Back the Dog You Got
by Christian Mitchell
Friday, Dec. 22, 2000 (AmpolNS) -- Pardon me, but I’m getting a little fed up.
All we’ve been hearing since November 8 is how Al Gore blew the election. He could’ve fought harder, he could’ve insisted on different rules in the debates, he could’ve done this, he could’ve done that. And we’re not just hearing it from the other guys. We’re hearing it from our side, too.
My apologies to my friends on the same side of the aisle who feel this way. I know you’re upset about all this. So am I. But I’m going to say this because it needs to be said.
Let’s lay off Al.
Al Gore got a bum rap from all sides throughout the campaign, and now he’s getting a bum rap from his own people. We’re making the same mistake Democrats ALWAYS make. We’re turning on our own people. We did it to Carter, we did it to Mondale and Dukakis, and now we’re going to it Gore.
All through the campaign, what did we hear?
We all have jobs, right? We go to work, we deal with office politics and tight deadlines and occasional pressure from the boss. We sweet-talk Sylvia in supply who doesn’t want to order the cute little multi-colored paperclips we like because they’re too expensive, and we kick in for Ed’s birthday present even though we really don’t much like the guy, and we do our jobs and go home, right?
Well, think about this for a job, folks. You go to work every day at five in the morning and work ‘til well past midnight. You run around from place to place giving of your time and attention to everybody who needs it. Every day you have ten meetings in five different cities and at every one of them you’ve got to explain to people why they should give you a promotion when they really don’t even know what it is you do.
You talk to crowds of 5,000 and 10,000 people until your voice is hoarse and your throat burns. You shake so many hands each day that your arm is numb and stuff and you have to put ice on it at night.
The other guy who’s up for the same job is a drunk and a cocaine user. He’s never held a real job, is dumb as sled tracks and can barely put a sentence together. He won’t even debate you unless you promise not to ask him any questions -- but if you don’t agree to the rules, the pundits will say it’s you who’s afraid to debate.
And if you point out what an idiot the guy is, they’ll say you’re mean. They’ll make you look bad, and say you don’t deserve the promotion ‘cause God don’t like ugly. And the people will believe it because, hell, what is it you do again?
To top it all off, the press is screaming that you’re not enough of an Alpha male, then you’re too much of one, and you’re cold and pedantic and superior and condescending and don’t crack enough jokes, and you dropped out of law school. They’re telling horrible lies about you, and won’t print the truth even if you correct them. They’re even suggesting that you’re a traitor.
And you must endure all this while running on four hours’ sleep.
Now, could you do that job?
I couldn’t.
Well, Al Gore did. Not only did he do the job, he got the promotion. He won the goddamn election, let’s don’t forget that.
Gore won the popular vote by over half a million votes.
He won the electoral college, until the GOP Scalia’d him. It is clear that if the Republicans had allowed the vote counting to go forward, Gore would’ve won Florida by about 23,000 votes, and thus would’ve won the electoral college.
He garnered 90% of the African American vote.
He got more votes than any other Presidential candidate in history, Democrat or Republican, except Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Well, folks, he must’ve been doing SOMETHING right.
But oh, everybody says, he’s no Clinton. Why can’t he be more like Clinton? Clinton could fend off the attacks, Clinton could connect with people, Clinton this and Clinton that.
Well, there’s something very special about Bill Clinton, folks. This is very important, so mark it well:
Bill Clinton is the greatest politician since Abraham Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln came to Washington a country lawyer, with almost no legislative experience and certainly no executive experience. His election drove the south from the Union, and he steered the country through a Civil War during the first two years of which his armies hardly ever won a battle. They called him stupid, they called him insipid, they called him a gorilla. He broke a lot of rules. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus, he shut down Copperhead newspapers, and he had political rivals arrested before the 1864 election. And still he earned the affectionate nickname Honest Abe. He ended the war and encouraged gentle and inclusive reconstruction policies. During all this, he lost his beloved nine-year-old boy Willie and his wife went insane. He was assassinated a week after the Confederate capital fell, before he hardly took a breath in a nation at peace.
He is remembered as Father Abraham.
Bill Clinton was a poor boy from Arkansas with no daddy. He had to stand up to his step-daddy when he tried to beat his mother. He had no money and no connections. Yet he got himself elected President, even with the whole country knowing he’d had multiple affairs. He took office in the worst recession since the Great Depression, with trillion-dollar deficits, staggering unemployment and a middle- and working-class population ravaged by twelve years of Republican rule. He survived two hits right out of the gate over gays in the military and health care, passed a balanced budget amendment and eliminated the deficit while two hundred lawyers were spending $65 million dollars and crawling all over Little Rock looking for crimes to convict him of. He got impeached for getting a blowjob, and was still able to give a sweeping and triumphant State of the Union Address. He was acquitted in the Senate, has protected more lands by Executive Order than any President since Teddy Roosevelt, and is still negotiating for Middle East peace as this is being written. He even did a Rolling Stone cover. And he leaves office with an approval rating of 67%.
He is the Big Dog.
We will never have another Bill Clinton, folks. So focus those energies on repealing the 22nd Amendment and, in the meantime, back the dog you got.
Al Gore may be a little boring and lacking in Clinton’s political skills. And he may come from a more privileged background than Lincoln or Clinton. But he’s never forgotten the working people of this country, or those who are discriminated against, or the kids and the fact that they deserve clean air to breathe and water to drink, and he’s fought like hell for us for 24 years.
Let’s all take a break, lay off poor Al, and put the blame where it belongs, squarely on the fascist li'l shoulders of King George and the fabulous goose-stepping GOP.
They were bound and determined to steal this election, and nothing Gore could’ve done could’ve stopped them.
They stole it in Florida, and we all know what happened there.
They stole it in Georgia, where complaints have surfaced about rigged polling machines, where folks put the ballot in and punch it for Al Gore, but the machine actually punched the hole one line higher. And who was one line higher on those ballots than Al Gore? King George, of course.
They stole it in Tennessee, where there are also allegations of voter intimidation, particularly of minorities – gee, what a surprise, huh? – in cities like Memphis, where black people were told to go to the back of the voting line behind whites with this phrase, "You black people know what it’s like to go to the back of the bus, don’t you?" So it seems Al Gore in fact would’ve won his home state, if not for the Gestapo tactics of the GOP.
If this is what King George meant by his little tag, compassionate conservative, somebody get that boy a dictionary.
The GOP has always been an organized solidarity. They fight like an army in battle, and they strike ferociously as a unified force. Focus on one target and attack viciously until it is reduced to a pile of ruins.
And now they have the field. They have the White House, the House and Senate, and the Supreme Court. They’re in their earthworks and fortified, the most coveted spot for an army, and for abatis they have Tom DeLay and Dick Armey and the Christian Right with sticks pointed to razor sharpness, waiting to impale whoever charges them. All they have to do is stick together and huddle.
To fight an army like that, we have to become an army ourselves. And an army doesn’t fight a battle by splitting up its forces and fighting each other on the field, then letting the Division that survived fight the enemy. The division that’s left is bloodied and spent and has no energy left to fight the fight that counts.
We have to be a unified army and we have to stick together.
And don’t bet on Hillary. If she runs in 2004, we will lose and lose big. The hate the GOP feels for her surpasses even the hate they have for the Big Dog. They will stop at nothing to keep her from the White House. And I mean nothing. Remember JFK and RFK and MLK, folks? Don’t fool yourselves, I’m talking THAT kind of hate.
Besides Hillary, who have we got?
Daschle’s too milquetoast, we need Gephardt as Speaker, Kerry of Massachusetts is too liberal and Kerrey of Nebraska is a self-serving traitor.
Them’s the facts, folks.
Al Gore’s our dog. He won the election and everybody knows it. He’s got the mandate thing going and he’s got the rematch thing going and he’s got the underdog thing going. If we’re smart and we stick together, he can come back in 2004 and beat the knee-pants off of King George.
But if we do as we always do, blame our guy and fight amongst ourselves, we’ll be looking at four more years of GOP rule.
Anybody as terrified at that thought as I am?
Copyright © 2000, Christian Mitchell. Reprinted by permission.
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