Gore Defends Democratic Base
July 6, 2000 -- While Texas Gov. George W. Bush tries to prove he’s a “different kind of Republican,” Vice President Al Gore is struggling to convince his party’s liberal base that he’s the same old kind of Democrat.
Trailing his Republican rival in every major public opinion poll and losing ground with traditionally Democratic voting groups such as women, Latinos and labor unions, Gore has been forced into the uncomfortable position of having to defend his left flank.
The Democratic candidate has returned to the populist rhetoric that helped propel him to a lopsided victory in his primary battle with former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley.
“I want to fight for the people,” Gore told a group of seniors in Niles, Ill. today. “That’s why the big pharmaceutical companies … are supporting Gov. Bush. That’s why the big oil companies are supporting Gov. Bush. That’s why the big polluters are supporting Gov. Bush. That’s why the HMO’s and insurance companies are supporting Gov. Bush.”
Railing against corporate greed is at the heart of Gore’s effort to shore up his support from organized labor, a key Democratic constituency that is still angry over the vice president’s support for a deal that was brokered by the White House to permanently normalize trade relations with China. That agreement — recently passed by the House — was hailed by big business, but hated by labor unions that argued it would drive down wages for American workers.
Blaming Business, Bashing Bush
With prescription drug prices rising at record rates and Republicans and Democrats now pushing competing coverage plans for Medicare recipients, Gore is blaming the soaring costs on what he says are greedy pharmaceutical manufacturers.
“There is price-gouging going on,” he said this afternoon. “They’ve already had the highest profits of any industry in America.”
“I’m for the people who are having trouble paying their prescription drug bills,” Gore said today on ABCNEWS’ Good Morning America, “and others are for the big companies.”
Gore’s ongoing assault on the pharmaceutical industry echoes his recent attacks on the oil industry, which he blamed for rising gas prices across the country — and particularly in a number of Midwestern states that many experts say will decide the outcome of the presidential election.
“The big oil companies’ profits have gone up 500 percent in the first part of this year, just at the time when these prices are going sky high,” Gore said in an interview with ABCNEWS last month. “I think that justifies a much broader investigation into possible collusion, price-gouging and antitrust violations.”
As he lashes out at drug and oil companies, the vice president is also doing his best to link his general election opponent to both of them, attempting to portray the GOP in general and the governor of Texas in particular as the minions of moneyed special interests.
As prices at the pump soared, Gore repeatedly accused Bush, who started and ran his own oil company in Texas, of being in the pocket of the oil industry.
“Does Gov. Bush have the perspective to be president?” Gore asked rhetorically.
“George Bush, being a big buddy of the oil industry, probably doesn’t have much interests in lowering prices,” added Gore campaign spokesman Doug Hattaway.
Now, Gore’s aides are trying to tie Bush to the pharmaceutical industry, noting that Alex Castellanos — a well-known GOP consultant whose firm, National Media, is involved in buying airtime for Bush campaign ads — also has created commercials for Citizens for Better Medicare, a special-interest group that is campaigning against a Democratic proposal to create a prescription drug benefit under Medicare.
“Despite [the Bush campaign’s] best attempts to deny their ties to the drug industry, the facts speak for themselves,” Gore spokesman Jano Cabrera said in a statement today. “Castellanos, who has done work for and been paid by the Bush campaign, is the same man who spearheaded the drug industry’s multimillion dollar deceptive ad campaign.”
Neutralizing Nader?
Arizona Sen. John McCain’s bid for the Republican nomination was centered on his call for campaign finance reform. After the senator trounced Bush by a double-digit margin in the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire, Bush moved aggressively to co-opt his challenger’s main issue: The governor shed his “compassionate conservative label,” dubbed himself a “reformer with results,” and offered his own campaign finance reform proposal in an effort to neutralize McCain’s growing appeal.
Gore’s increasingly populist rhetoric is, at least in part, an effort to neutralize the appeal of Green Party presidential nominee Ralph Nader. While the longtime consumer rights advocate has yet to break into double digits in national support, he is threatening to drain the vice president’s support in key electoral states such as California and several battleground states in the Midwest.
A challenge from TV commentator Pat Buchanan in the GOP primaries forced then-President Bush to lurch to the right in his unsuccessful bid for re-election in 1992. But the fiery conservative, who is running as a Reform Party candidate this time, is not forcing the former president’s son to do the same in this election.
This year, Buchanan barely registers a blip on the national radar screen and, unlike Nader, draws more or less evenly from Bush and Gore. As a result, the Texas governor faces no significant challenge from the right — leaving him free to move toward the center.
Buchanan and Nader both argue that the ideological differences that once separated the Republican and Democratic parties have now been completely obscured as both parties pander to big business.
“You know what the difference is?” Nader asks, referring to the two major parties. “The difference is the velocity with which their knees hit the floor when the corporations come knocking on the door.”
“I’m on your side,” Gore told voters in Niles today. “I want to fight for the people.”
His chances for victory in November may well hinge on whether or not “the people” believe him.
ABCNEWS’ Dana Hill contributed to this report.