THE CLINTON COUNTERATTACK

The Democrats' civil war is heating up. Algore's Dean endorsement has apparently enraged the DLC wing enough to start hitting Dean and working him over behind the scenes.

I'd like to take a moment to thank Algore for his horrid political instincts. During the Florida recount, Gore's initial decision to cherry-pick which counties would be recounted made it all too clear that he wasn't interested in knowing the truth about that vote to any degree--he just wanted to shame the Bush side into going along with a tactic he expected would deliver him the presidency (several press recounts proved that more or less wrong, btw). That decision--to cherrypick--got kicked around in all of Florida's courts save one, the notoriously partisan state Supreme Court, and the chief justice of that court (a Democrat, btw) castigated his fellow justices for going along with it all. SCOTUS eventually halted the farce on equal protection grounds--such an outcome would probably have been off the table had Gore decided to recount the whole state from the get-go. Gore's decision may have cost him the White House--given how close the vote was, an across-the-board recount might have actually won the thing for him (it's possible, though unlikely given the multitude of press recounts that showed he still lost). But a fair recount was not what he asked for.

And now, Gore has endorsed Dean, opening an angry fissure in the Democrat party. Lieberman is livid, and the various other candidates seem to be shocked and irritated that Gore inserted himself into the campaign in this way. The Clintons, obviously the most skilled pols in the bunch, are now openly gunning for front-runner Dean, and in so doing run the risk of fracturing the party between the center-left DLCites and the hard left Dean fedayeen (their word, not mine). Well, I shouldn't say that the Clintons are running the risk of schism--that risk has always been there, and Gore has just made the cracks a little wider and more brittle. If Dean takes the nomination as I expect, watch lots of centrist Dems stay home next November, or do what Ed Koch and Zell Miller did and endorse Bush (Bush gots lots of centrist Dem endorsements in his second run for TX gov, so it's not out of the question that he'll pick of several national Dem endorsements this time around). If the Clintonites manage to stop Dean, watch Ralph Nader enter and pull off the hard left vote and reduce the Dem nominee's vote. And all mostly thanks to Gore's political stupidity. He handled his endorsement in absolutely the dumbest, most heavy-handed way possible. The man possesses the subtlety and nuance of Dirty Harry on a bad hair day (with necessary apologies to Dirty Harry for the comparison).

Thanks, Al. You're the best (political) friend George W. Bush ever had.