Cohen wrote about Gore’s “fractured campaign” and Dionne followed just below about “the agony for Gore” before closing with the uninspired “if Gore pulls the election out.” Kinsley’s column was an ironic look at where the Gore campaign went wrong, “another Gore mistake was his almost frightening willingness to follow the advice of media commentators.” These three aren’t the only ones of course; the entire media seems to have given up on the vice president and even one of the icons of neo-liberal journalism, Joe Klein, spent an entire article in this week’s New Yorker on an analytical obituary of the vice president and his campaign.
Of course the Gore campaign has had troubles; but the race is still virtually tied and the battleground states that will ultimately decide the race are very much in flux. The media of course could change that if conservative pundits continue to promote Bush and attack Gore while liberal pundits join them for the latter. Bush is one of the most flawed candidates of my lifetime and yet the people who can write most persuasively about his flaws seem fixated on competing with each other over their almost self-fulfilling analyses of why Gore lost.
