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The Wall Street Journal Pundits have a host of explanations for why Bill Bradley’s and John McCain’s candidacies failed: Mr. Bradley failed to respond to Al Gore’s attacks; Mr. McCain blundered in attacking the religious right; Mr. McCain stole Mr. Bradley’s thunder; the public isn’t that interested in reform after all. The real explanation is […]

”Politics ain’t beanbag” — Finley Peter Dunne One of the many oddities of this cliffhanger election is what might be called the entitlement gap. Right from election night, the Republicans have behaved as if the election was theirs, while Vice President Gore has temporized. This sense of Republican entitlement in turn translates into a partisan […]

Snnnnnck. Out come the long knives, the jabbering classes urging Al Gore — now that the Supreme Court and a Florida circuit court have given him no love — to put country above self. Congressional Democrats leak that time is running out. “Last gasp for Gore,” The Boston Globe informs us; “Aura of Pessimism Pervades […]

The London Observer Al Gore is finally on a roll. But where will it take him? This past week he’s been telling Americans ‘we’ve got to put you first’ and not ‘the ones with connections, the ones with wealth, the ones with power above and beyond what the average family has in this country’. He’s […]

Americans will be asking questions about the 2000 election for some time to come. Here are two big ones: How could the world’s most secure democracy have ended up with a balloting system in which millions of votes routinely get lost, miscounted, stolen, or spoiled? The premise seems to be: What the hell, it’s close […]

After one of the emptiest political conventions on record, the stage is actually set for a very consequential November election. Though the Republicans did their best to camouflage it,theirs remains a highly conservative program. There really are enormous differences of substance between the two major candidates. If the election can be made to turn on […]

A funny thing happened to Al Gore on the way to his surprisingly effective acceptance speech. He became a liberal. The speech was as liberal as anything FDR or LBJ or Jesse Jackson or one of the Kennedys might have delivered. It was built around a commitment to fight for ordinary people, against large and […]

Should the United States abolish or alter the Electoral College system? If so, what should replace it? 12.18.00 Michael Nelson | Representative James Clyburn | Walter Berns | Representative William Delahunt | James R. Whitson Michael Nelson: End It The Electoral College was no one’s first choice at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Various delegates […]

Many viewers were startled to hear George W. Bush and Dick Cheney sound kinder and gentler on the hot-button issue of abortion rights. In the first TV debate Bush seemed to declare that he would not try to overturn the FDA’s decision approving the abortion drug RU-486, that he wouldn’t make reversing Roe v. Wade […]