Political strategies may seem heartless and manipulative on first glance, but, once you look deeper into the matter, you see that they really are heartless and manipulative. Gore ran an excellent campaign, probably about as good as he could possibly have done. In the US, the liberal base is smaller than the conservative base, but the swing voters are more than numerous enough to make up for the difference. Gore represents extremely liberal viewpoints, however, on the campaign trail, he tried nauseatingly hard to get the moderates and swing voters. It paid off magnificently, with that group splitting about 2 to 1 for Gore. The big downside, on the other hand, was that the plan alienated the far left and cost Gore a great many of those votes. But here's the rub: if Gore had not put such effort into securing the swing voters, they would have defaulted to Bush, giving Bush an easy victory. As it happened, though, Gore carried the middle and left the left to vent elsewhere: but he could be absolutely sure that the elsewhere for the far left would not be Bush. Thus, Gore ran a campaign designed to cut into Bush's lead and not really to garner as many votes as possible.

Now I shift from analytical to hypothetical. Clinton and Gore have very similar views; after all, they ran on the same ticket. [And that does imply similar views. Only a fool would have a partner he couldn't depend on.] Clinton wooed the middle as well, though he won because Perot siphoned about 20% from the conservative vote, but after election he reneged on many of his moderate promises. There's no reason to believe Gore wouldn't have done the same. Thus, what I'm getting at: I think the liberals shot themselves in the foot this election.

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