The Truth About Al Gore

ANd why you should be worried about his endorsement of Howard Dean, from Counterpunch:

Excuse me, but wasn't Gore the guy who, when running for the Democratic nomination, chose to trash black voters in the New York primary in 1988, with the help of Mayor Ed Koch? This guy, who couldn't stand up and demand a Florida recount based upon the blatant disenfranchisement last election of hundreds of thousands of black voters, is the African American's friend?

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Still others suggest that Gore's endorsement will suck union votes away from Dick Gephardt? But whoa! Isn't this the same Al Gore who so ardently backed and continues to back President Clinton's crooked NAAFTA job destruction treaty?

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Gore's endorsement betrays, and probably ultimately dashes those hopes. A corporate whore of the first order, Gore's 2000 presidential campaign took money from pretty much all of the same powerful groups that bankrolled the Bush campaign--oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, physicians, hospital companies, the insurance industry, the communications and power industries. Indeed, the difference between the two campaign contributor lists of Bush and Gore was really a matter of emphasis, not substance. Bush got the big oil bucks, Gore got the big medical bucks. They both got big defense industry bucks. More generally, they both got big contributions from big business, which is the main point.

Dean can still refuse this Judas kiss and the purse of silver coins that will follow, but he hasn't done so yet, and the Gore endorsement, more than anything else, has to be seen as a coded message to the big corporate interests, which have no doubt been watching the Dean bandwagon in dismay, that it's okay to back the former governor of Vermont; that he's "one of us."