The American Spectator

p> NEW NEGATIVES br> If nothing else comes out of the election of 2002 it is the knowledge that Al Gore is completely obsessed with his defeat in 2000, and that he is dragging his Democratic Party into whatever dark hole his mind resides in. /p>

Take what happened this past week in Maryland, when Gore stumped with that state’s gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. Understand that Townsend is perhaps, next to California’s Bill Simon, the worst campaigner this year. By all rights, she should be down ten, no 15 points in the polls. But in a Democratically controlled state, she was lucky on Wednesday to be up by one or two points against Republican Bob Ehrlich.

Then Al hit the road with her. His campaign speeches focused almost exclusively on his loss in 2000, with barely a mention of Townsend. Gore’s speech received major play across the state. And a day later, Democratic tracking polls showed Townsend had lost three points in the polls and trailed Ehrlich going into today.

“Someone is going to have to look at how many candidates Gore campaigned for in the last week of the election and how many of them lost,” says a Democratic National Committee staffer. “He was just a disaster. Whoever was supposed to prep him did an awful job. All he talked about was himself. No upbeat message, no rallying cry for the candidates. Just him.”

In fact Gore’s performance was so bad that Democrats immediately sent out an SOS and brought Bill Clinton into Maryland to campaign for Townsend in one last attempt to save her political career.

“That just has to burn Gore up,” says the DNCer. “And if it doesn’t it just shows how detached Gore is about the mess he’s in.”

p> NEW LETHARGY br> Last Friday night, Democratic National Committee advisers working with remnants of the Paul Wellstone