NASHVILLE—The Democratic Party’s estimates of its chances of defeating President Bush in November have rebounded in concert with John Kerry’s campaign. A little more than a month ago, most Democrats were overly pessimistic about the 2004 election. Now they’re overly optimistic. Sunday afternoon, during a press conference prior to a Democratic Party rally at the downtown Hilton here, U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., declared not only that “Bush 43 looks very beatable at this point,” but also that 2004 could be a congressional “tidal wave year” for the Democrats, akin to 1994 for the Republicans.
And if 2004 isn’t a Democratic 1994, maybe it’s 1976. That was former Vice President Al Gore’s message to the Tennessee Democrats Sunday night. In an angry, sweaty shout, sounding like the second coming of Huey Long, Gore drew an extended comparison between the post-Watergate election of 1976, the year of his first election to Congress, and the post-Iraq election of 2004. John Kerry’s two main rivals in Tennessee, Wesley Clark and John Edwards, spoke to the party, too, but Gore was clearly the main event. And if he wasn’t before he spoke, he was by the time he was finished.
“You know, there was a mood in ‘76, a spirit of unity, a feeling of determination that we were going to win that race that year,” said Gore, clearly linking that feeling to the resolve of 2004 Democrats to win back the presidency. Gore, however, wasn’t referring only to the feelings of national Democrats in 1976. He was referring to the feelings of Tennessee Democrats, who were bitter over a Senate race that had been lost six years earlier.
Gore’s father, Albert Gore Sr., was defeated in his 1970 campaign for re-election to the U.S. Senate. Gore made a number of comparisons between 1970 and 1976 in Tennessee and 2000, 2002, and 2004 in America. “President George W. Bush reminds me more of former President Richard Nixon than any of his other predecessors,” he said, implying, it seemed, that Nixon smeared his father in the midterm elections of 1970 just as President Bush smeared Georgia Senator Max Cleland in 2002. “They tried to make out like my dad was an atheist because he didn’t want a constitutional amendment putting the government in charge of telling children how they ought to worship God in the public schools,” Gore said. “They came out with accusations that he was unpatriotic because he was opposed to the Vietnam War and the mistaken policy that got us into that war.” Gore recalled his father’s concession speech on Election Night: “He took the old Confederate slogan about ‘The South shall rise again,’ and he stood it on its head. And he proudly proclaimed, ‘The truth shall rise again!’”
Gore was also drawing an analogy between his father and himself. He was expressing the hope that just as his father’s loss was redeemed by the election of a Democrat, Jim Sasser, to his U.S. Senate seat six years later, so too could Gore be redeemed after his loss to George W. Bush, if the Democrats reclaim the White House in 2004. As Gore stood on stage before his remarks, I wondered, what must it be like to be Samuel Tilden? What’s it like to be haunted by the fact that you’re a historical footnote? Gore’s speech provided some answers.
“We have seen an administration which in my view more closely resembles the Nixon-Agnew administration than any other previous administration,” he said. “There’s a reason I say that. I don’t offer that as simply a casual slur.” The crowd laughed. “I’m not above a casual slur,” Gore added, in a “mind you” tone, to more laughter. “But I’m biased, I didn’t vote for the guy.” A man calls out, “Neither did America!” To which Gore responds, “Well, there is that.”
He continued: “But here’s the reason I say that President George W. Bush reminds me more of former President Richard Nixon than any of his other predecessors. Nixon was no more committed to principle than the man in the moon. He, as a conservative Republican, imposed wage and price controls. Hard to believe in this day and time. But he did. And he cared as little about what it meant to be really conservative as George W. Bush has cared in imposing $550 billion budget deficits and trillions in additions to the national debt. That has nothing to do with conservatism and everything to do with his effort to get re-elected!”
Gore then explained how he planned to travel to Iowa in September 2001 to deliver “a real ripsnorter of a speech” that would have harshly critiqued President Bush’s first nine months in office and broken Gore’s political silence. He abandoned his plan after the Sept. 11 attacks, he said, and instead swallowed his pride and told the Iowa Democrats of the man he clearly feels stole the presidency from him, “George W. Bush is my commander-in-chief.”
“I think there were millions just like me, who genuinely, in spite of whatever partisanship they may have felt prior to that time, genuinely felt like they wanted George W. Bush to lead all of us in America wisely and well,” he shouted.
“And the reason I’m recalling those feelings now is because those are the feelings that were betrayed by this president! He betrayed this country! He played on our fears! He took America, he took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure dangerous to our troops, an adventure that was preordained and planned before 9/11 ever took place!” Gore closed with his father’s line from 1970: “And so I say to you in closing my friends, in the year of 2004, the truth shall rise again!”
The crowded erupted in a frenzy that recalled a Howard Dean audience circa August 2003. Which, if you think about it, is pretty much where Gore still is. Many Democrats took the 2000 election personally, and they saw the Dean campaign as the outlet for their anger and frustration. But no Democrat could have taken it more personally than Al Gore. To those who speculate that Gore’s endorsement of Dean was a crude and ill-timed political calculation, this speech was a repudiation.
Not only does he believe that he should rightfully be president, he also thinks he performed his patriotic duty in the aftermath of 9/11, and Bush screwed him for it. To Gore, it seems that beating Bush wouldn’t suffice. He wants to convince the world that Bush is one of history’s worst presidents.
Gore is still popular with the Democratic base, but after this speech, the question for the party’s nominee has to be, do you want this man to speak at the convention in Boston? Even if you like the sentiment behind this speech, if Gore delivers an address like this one in July, the historical analogy won’t be to the Democrats of 1976 or to the Republicans of 1994. Instead, the comparison will be to the disastrous Republican convention of 1992. The angry white male is back. Do the Democrats really want him?
