Quote:
I remember Gore saying he was going to fight, fight and fight and then three hours later, he gave up.
Gore did not officially concede for five weeks! http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITIC ... index.htmlQuote:
Gore's decision to concede Wednesday was a particularly painful moment of political deja vu. He had come within minutes of publicly conceding the presidential election in the early morning hours of Nov. 8. Based on information from network exit polls and his own aides, the vice president thought he had lost Florida by approximately 50,000 votes, called Bush to offer a private concession, and was taken to the site of a post-election rally to make a concession speech.
But Gore aides reached campaign Chairman William Daley and told him that the actual count in Florida had closed to within a few hundred votes. As thousands of Gore supporters waited in the early morning rain in Nashville, it became clear that something was happening within the Gore campaign.
It was. The vice president telephoned Bush to retract his earlier words of concession, which he delivered to Bush when most major news organizations declared Bush the winner. Bush was reportedly not pleased to take the second call.
"Let me make sure I understand," protested Bush, his victory speech in hand. "You're calling me back to retract your concession?"
"You don't have to get snippy about this," Gore protested.
"Let me explain something," Gore continued. "Your younger brother is not the ultimate authority on this." Jeb Bush, the Florida governor and brother of the GOP nominee, had reportedly assured the Texas governor in the wee hours of Wednesday morning that Florida was a done deal.
The Nashville crowd, still waiting for word, was greeted by Daley instead of Gore. "Without being certain of the results in Florida, we simply cannot be certain of the results of the national election," Daley announced shortly after 4 a.m. EST. "I've been in politics a long time, and I don't think there's ever been a night like this one."
But that night was just the beginning of an electoral process that has been unprecedented in more than 100 years. The nation's attention turned to Florida and a month of recounts, ballot challenges, special legislative sessions and lawsuits -- including one that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. But Gore gained few victories along the way, and none of the recounts gave the vice president the votes he needed to overtake Bush.
I would be less inclined to believe that the Bushies had anything on Gore that they could use against him in view of his battle once the facts had been shown to him regarding the Florida vote.
Kerry was the one that gave up without a fight, even though his campaign staffers had to know there was trouble with the Ohio vote. I don't think I could ever trust Kerry as a presidential candidate again. He's as tainted now, for me, as Ted Kennedy was for the Democrats after Chapaquiddick.
