Final Days
With just 17 days until the election and the presidential race locked in a virtual dead heat, Al Gore and George W. Bush are ironing out their end-game strategies.
The latest CBS News analysis of the electoral map shows a remarkably close race with 15 states representing 208 electoral votes likely to vote for Gore, versus 23 states with 205 electoral votes going Bush's way. Too close to call: another 13 states with 125 electoral votes.
Recent public opinion polls conducted before Wednesday night’s third debate, however, tell a better story for Bush, with the candidates tied or the Texas governor leading by about four points, close to the polls’ margin of error. And a CNN/USA Today tracking poll that includes one day’s worth of post-debate reaction has Bush up ten points. (Third party candidate Ralph Nader is still pulling 3 to 5 points in the national polls.)
This week, the candidates engaged in a pointed volley over Bush’s Social Security plan.
Gore wants voters to think that the governor’s proposal to allow younger Americans to invest some of their retirement entitlement in financial markets is impractical.
Bush wants voters to think Gore is stoking generational tensions and "ignoring the hopes of younger workers."
Bush’s plan to allow younger workers to invest some of their Social Security entitlement in financial markets is probably his boldest domestic policy initiative, but Gore’s determined to show him the meaning of "third rail."
Gore is making the Republican nominee defend himself, collapsing months’ worth of arguments about the plan’s fiscal feasibility into the suggestion that Bush has promised the same trillion dollars to two different generations of Americans.
In their third debate Wednesday, Gore said, "He has promised a trillion dollars out of the Social Security trust fund for young working adults to invest and save on their own. But he's promised seniors that their Social Security benefits will not be cut…. Which one of those promises will you keep and which will you break, Governor?"
Gore continued to press the point with reporters on Air Force Two on Friday.
"This is not a small detail," Gore said. "This is an amount of money that could make the difference between prosperity…and a return to the deficits and recessions of the 1980s."
On both tax cuts and Social Security, Bush likes to say that he "trusts people" to manage their own money.
He repackaged his Social Security pitch Thursday, as a "new deal" for the twenty- and thirty-somethings he calls the "Rising Generation."
"All Americans must have the right to plan for their own futures," he said.
Bush advisor Charlie Black says the governor "is trying to be on offense on the issue, which is also a good defense."
Next week, Gore will continue to argue that he’s the right man to cotinue the economic expansion, and he’ll steal a page from the Bush playbook to do it.
Remember Bush’s tax families? The faces of his promised tax cuts? They’re mostly two-parent families with young children and gross incomes in the $30,000 to $50,000 range.
Gore will begin each day next week with his own families, visiting them at their homes in battleground states and in their places of work, discussing how his agenda effects their future prosperity.
Bush, who urged Michigan Republicans at campaign stops this week to "call your neighbors" and bring some of those old Reagan Democrats back into the fold, will take his ground war to the swing states next week.
After a Sunday rally back home in Austin, 29 Republican governors will fan out to 25 states for three days of campaigning. Bush already has popular surrogates like his mother, Barbara Bush, and ex-rival Sen. John McCain appealing to independent voters on his behalf.
Meanwhile, there’s a family argument among Democrats over what role will be played by the biggest Gore surrogate of them all, President Clinton.
Gore didn't utter the president's name once in the three debates, even while touting the administration’s accomplishments. And he refused to answer directly when asked by reporters Friday if Mr. Clinton is a "plus," "minus" or "neutral factor" for his campaign.
President Clinton will make some appearances aimed at turning out Democratic voters; a California trip is planned. The Democratic National Committee says Mr. Clinton will also do radio spots and recorded telephone messages. But Gore strategist Tad Devine says there will be no joint rallies, no buddy trips.
Democratic opinion is split about the Clinton factor. Some think the president’s their silver bullet; others think he’s more like a hand grenade.
Black, speaking for the enemy camp, says, "We think, as do the Gore people apparently, that Clinton is a doubled-edged sword for them." He's capable of turning the base out big time, but could also remind more independent voters that "everything they didn’t like about Clinton, Gore was supporting. Whether it’s a net gain for them, I don’t know."
A more quantifiable net advantage goes to the Republicans in the money department. The Republican National Committee has between $45 and $50 million left to spend against the Democrats’ $31 million.