Here is the trouble with Maureen Dowd's brand of journalism

I must have missed that day in civics class where it was taught that a candidate was required to win his home state to become president.

Gore had the same uphill battle in his home red state in 2000 that Romney will have in his home blue state in 2008, if he gets the nomination. Romney is by no means a cinch to win Massachusetts.

Wonderful meme here. Voters may have been disenfranchised, the system didn't work in Florida, that state's electoral votes might have gone to the wrong guy, but Gore didn't win Tennessee, so fuck it.

 

Florida followed its election laws with regards to counting and recounting ballots. I guess if your guy doesn't win that means the system didn't work.

Oh, and stupidity on the part of the voter does not constitute disenfranchisement.

 

Tennessee people can read Gore like a book. Which is why he didn't carry the Volunteer State.

 

Interesting.

How do you explain the people of Tennesse sending him to the House four times, the senate twice and then helping he and Clinton win the White House twice, then?

You get dumber every day.

 

Sigh.

What happened or didn't happen in Florida is irrelevant -- although if you're waiting for new members to your Florida 2000 Fair And Model Election Club, I have a hunch you're going be waiting a while. The point was that this notion that Gore's failure to carry Tennessee automatically disqualifies him elsewhere is ridiculous.

Again, I hope you Republicans get a chance to apply the Gore Standard to Romney in 2008.

 

It didn't disqualify him anywhere. But a failure to win his own home state unnecessarily put Florida in play, and opened the door for Bush to take office.

Florida should not have mattered. But for whatever reason, he couldn't get support as president from the people who (as Zeke noted) sent him to the House four times, the Senate twice, and helped elect a Clinton/Gore ticket twice.

It's a fascinating irony. Even as he (and his supporters) wrangled over Florida's votes, they had to have that regret that his own constituents had been in position to make Florida meaningless.

 

You also missed reading comphrension class. I never said winning a home state was a requirement. But it sure as hell helps, and blowing your home state should be on the level as blowing a 30-point lead on your home court with 10 minutes to play.

And after years of investigation, the FEC still can't come up with one "disenfranchised voter" in the state of Florida, nor evidence that there was any attempt to disenfranchise voters. If anyone intended to vote for another candidate and didn't chalk it up to the Palm Beach Country ballot, conceived by a Democratic election supervisor.

 

Then why did they desert him on election day 2000?

 

That's a long answer, but here's the short version.

A long period of peace and prosperity completed the demystification of the job so much that people honestly thought anyone could do it. That, and the 1994-2000 political wars wore on people to the point that they simply wanted change. Al had been in Washington too long.