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You wrote: Now, on the bright side, I agree with Clinton's analysis of the 2000 election. He said that Bush basically ran on the platform that he'd do everything Clinton did but with a smaller government and lower taxes. So, after Clinton co-opted the issues, he turned the Republicans into the "me too" party.
I don't know whether Clinton discussed this, but what actually happened is much more subtle than that. After the Dem convention, when Gore's speech took him from trailing Smirk by around 12 points to about even with Smirk, Smirk changed his tactics. From then on, three days after Gore would make a policy speech, Smirk would make a policy speech with an almost identical plan, only laced with conservative buzz words, and without Smirk bothering to figure out how "his" proposal would actually work or how it would be paid for. This was the case of almost every subject. Smirk co-opted even the issues that sharply divide Dems and Republicans. For example, Smirk had his surrogates (his wife and Mom in particular) campaign that, although Smirk opposed abortion, they were pro-choice, and somehow that meant Smirk wouldn't actually threaten abortion rights. A lot of pundits and second level Smirk surrogates (celebrities etc) said that Smirk's anti-abortion stance was only election year posturing to keep the conservative wing of the GOP happy, and he would never actually threaten abortion rights.
This wasn't just about co-opting policy. Smirk took this tactic because the GOP had been spending the previous two years on a smear campaign designed to destroy Gore's character. So Smirk created a false choice: two candidates with "identical" policies, but one was morally repugnant and the other was a gonna bring honor and dignity back to the White House. Who wouldn't vote for Smirk under those circumstances?
The reason Smirk got away with it was because the media did such a miserable job covering the election. They ignored everything that Gore and his surrogates said about himself and Smirk, their history and their proposals, no matter how much evidence they had to back it up. And of course, they also ignored everything that they knew about Gore - - like his leading role in creating the Internet - - in order to mindlessly parrot the GOP smear campaign against Gore.
Even if Gore had said nothing to defend himself or expose Bush's real agenda, it would take about two minutes of actual research to discover that promises that Smirk was making in the summer and fall of 2000 were totally at odds with his history and ideology. If you spent three minutes researching it, you'll find that Smirk did the same thing when he ran for re-election as Texas governor - - pushed through a bunch of extremely conservative bills in the first part of his term, then worked hard to appear "moderate" for the second half of his term (although he didn't do anything moderate, he just made it look like he was one). But the vast majority of the press didn't bother to research that (or anything else in 2000). The "best" coverage of 2000 does conform to what Clinton reportedly said: the TV news would announce "Today, Vice President Gore announced a plan he said would save social security. Governor Bush countered with his own plan, which he said was better. In our next story - - "
As long as the media continues to operate so poorly, refusing to really research the candidates and their positions, the far right wing of the GOP will be able to do this. And they will get away with it most of the time.
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