Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Pretty Well Centered

Wednesday, April 19, 2000

Ron Brownstein's L.A. Times column sums up the critical problem of the Gore campaign: "On Key Issues, Bush Sounds More Like a Centrist Democrat Than Gore." (To read the entire column from Monday's Times click here.)

Brownstein points out that, notwithstanding the proclamations of Gore's senior spokesperson - Bill Clinton, Bush has staked out territory which is smack in the center of where a large majority of the American voting public lives.

On health care, on Medicare, on Social Security, on education reform, and on trade agreements Bush is not being seen as aligned with movement conservatives. He is seen as aligning with the Democratic Leadership Council - the centrist wing of the Democratic party.

So, most of the major attack points which the Gore campaign had planned to use against George W. Bush "and his right-wing-extremist friends" are now useless and will need to be, well, not discarded but certainly recycled.

If that weren't enough bad news for Gore, Ralph Nader is making a serious effort to get on the ballot in a number of states as the nominee of the Green Party, including California where he might get as much as nine percent of the vote. Don't think this matters? Reuters reports "Brent Blackwelder, head of the 20,000-member organization that calls itself the largest network of environmental groups in the world, said Friends of the Earth is considering backing � Nader" not Gore.

Meanwhile, over the weekend Al "Yo-Soy-Un-Hombre-Sincero" Gore turned his attention from pandering to the Cuban-American community in Miami to pandering to the Latino community of Los Angeles. This, just before he attended a billion dollar soft-money fund raising event in that barrio of every-day-people, Beverly Hills.

At that fundraiser, Al "If-You-Can't-Say-Something-Nice-About-Somebody-Don't-Say-Anything-At-All" Gore introduced his pal Bill Clinton as follows:

       "Of all the good things I could say about President Bill Clinton ...
        I could tell you about the many, many times when I have seen
        him - especially in the early years - nearly buckle under the
        pressure of this office."

Which is the functional equivalent of not saying anything at all.

Some final thoughts on the protesters who were in Your Nation's Capital to protest the International Monetary Fund/World Bank meetings. Now that the meetings are over and the protesters had zero impact on them or future lending policies, they are reduced to whining about how badly they were treated.

Chief Charles H. Ramsey of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, responding to whining by protesters who were arrested said, "They refused to eat what we gave them. This isn't the Hilton. You don't call room service and say, 'I'm a vegetarian. I want fish. I want tofu.' You get what we got ... You get bologna and bread." Eeeeewwwww! Not white bread!

Chief Ramsey for Mayor.

Estimates for the costs incurred by the City of Washington to handle the protesters now range up to five million dollars. How much would that have helped, say, repair school buildings or buy new books for school children, or improve medical care for homeless people?

On the Elian front, papa Gonzalez demonstrating why his behavior should not be an issue, reportedly gave onlookers the international symbol for "Hey, jerk, you cut me off" the other day in Bethesda, Maryland.

Also the other day, the Justice Department hired a pediatrician to watch that video tape of the child on television. The pede diagnosed Elian as suffering from the Stockholm syndrome. I would like to have that doctor look at video tapes of the citizens of Cuba and see if they don't suffer from the same thing.

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Copyright © 2000 Richard A. Galen

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