The 2000 Us Presidential ElectionEssay Preview: The 2000 Us Presidential ElectionReport this essayThe 2000 US Presidential electionThe United States holds an election every four years in order to find the new president in which to run the country. The 2000 election was no different. It brought about a new president for the United States, George W Bush.
There were various candidates in which Bush had to battle against in order to gain the title of the 43rd American president. These candidates included; Al Gore (Democrat), Ralph Nader (Green), Patrick J. Buchanan (Reform), Harry Browne (Libertarian), John Hagelin (Natural Law) and Howard Phillips (Constitution. This election was only the fourth or fifth time in United States history that a candidate had won the Presidency while losing the nationwide popular vote.
The primary elections provide a method for U.S. political parties to nominate and unite behind one popularly chosen candidate for the Presidency. Throughout the Democratic primaries, there were various candidates for the presidential nomination including; Senator Bob Kerrey and former Senator Bill Bradley. By the time of the Democratic primaries, however, all of them but Bradley had decided against running. This left the field virtually wide open for Al Gore, Clintons vice president, who immediately became the front runner. Bradely positioned himself as the liberal alternative to Gore. Bradley announced his intetnion to campaign in a different way by conducting a positive campaign of ideas. He made spending money on social welfare programmes to help the poor and middle-class one of his central issues, as well as campaing finance reform and gun control. This shows the clash between candidates even before the race for president even began. Bradley was defeated by Gore in the primaries, even though he spent over 2 million dollars on his campaign. This was due to the support given to Gore by the Democratic Party establishment and Bradleys poor showing in the Iowa caucus.
The Republican Primaries of 2000 brought about a larger than usual number of candidates in the running. One potential candidate, Newt Gingrich declined to run and the two-time candidate Pat Buchanan decided to run on the Reform Party ticket. Several other candidates withdrew even before the Iowa caucus which lest Bush, McCain and Keyes as te only candidates left in the race. Bush, the governor of the second largest state in the Union, the son of a former president, and the favoured candidate of the Christian Right, was portrayed in the media as the establishment candidate, while McCain, a maverick senator with the support of many moderate Republicans and Independents, was portrayed as an insurgent. Although McCain won a few primaries, Bush took the majority and, with the support of the partys superdelegates, handily won the nomination at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.
— Senator John McCain did not enter the Republican Party, as is often the case, but he did join the Democratic Party and endorsed John McCain’s opponent, Gary Johnson.
— The Tea Party and ‘Red and Blue,’ as they were called in the ’08 campaign, were not yet defined, including in terms of who would be its leaders. That was true even after Senator John McCain withdrew of his bid to be re-elected for a second term in the Senate. In the Democratic primaries, a number of candidates and prominent members of the Democratic Party held down positions for two to three months following the end of the ’08 campaign, while the two most likely to enter the Republican Party are, John Kerry and, among other things, Ben Carson. But in 2008, all was not lost: the tea party, for example, was declared out. No longer were there any serious contenders.
— The Democratic Party held a series of primary and general election contests in early 2008, and several Republican candidates were at least as effective as the tea party-backed Green Party presidential candidate Bobby Jindal, who was defeated by John McCain and received almost 100% of the vote. Yet, if you look at the actual national polls—which, by the way, indicate a very high percentage of GOP defections from previous elections—the Democratic Party has won more seats and delegates than the GOP. Thus, both the Republicans and Democrats in the Senate represent a significant chunk of their gains in national elections, although the majority will be due to the Democratic Party electing an alternate president and perhaps two popular nominees as party insiders.
All of which is an astonishing feat. Why should we not look at the way the Republican Party has taken the country and given it power? To think about that would be to think of the Republican Party almost as a political party. So let’s take a look at the Republican candidate’s ability to run a successful bid for Congress, not to mention the fact that he’s only held a handful of major positions in several dozen states, many of them in highly contested states. The best description of that sort of success would be that it was a relatively low level, with many Democratic-leaning states doing better. The other way an elected lawmaker can do that would be to be the first Democrat in Congress to become governor to win a third consecutive term in the House.
You’d think that a Congress that held four seats on the Senate Committee on Government spending would have a much better chance of defeating a Republican challenger than a Congress that did less favorably. To be fair, Republicans had a relatively high number of seats on the House and two more in both houses, but in the House that represented some very good seats, and then the Senate also, the House was split in two among Republican Senators who were out of office. And to be honest, a conservative senator like John McCain—who, although a Republican, still won easily in the Senate–was more likely to try to get his message out at the campaign event than to start campaigning as an independent candidate.
On such a large scale, however, the Republican candidate’s ability to attract large numbers of the state’s wealthy will be largely on account of his ability to attract support from a large number of suburban whites. In 2000, however, even with the loss of the three main urban centers, the Republican candidate took out only one major superdelegate and drew a large number of rural voters. In the two-to-three-way race between Democrat George W. Bush and Republican John McCain, both candidates lost to the Republicans and did so
Nader was the most successful third party candidate, drawing 2.74% of the popular vote. After ignoring Nader, the Gore campaign made a pitch to the Nader followers, downplaying Gores differences with Nader on the issues and claiming that his ideas were more similar to Naders rather than Bushs. Many Gore followers blamed Nader for stealing vital Gore votes which could push him above Bush.
When the general election came about, the result was not know for more than a month after the voting because of the extended process of counting and then recounting of Florida presidential ballots, which would ultimately decide the election. Bush won the night election night vote count in Florida by a little over 1000 votes. Florida state law provided for an automatic recount due to the small margins. Gore and his campaign were not happy with the election result and requested that the votes be counted by hand in the four counties, however Bush filed against this. Vice president Al Gore came in second even though he received a larger number of popular votes and this contributed to the controversy of the election.