simply riding his name and buying the Presidency. I also remember, for example, pundits in the MSM asking during the Summer of 2000 in one story, whether or not Gore was being too negative towards Bush! When I thought back to what Bush did to McCain and the lack of coverage about it, I had my revelation that the Mainstream Media is pro-GOP.

Unfortunately, there was no serious opposition to the lies against Gore. We had mealy-mouthed people like Donna Brazile not defending him adequately on tv, and forcing him to campaign in a way that only furthered the negative perception against him. At the time, Daily Kos, DU, Talking Points Memo, FireDogLake, and others did not exist, and MoveOn was still infancy. The right already had the Freepers and Drudge but we had nothing six years ago. Many of us watched as Gore won the first debate and saw how the MSM spun it to make it look like Bush won based on the fact that Gore sighed a lot. In contrast, I remember reading, however, in 2004 when Kerry won the debate, progressive websites took up arms against the media and voted intensely in polls asking who won and emailed pundits to prevent them from helping spin again. I think that CNN even re-posted their online poll two times after this, but I don't remember. The fact that the netroots were able to defend the perception of who won the Kerry-Bush debate helped get Kerry out of the ditch he had been in since the Swift Boat onslaught.

In hindsight, do you think that we could have made a difference in 2000, had the netroots existed? My personal opinion is yes, but not much. Even today the netroots isn't able to outmatch the VRWC, but we're catching up. Then again, given the closeness of 2000, I think that while the narratives against Gore would have spread, some of the key spin used against him would not have happened. When I mean by "outright" I mean that the SCOTUS coudn't have stolen the election because his vote total would have been big enough so that he would not have needed a recount.

[Bonobo]

1. Ummm. He won by half a million votes.

[dogman]

2. Not likely.

It didn't stop the swiftboating of Kerry even though the MO was apparent after 2000.

[IndyOp]

3. Al Gore DID win outright --

though not by enough to prevent the GOP (including Delay, Baker, and...) from stealing it from him/us.

My biggest question: Would Al Gore's win have been defended if the blogosphere had been around?

My first answer: No, we didn't manage to rescue Kerry's win from the GOP thieves, so we probably would not have helped Gore.

Next issue: Will we be ready to fight the battle win elections are stolen in 2006 -- as has already happened in Texas, and in Ohio in 2005... and...

:mad:

[dchill]

7. Q: Are we going to get burned in November?

A: HAVA match?

[IndyOp]

22. Hey! Thanks! That is excellent...

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Laughter communicates like nothing else!

[JI7]

4. the online polls showing Kerry winning may have backfired

i hear the whores at the news stations were angry about the sites calling on people to go vote on there and having Kerry with a huge lead. they claim that is one reason they didn't make a big issue out of the debate and how horrible Bush looked.

but that's the excuse they gave. in reality they are whores and if Kerry had lost the debate they would have been all over it.

Gore got crap 24/7 for sighing in the debate. never mind that Bush did a crappy job when it came to discussing the issues.

Bush came off far worse in 2004 than Gore did with the sighing.

Gore could have won outright a number of ways but i don't htink the blogs would have much to do with it.

[Ignacio Upton]

10. I think that they worked though

I remember the pundits were saying how it was close during the first few hours after. Then by the next morning and ensuing days they were talking about how Kerry won. If the netroots hadn't been aggressive, Wolf and Tweety would have told us that the debate was a virtual draw.

[Iris]

5. actually, believe it or not, I think the right were pioneers on the web

They consider an alternative to the "liberal media." The saw the internet as an alternative way to get the hate out almost a decade ago.

[Ignacio Upton]

8. Yes, the right actually had an internet presence first

Because they were the out of power party during the '90s, while Clinton was President. However, I think the fact that many liberal activists were not satisfied with Clinton in some respects and supported Nader, also kept the formation of a liberal grassroots from happening. However, we have utilized the internet to a far greater extent than FR or Drudge ever did during the Monica heyday. Hell, Kos is now even with FR in traffic.

One thing that concerns me when we come back into power is whether or not members of the netroots will stick around to hold President _________'s feet to the fire, or will we slide back into Clinton-era complacancy and then vote for a Nader-type in 2012 or 2016?

[Iris]

11. Well, I plan on holding feet to fire.

It's going to take a long time to get us out of the mess the Repugs have made. And, quite honestly, I don't trust the Democrats all that much anymore, either.

[Ignacio Upton]

12. That's what I want to hear!

The GOP could have stopped building the VRWC when Nixon got elected in 1968, but they just continued. If I see the Democrats weaken online when we take back the White House I will start pulling my hair out!

[neoblues]

6. Definitely...

We would probably be able to better respond to these coordinated smear campaigns based on false quotes and other lies. Still, we didn't save Kerry from the Swiftys. Then again, neither Gore nor Kerry really reacted quickly or effectively to rebut the garbage slung against them; taking the high road and/or presuming that people had the sense not to listen to such absurd tripe simply doesn't work. We have to have an immediate, nationwide counter-propaganda campaign when this happens.

[DainBramaged]

9. Could Al Gore have won if Nader was dead?

You bet he would of. Instead, the Thugies pumped him up with money and hubris and look what we have. He won, but we were crunched by the Supremes too. I hope Nader has a tire go flat on his bicycle and he crashes head first into a garbage truck.

[LiberalUprising]

13. WTF!

:shrug:

[DainBramaged]

16. Sorry, maybe a recycling truck instead.

[ooglymoogly]

19. a steam roller would work

[Ignacio Upton]

14. The GOP would resurrect him

They would take his skin off and graft it onto a cyborg.:sarcasm:

[DainBramaged]

15. Or on DeLay

[ooglymoogly]

17. well i for one think it would have made a hell of a diff.

the main reason being that it would have prevented them from stealing an election with too big of a victory margin. plus you forgot cl. klink (wolf blitzer) add nauseom praising the creep (squeaking he's the real deal)like a parrot every chance he got along with candy crowly, cnn, faux and msnbc news ho's. in a word; yes
what happened was the blogesphere was in its infancy and nobody was really paying attention to it and the corporate media were actively promoting bush and vilifying gore. in other words the press had turned into the gop propaganda machine by then and they left no stone unturned to get their man in the white house.

[Ignacio Upton]

18. The blogosphere didn't fully emerge until 2003

When Howard Dean and to a lesser extent Wesley Clark had netroots-driven campaigns. Kerry was smart in embracing them (at least from a fundraising point, even though he should have done more.) The fact that someone who was backed by the netroots as DNC Chair tells us that we have come a long way from the Clinton-era, Terry McAullife types, although they still hold sway.

[ooglymoogly]

20. are you saying that nobody was blogging before 2003

The term blogosphere was coined on September 10, 1999 by Brad L. Graham, as a joke <1>. It was re-coined in 2002 by William Quick (quite seriously)
i believe the coining came after the fact to name what was going on.

[Ignacio Upton]

21. It wasn't the useful and prominent institution that it is now

The tecnology for blogs have been around since the late '90s, but any direct impact on elections and the political process only happened in 2003....although at the end of 2002 it was Josh Marshall who helped bring down Trent Lott by pointing out his racist comment while the Media ignored it originally.

[ooglymoogly]

27. i believe that was my point

it was in its infancy and not many were paying attention to it...certainly not as it is today, and that if the blogosphere were in its present day state in 2000, it is my beliefe gore would have won because the margin would have been to great for the buglicans to have stolen the election that with the help of scotus, they clearly did.

[zulchzulu]

23. There was a "blogosphere" in 2000; it was called the net...

Granted, broadband was not as ubiquitous as it is now, but there was certainly a lot of chat/disxussion/forums and such on the net. People on the net were tired of Gore after so many years of Clinton...and some thought being for Nader was "hip"... if anything, blogs like DailyKos would have been for Nader because it was cool...the punkish meme that there was no difference between Gore and Bush was drummed all through the net culture at the time.

[Ignacio Upton]

24. Sadly you might be right

Of course there were progressives online, but in all seriousness, they we not nearly as influential or active as the Freepers or Drudge were in terms of how the internet could affect the nation's political discourse. The fact that we were the party "in power" was what kept us from having an incentive to mobalize (although I think during Impeachment there certainly was a bit of progressive grassroots movement from a newly-created MoveOn and some others.) It took all of this crap to get us to organize. During the Clinton years we were too content with things to want to go online and raise money for a Democratic Congressional candidate. Also, I think that one of the consequences of McCain-Feingold is that it helped heighten the emergence of the netroots as a fundraising power. Dean went to the netroots because traditional donors did not flock to him in as big numbers as they did with his opponents, and before McCain-Feingold, a Democratic candidate could just get large soft money donations.
When we take back the White House in 2008, the next Presidet will be the "Blogger President," in the same way that JFK was known for being the first TV President (although Truman and Ike were around with tv, Kennedy used the medium more effectively. Clinton and Bush have been around with the internet but they haven't utilized it.) OUt of the potential candidates, I think that Russ Feingold, Mark Warner, and to a lesser extent Wes Clark and John Edwards are the types who could connect with the netroots.

[zulchzulu]

25. With faster net connections, the web allows us to be our own media

Call it the blogosphere this month or whatever the kewl nom du jour next month, the fact that it is possible to allow more multimedia to be channeled and available to a lot more users than 2000 (and even 2004), we can create our own media channels. Fox News and the others can be marginalized...we are our own Cavalry if we want it.

But it all still gets down to making it on the street too. Get that table, print up those PDFs and Avery labels and get people signed up. It's not all online.

[Minnesota Libra]

26. It's not that he COULD have won Gore DID win the US SC stole it. nt