BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

by Mark Karlin

Editor and Publisher

April 14, 2008

Add this to Senator Hillary Clinton's list of craven pandering: she doesn't believe Al Gore won the 2000 election, even though he beat Bush by 542,000 votes and beat him in Florida, except that the Supreme Court stopped the recount.

But Barack Obama will have none of accepting the GOP mugging of democracy in 2000 as Clinton has done. In the so-called "values debate" on April 13th, Obama chastised Clinton for lumping Gore and Kerry together as "elitist" candidates -- and claiming that's why they both lost their elections.

Obama becomes the first major candidate to acknowledge the truth about the stolen 2000 election as he issued this rejoinder to Clinton's disowning of the real vice-president during her husband's administration: "I know that Al Gore was mentioned earlier," Obama said. "By the way, I have to say, I think Al Gore won."

The Washington Post offers details of what Obama was responding to.

From the April 14th WP : [1]

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) asserted Sunday night that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), through his recent description of sentiments in small-town America, reinforced a stereotype of "out-of-touch" Democrats that doomed the party's past two presidential nominees.

"We had two very good men, and men of faith, run for president in 2000 and 2004. But large segments of the electorate concluded that they did not really understand or relate to or frankly respect their ways of life," Clinton said at Messiah College, referring to former vice president Al Gore and Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.). She repeated her view that Obama had been "elitist . . . and, frankly, patronizing."

Perhaps Senator Clinton's shameless and disingenuous tag-teaming with John McCain against Obama will meet with some success in Pennsylvania, as wielding dishonest wedge issues have in the past with workers left behind by NAFTA, Wal-Mart factories in China, and the neo-liberal trade policies of the Clinton and Bush administrations (and Reagan and Bush administrations before them).

But for once, we've heard a potential president say what the facts tell us about the 2000 election: Al Gore won.

As is often the case, Senator Clinton just can't get her facts straight. She sold Gore and democracy down the river for a desperate Hail Mary attempt to wrench the nomination from Obama.

But Obama spoke truth to power and gave Gore and our voters the due that they deserve.

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

Bookmark/Search this post with:

buzzflash [2] | delicious [3] | digg [4] | technorati [5]