I posted this email to Vice President Gore on the evening of November 6th. I’m glad I sent it and I stand by it:


Dear Vice President Gore:

I have been a supporter of yours for many years, and have been working as a volunteer and e-leader on your Presidential campaign. I am convinced that you will win tomorrow, but even if you do not win, I will always be proud to say I have worked on this campaign. Even though the opposition has relentlessly launched false attacks on your character, you have kept to the high road. By campaigning on the issues, accepting campaign spending limits and refusing PAC money, you have shown real leadership. Thank you very much for proving a candidate does not have to compromise these principles to run for the White House.

I look forward to working on your re-election campaign in 2004.

I’m writing this about 11:30pm Pacific Time, November 7th. I was at the local Democratic Headquarters today from 7:30am to around 11:00, when 2% of the vote was left to count in Florida. The vote was split 49% to 49%. Bush was ahead by a very small 50,000 vote margin. Several networks suddenly gave the state and the election to Bush. But since Florida had been called to Gore earlier, then Bush, then back to "too close to call", we were asking the professional politicians if this really could be the end. We asked whether there would be a recount in Florida, whether there was any chance we could win a recount in Florida, whether there were any other states that were close enough that they could go over to Gore later - - and then all our questions were answered at once. We were told Gore was going to come out to make his concession speech.

I went home.

I couldn’t watch him admit he lost to Bush.

I’m sure it was a classy speech. He’s a classy guy.

I started this website in early September, because I was disgusted with the media’s coverage of the Presidential campaign. I actually began planning it in August, when Gore’s poll numbers were flying high off "the post convention bounce", when he spent each day talking to tens of thousands of cheering people lining the banks of the Mississippi River - - all this while the media was busy telling us that his convention speech was a big flop and his populism bored voters.

I have read many critiques of Gore’s strategy throughout this campaign, and there will certainly be many more in the days, weeks, months to follow. The central theme of these complaints, whether expressed by the corporate media or Internet Real People, is that Gore is completely responsible for whatever was perceived as wrong with Gore’s campaign. I disagree. Every time I read "Gore’s got to make the economy the central issue", I could rattle off at least twenty speeches he’d given earlier were he stated and stated and restated the economy was the central issue of the campaign. Every time I read "Gore’s got to stop these ‘Gore Lies’ stories", I could rattle off four or five interviews he’d given in the past few days, stating the true facts of the story.

A lot of times, I felt like I was the only one listening to Gore. If it wasn’t for "The Daily Howler", and "The Bush Watch" and a few other sites, I might have started to believe I imagined Gore’s speeches and interviews.

It’s this flat simple to me. The media threw the election to Bush. Not always blatantly, like Tim Russert - - often subtly, like Jim Lehrer either not knowing or not caring that Bush was avoiding answering any of Gore’s questions in the debates. They refused to investigate any of Bush’s character issues and manufactured character issues about Gore - - and then told us the race would be about character. They painted Bush an "Aw-shucks" Reaganesque every man and characterized Gore as a prissy elitist snoozefest - - and then told us the race was about charm. They told us over and over again that Bush was Gore’s equal - - and that Gore wasn’t half the man Bush was.

But mostly, they just refused to cover him if it wasn’t a negative story about Gore.

If it wasn’t for the Internet, I wouldn’t have had any idea what was actually going on.

Driving home tonight, I thought about the campaign coverage that was playing when I left headquarters. Already the pundits were saying this incredibly close loss was going to haunt Gore the rest of his life, that he would suffer endless tortures wondering what he should have done differently to get 50,001 more votes. Now the Democrats will swing farther right in search of those 50,001 votes. Now populism will be political poison because it lost those 50,001 votes. Incredible that such a thing could happen to a sitting Vice President in the midst of this unprecedented prosperity! How could Gore possibly have lost?

I could not get the image out of my head of these three old white guys on PBS solemnly blaming Gore and consigning him to purgatory. At the same time, I thought about the people who I had met working on the campaign - - mostly women, gays, African-Americans, Jews, Hispanics... the "Real People", not the old white guys who haunt the TV. The Real People who, up until the very last minute, worked themselves sick and clung to crazy hopes that maybe this time, just this once, things would finally break for the Real People.

Thinking about that contrast, I finally understood what this election was really about: it was Gore’s glass ceiling.

We Real People have all been under the glass ceiling. We know how it feels to be passed up, passed by, passed over while the old white guys on the other side of the glass ceiling solemnly tell us: The system is a meritocracy. This failure is all your fault.

Al Gore hit the glass ceiling for us all when the entire American media went out of its way to humiliate him, when the oil monopolies et al spent over $140 million to end his career, when Right Wing fanatics in the House and Senate wasted $52 million and six years investigating and smearing him... when all the forces of the status quo promoted the dumb white guy over the overqualified "other".

What can you do when you meet up with the glass ceiling? You try to break through, but how? Do you try play the glass ceiling’s game - - do you try to win at any cost, knowing there’s barely a million in one chance that the glass ceiling will yield to your pressure? Or do you try and win clean, praying for a miracle just as elusive? It’s a question we all struggle with on a daily basis. Gore just had the misfortune to have his struggle second guessed by every person in America who had never been formally introduced to the glass ceiling.

Before I left Headquarters, I found myself repeating over and over: Now there will be no campaign finance reform. And because of that, because it will always be about raising money and not blowing it on losers, Al Gore will never get to run for President again.

Those 50,001 votes cost us one of our greatest Presidents, forever. Gore would have been as great as Kennedy, as great as Roosevelt, maybe even as great as Jefferson. Now he joins the ranks of the Presidential wannabes... names only vaguely remembered, completely divorced from their history, their philosophy, their promise. Al Gore lies buried at the crossroads. The glass ceiling has had the final say, as the glass ceiling always does.

Now it’s 2:30am and I am bone tired. I have no idea what I’m going to do with this website now. I know a lot of people wouldn’t miss a beat, they’d just keep making fun of Bush. But maybe laughing at evil is a mistake. Maybe laughing at evil helps us accept it, rather than fight it. Maybe the system is a meritocracy. Maybe this failure is all my fault.

I’m going to go dark until next Monday, November 13th. Unless I wake up tomorrow and discover this has all been a horrible nightmare.

That's the trouble with us damn Real People! We can't ever quite manage to stay buried at the crossroads...

Thanks for all your kind words and support.

Janet


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