Down & Dirty by Jake Tapper Read Free Book Online

president—is a solid Bush win.
    “That’s my fault,” Clinton says, turning to chief of staff John Podesta. The environmentally friendly strip-mining policies
     Clinton pushed fostered resentment for Gore among the coal-mining community. “That policy screwed him,” Clinton says.
    It’s a small crowd in the room, which consists primarily of Clinton, Podesta, Prince, Band, pollster Mark Penn, deputy chief
     of staff Steve Richetti, and Joel Johnson, senior adviser to the president for policy and communications. But even with such
     a small group, there’s a hell of a lot of frustration and disdain toward Gore’s consultants—Carter Eskew, Bob Shrum, and Tad
     Devine. The consensus seems to be that they ran a shitty campaign for Gore, that they never really cared about him the way
     James Carville cared about Clinton in ’92, or Dick Morris did in ’96. Devine’s the guy who—when Clinton’s speech at the Democratic
     convention in 1988 went more than a little long—supposedly turned the lights down on him, and Clinton’s never forgiven him
     for that. Eskew and Shrum are seen as just part-of-the-problem Washington guys who could envision losing, guys for whom Gore
     was just another client.
    Then there’s the campaign they waged, the running away from Clinton, from the unprecedented peace and prosperity. They barely
     used the president, since their poll numbers showed that post-Lewinsky he hurt them with swing voters. But to not even get
     him to Arkansas until that last week?! Even worse, Shrum and pollster Stan Greenberg concocted this pose for Gore that was
     a total diversion from the New Democrat thing he and Clinton had sold so well to the public.
    Clinton has a term for it tonight. He calls it “consultant populist bullshit.”

    In Miami, Democratic senator Bob Graham has just completed an interview with Tom Brokaw when a producer asks him if he’ll
     be willing toremain miked-up and in front of the camera to talk to MSNBC anchor Brian Williams. Graham says yes and is flabbergasted when
     only a few minutes later NBC calls Florida for Gore.
    There are a few congressional districts not even completed with their voting, Graham thinks, those west of the Apalachicola
     River. And as the senior Democrat in the state, Graham knows just how razor-thin the race is, how anyone can win it.
    “They’re really stretching it,” Graham thinks.

    In Fort Lauderdale, the three members of the Broward County canvassing board are in the supervisor of elections’ warehouse,
     watching TV with mouths agape. They and the election workers haven’t even counted one Broward County ballot before the state
     is awarded to Gore. They typically don’t watch TV while they count the ballots, but this is the closest election in recent
     memory, and no one can resist.
    “Oh, that’s very kind of Mr. Brokaw to just give this away,” says longtime supervisor of elections Jane Carroll, seventy,
     one of the few Republican officeholders in the overwhelmingly Democratic stronghold.
    The chairman of the canvassing board, Judge Robert Lee, a Democrat, is incredulous at Brokaw’s pronouncement. Not one precinct
     has come in! And Florida’s in two time zones—the polls aren’t even closed in the western part of the Panhandle!
    As the night goes on and the ballots start pouring in—accompanied by sheriff’s deputies—Lee, Carroll, and Democratic county
     commissioner Suzanne Gunzburger occasionally poke their heads into the back room, where every fifteen minutes they transmit
     the county results via a computer.
    On the secretary of state’s special Web site—for which they need a special password—Lee sees that Gore is hardly running away
     with the state. “Why are they calling Florida for Gore when it’s so close?” he wonders.
    Soon a few local Republican muckety-mucks—Shari McCartney and Ed Pozzuoli—storm into the warehouse. Where are the ballots
     from Weston? they ask.
    Weston is one of the few GOP areas in