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Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., acknowledges that the election cannot become "an
endless count."
Gore under pressure from both sides
Concern grows in his own camp
over sustaining election challenge
By Ceci Connolly and David S. Broder
THE WASHINGTON POST
Nov. 29 — Vice President Gore pleaded again for patience from the American
public yesterday amid growing concern in his own camp over how long he can
sustain support for his unprecedented challenge of the Florida election
results.
‘This is a search for an accurate count, but it cannot be an endless
count.’
— SEN. BYRON L. DORGAN
(D-N.D.) IN THEIR PUBLIC statements, party leaders were still
backing Gore’s last-ditch push for the presidency. But privately many
Democrats-including Gore senior advisers-said he is running short on time.
“This is a search for an accurate count, but it cannot be an endless
count,” said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.). “There has to be a circumstance
here where one person congratulates the other.”
As his lawyers raced from one courtroom to the next, Gore was being
buffeted by an array of pressures. Liberal activists who worked hard for his
campaign and dread a second Bush administration grow fiercer by the day in
saying that Gore must not surrender. Several planned news conferences,
rallies and e-mail blitzes for this week.
POLLS SHOW AMERICANS WEARYING
Yet Sunday’s certification of the Florida vote and new polls showing a
majority of Americans tiring of the presidential saga have led many allies to
conclude that without some obvious boost in the coming days, it will be
difficult to hold the critical political middle.
“There’s an inherent fear that if we don’t get a [court] victory,
they’ll not only soften but slide away,” said one chief strategist. “So far,
surprisingly, nobody is defecting.”
One critical event is the U.S. Supreme Court hearing Friday on Texas
Gov. George W. Bush’s claim that the Florida Supreme Court overstepped in
allowing the hand recounts to begin. “We can hold politicians until the
Supreme Court rules,” one Gore adviser said. “All bets are off after that.”
And for the first time yesterday, some of the people close to Gore
began talking about his political prospects beyond 2001.
‘HE IS MAKING BUSH STRONGER’
“The biggest challenge for him is to hold on to the American people,
and he isn’t,” said one informal adviser who cited a new poll showing 60
percent think Gore should concede. “By the end of the week, it will be in the
seventies. At that point, he is making Bush stronger, and he in effect
destroys his ability to” pursue the White House in 2004.
Less than 12 hours after Gore’s nationally televised address Monday
night, his team was lobbying on several fronts. The vice presidential
nominee, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), worked the airwaves and telephones
as Democratic fundraisers issued an urgent request for more money to pay the
legal bills. At midday, Gore posed for pictures with Treasury Secretary
Lawrence H. Summers, painting a picture of a calm, understated transition.
Most notably, he took questions from the media for the first time
since Oct. 29, relinquishing control of the agenda to a press corps he and
aides view as unsympathetic if not outright hostile. Reporters pressed him
for evidence that Republicans tried to intimidate Miami-Dade County
officials, and Gore said video of the incidents speaks for itself.
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A campaign strategist, acknowledging that “we need a sense of
momentum by the end of the week,” said Gore was likely to repeat his pitch
every day.
“There are no better advocates for their position than them,” senior
adviser Tom Nides said, referring to Gore and Lieberman’s personal
intervention. “They feel passionately about this.”
“The question is, can they sustain the legal battle politically?”
said one congressional Democrat. “So far they are, but in three or four more
days will it be sustainable?”
DEMOCRATS FLOODED WITH FEEDBACK
Many Democratic offices on Capitol Hill reported being flooded with
messages urging Gore to end his legal challenges and concede. The Capitol’s
Internet server buckled under the crush of the burden, which an official said
was the heaviest since President Clinton’s impeachment days.
Some said they believed conservative talk show hosts had encouraged
listeners to target Democratic senators up for reelection in 2002, because a
high percentage of the messages were from states other than their own. Others
said the calls were clearly coming from Republicans and sounded scripted.
Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), who faces reelection in 2002, said he is
finding “a lot of exasperation about how long this has gone on.” Even some
of his fellow Democrats think that “no matter what Gore does, the result will
be the same,” Johnson said.
DEMOCRATS SUPPORT COURT EFFORTS
Yet even Democrats such as Johnson who come from states Bush carried
appeared ready to support Gore’s efforts, at least while they are still being
considered in court. And, Johnson said, it is in Bush’s “interest for the
courts to see that a very careful count is made. He would be a president who
failed to win a popular majority, so it’s in his interest to remove as much
of the doubt about the Florida results as possible.”
Rep. Tom Allen (D-Maine) was one of several members of Congress who
picked up on the argument made Monday by House Minority Leader Richard A.
Gephardt (D-Mo.) about the risk to the new president if the contest launched
by Gore is not allowed to run its course. “No matter which one becomes
president,” Allen said, “if we learn later on he didn’t get the majority of
the votes in Florida, it would cast a terrible cloud on him.”
Gephardt raised the possibility that a private group, using the
Florida freedom of information act, would gain access to the disputed ballots
and belatedly conclude that Gore should have been awarded Florida’s 25
electoral votes.
THE CLOCK IS TICKING
But time is clearly working against Gore, and yesterday a Florida
judge ruled that there would be no additional examination of disputed
ballots, at least until Saturday.
Dorgan, whose home state of North Dakota went for Bush by 28
percentage points, said: “Obviously, people are impatient.” He added, “My
worst fear would be to have this come to Congress. At some point, Republicans
and Democrats have to understand the national interest is more important than
the party interest.”
One Democratic senator, who declined to be named, said, “The drumbeat
that Bush has won creates its own dynamic. It is very troubling.”
GORE: ‘POLLS DON’T MATTER’
In response to a question, Gore tried to minimize the impact of public
opinion: “I’m quite sure that the polls don’t matter in this, because it’s
a legal question.”
Standing on the front lawn of the vice presidential residence, Gore
was more pointed in his criticism of Bush than previously, as he made his
case for seeing the matter through. “This is a time to count every vote and
not to run out the clock,” he said, reading from notes. “This is not a time
for delay, obstruction and procedural roadblocks.”
As he turned and walked the 50 paces to his porch, Gore was asked if
he thought he won. He took two steps in silence, craned his head and replied
with a chuckle: “I hope so.”
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