Resurrecting and retaining core knowledge about the 2000 election

When you see somebody claiming it was Gore’s own fault he lost the 2000 election – Howard Kurtz self-servingly dips his toe into this conclusion in the Washington Post today -- just remember these simple facts. While a bunch of the most influential reporters unquestionably skewed their reporting into picturing Gore as the loser in the first debate – his supposed sighs and eye-rolling, his extensive “show-off” knowledge of subject matter a President needs to know, his “meanness” in confronting Bush’s outright falsehoods, his (falsely) alleged exaggerations that provided the baseline narrative for the rest of the campaign -- the average of four instant polls, before the negative framing could take hold, showed Gore clobbering Bush 48-39. Even after these dishonest reporters and pundits had their first chance to channel the Republican attack to a public not armed with extensive political knowledge and the ability to deconstruct immediately superbly crafted language, a Time poll showed Gore annihilating Bush in that debate, 51-37. That’s huge.

Where was all that disgust with his personality? That was a complete fabrication of a press corps that, as best as anyone seems to be able to surmise, was pissed because they did not get Clinton. The fact that Gore did not win it all, with enough popular votes to win the electoral vote, and then was blamed even by liberals for not running a better campaign – generally without benefit of any credible analysis of how it should have been different -- is a textbook case: not about how or how not to campaign, or who can win an election, but on how incredibly easy it is to manipulate a critical mass in the country and change the course of history. When the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC, CBS, ABC and CNN sneeze – when they fire off their clever takedowns in the same direction at the same time -- the rest of the press catches the ebola virus. Even if a solid near-majority stays true, it’s enough to tip the balance, and put people like Bush and Cheney in charge.