Four years ago, Al Gore was pulling an all nighter in Florida — exhausted, voice shot to Hell, shouting out his stump speech theme phrases at a 4 am rally in Southern Florida on that first Tuesday of November, attempting to smash Florida out of Jeb Bush and the Florida Republican Party Machine’s tight-fisted hands.

It never quite came out. The corrupt Florida felon’s list ensured the winning margin of victory — any doubt I had that that story was false was smashed when the 2004 list was subponoed out and we descovered a list swarming with blacks with a smattering of Hispanics — Florida Hispanics being Cuban 1 issue-voters, the issue being that damned Castro guy that nobody else in the whole of the USA can bring themselves to give a damned about.

You will remember that Bush Campaign was quick to assure everyone, after Florida was called, that the state was still not decided yet. A curious game. Bob Dole made that point on the live Daily Show broadcast that night. Bush sent the photo-op conversation of the Bushes eating dinner, a bizarre conversation of the states still in play and about how Florida was not decided yet. It’s difficult to know what to make of that… then and now.

That was the first in a long series of odd photo ops mailed over to the 24 hour news networks. We would have Bush essentially having cabinet meetings — Colin Powell makes an appearance — in retrospect the first of two meetings through the entire four year term. (The second meeting giving him his script before the UN.)

In 2004, in the final week of the campaign, Al Gore was shipped over to Hawaii. Hawaii isn’t polled too often — Reagan nearly lost it in 1984 and it has a grand total of three electoral votes. But, evidentally the last two or three polls from the state showed a strangely close margin, so Bush sent Karl Rove over and Kerry sent Al Gore over. Kerry would be kicking himself if, by some fluke, Hawaii went to Bush and Bush won the total electoral college by 2 votes.

The problem with the idea of Hawaii as a swing state is that it throws a wrench into the “GOTV drives”. Imagine campaign volunteers being given a choice of flying off to New Hampshire to try to pry those four votes out or being flown off to Hawaii for those three votes. Everybody would be leaving to Hawaii, where not much work would really be gotten done.

I hope Al Gore enjoyed himself down there, at any rate.

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