By Brian Carnell

Monday, July 17, 2000

In the real world, Al Gore should be kicking George W. Bush's political butt all over the place. Given the continuing high flying economy and the still high approval rating's by the public on Clinton's job performance, Gore should be a shoo-in just on coattails, much as Bush's father road the afterglow of the Reagan years into the presidency.

In fact, though, national polls show Gore behind at the moment, and although such early polls might not mean that much, it is shocking that Gore is not doing better among voters. And the numbers are even worse once you figure in the possible effect of Ralph Nader pulling the left wing of the Democratic Party away from Gore.

In Michigan, for example, where Bush suffered a stunning primary defeat to John McCain, the breakdown looks like this: Bush 46, Gore 34, Nader 8, Pat Buchanan 3. That's an interesting mix since much the opposite was supposed to happen if you paid attention to the talking heads on TV -- Buchanan would swipe votes from Bush, but Nader's impact would be minimal outside of the Eastern states. Of course part of the reason that was supposed to happen was because of Bush's somewhat wishy washy stance on abortion; the hard core anti-abortion advocates were supposedly going to follow Buchanan to the |Reform Party|. But assuming Buchanan gets the Reform Party's nomination, which is definitely not a sure thing, Gore's attempts to paint Bush as an anti-abortion extremist certainly help Bush in this area.

I'll probably vote for the Libertarian Party's Harry Browne unless it looks like they might get 5 percent or more of the vote in which case I will just stay home. The fact that the LP candidate has virtually no chance of winning is one of the best reasons I can think of for voting for him. When votes are used to elect war mongering statists, best to go with those with no shot at power.

And although he has no chance at winning, Nader is still a diehard statist running on the ticket of a party whose policies come closer to out and out fascism than any political party that is likely to get at least 1 percent of the popular vote (and yes, I am working on a detailed critique of the latest Green platform to back up that claim).

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