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Charles Jaco has written opinion and commentary pieces for dozens of magazines and newspapers. Each week, read and comment on a fresh on-line version. The discussion page enables you to share your view points world wide. If you would like to make a comment go to the " Join the discussion" link below. If you would like to view past editorials visit the Editorial Archive. Editorial 12/08/00 note: for links to information resources on Indecision 2000, go to NewsBoom GORE'S LAST STAND My mother-in-law just spent a month with us. I don't dislike the old girl, but it felt like V-J Day when she left. It's time for the Vice-President to get the message. He stayed for dinner, dessert, and drinks, spent the night, cooked breakfast, and now wants to know what's for lunch. It's time to pack up and catch a cab to the airport. We all know why he won't, of course. He knows he beat Bush in the popular vote and figures--probably correctly--that he won Florida, too. But Andrew Jackson in 1824, Samuel Tilden in 1876, and Grover Cleveland in 1888 knew the same thing, too. And none of them ended up in the Oval Office, at least in those years. Gore knows he's neither Jackson nor Cleveland. Both of them came back and were elected. He has the unsettled feeling that he's Tilden, who dropped off the electoral map after the Centennial election fiasco. Gore knows that after his trench warfare over the results he's probably poison to the national Democrats and won't be considered in 2004. He's right. Gore inherited a booming economy and still couldn't steamroll Bush. He couldn't carry his own home state. He refused to unleash Bubba, who could have probably taken Arkansas and maybe a couple of other states into the Gore column. The conservative talk squawkers can't stand to hear it, but President Clinton is astonishing on the stump. Why, the Democrats are asking, should we even think of re-nominating a man with all the political tactical sense of George Armstrong Custer? And now, Gore and his ragged troops are dug in at the Florida Supreme Court and in Leon County Circuit Court, trying to avoid a mass slaughter. Too late. Look at the alternatives. Gore will probably lose before the Florida Supremes, simply because they've been hemmed-in by the barbed U.S. Supreme Court rejection of their original ruling in Gore's favor. But even if he does win, the electors would be Constitutionally chosen by Florida's Republican-controlled legislature. The Florida court might appoint a set of Gore electors, but then it would be up to Congress to choose between them. Even if the House went for Bush and the Senate went for Gore (assuming no Senate Democrats bolted), then the entire mess would end up before the U.S. Supreme Court again. Given their previous ruling, guess which way they'd fall? I've been in a last stand, in Nicaragua with Contra rebels in 1986. It was no fun. A half-dozen of us managed to survive the carnage, mostly through luck and Sandinista miscalculation. Al Gore's ready to learn that lesson the hard way. A straightforward, simple concession speech would be nice. We'll even front him the cab fare to the airport.
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