Gore and his spokesmen have demonstrated that they want the presidency even if they lose the Electoral College, and they are contesting election results using methods—attacks on local election officials, marches—that would never have occurred to any pre-Clinton Democrats. Before Clinton, no president had so openly orchestrated a campaign, complete with propaganda and legal action, against an officer of the law. Before Gore, no presidential candidate had so openly orchestrated a campaign to steal the presidency.
Impeachment illustrated an important fact about the Democratic party: It clings to power by playing the race card. Democrats managed to racialize impeachment. Clinton was “the first black president” and the target of an attempted “lynching” by House managers. (“All they were missing was white sheets”— Eleanor Clift.) Now Jesse Jackson says that Selma has moved to Florida. Voters are being “disenfranchised.” (It depends on what the meaning of “disenfranchised” is.) “It seems that in West Palm [Beach], the African-Americans and the Jewish senior citizens were targeted. Something systematic was at work here,” Jackson said. “It was large and systematic.” Speaking to the “sons and daughters of slavery and Holocaust survivors” in a sermon at Temple Israel of Greater Miami, the Rev. Jackson said that “we must stand together or we will perish alone.”
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