Reply #42: another good article on Gore's transformation in 2000: [View All]

Published on Sunday, August 20. 2000 in the Boston Globe
Thank You, Al Gore
by Robert Kuttner

A funny thing happened to Al Gore on the way to his surprisingly effective acceptance speech. He became a liberal.

The speech was as liberal as anything FDR or LBJ or Jesse Jackson or one of the Kennedys might have delivered. It was built around a commitment to fight for ordinary people, against large and powerful interests. This, of course, is precisely what made it effective.

The emotional heart of the speech, Gore's honoring of four ordinary American lives, did not just salute the struggles of workaday families, the way Ronald Reagan often did. It identified who was dishonoring their struggles - corporations. He singled out heartless HMOs who pressure a family to sacrifice a child; drug companies that force a pensioner to choose between food and medicine; corporate polluters; corporations that pay workers inadequate wages.

And he identified the solution: strong, reliable public Social Security; better Medicare; welfare reform that rewards work rather than punishing the needy; higher minimum wages; and more investment in public - not voucher - schools, so that working families don't have to send kids to crumbling classrooms.

What is the evil? Corporate power. What is the remedy? Effective government.

-snip
http://www.commondreams.org/views/082000-105.htm