Election 2000: Al Gore Hoping Bradley Endorsement Keeps Liberals From 'Defecting to Ralph Nader'
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: And it's time now for our Monday morning look at politics and election 2000. Joining us from Washington with his latest list of winners and losers is CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider. Good morning, Bill.</s>WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Good morning, Carol.</s>LIN: So, who gets a thumbs up today?</s>SCHNEIDER: Well, Al Gore finally had a good week. He got an enthusiastic endorsement from Bill Bradley, and that could help Gore reach a couple of constituencies where he's been weak and Bradley's been strong; mainly men and independents. Gore also hopes that Bradley's endorsement will help keep liberals on board and keep them from defecting to Ralph Nader. In his endorsement, Bradley said that Gore has a more progressive agenda than George W. Bush, and, he added, it's not even close. Bradley's message for liberals: a vote from Nader is a vote for Bush.</s>LIN: Well, that's an interesting endorsement, sort of like the old saying, no such thing as friends or enemies, only interest in politics, Bill?</s>SCHNEIDER: That's exactly what's going on there.</s>LIN: All right, well, a little bit of a thumbs down in the headlines for a city not a person this time around, huh?</s>SCHNEIDER: The city of Philadelphia. The shocking videotape of a police beating has embarrassed the city that's about to host its first national convention in over 50 years. Now, whatever the provocation, the police behavior captured on this videotape was highly unprofessional. Now, that incident involved a criminal suspect. What Philadelphia is going to get at the convention is protesters, some of them professionals, deliberately seeking to provoke a confrontation with the police. They want inflammatory pictures like this one, like Chicago in 1968. It gets the media attention. And of course police brutality is the most polarizing issue imaginable. Philadelphia has to ensure that that doesn't happen, which means a better trained police force than the one we just saw.</s>LIN: Boy, how is the GOP going to handle this, Bill? I mean, this must be their worst nightmare on the verge of their convention.</s>SCHNEIDER: It certainly is because they remember what happened to the Democrats after 1968. It was a very dramatic series of pictures that played over and over again in the news, and it did incredible damage to the party and to the ticket.</s>LIN: Well, maybe we'll see lots of shots of the Liberty Bell. What do you think?</s>SCHNEIDER: Well, that's what they're hoping for.</s>LIN: All right, you got a twist for us today?</s>SCHNEIDER: Well, I certainly do. A surprising twist we reported earlier in that New York Senate race: the allegation cited in a new book that Hillary Rodham Clinton once made an anti-Semitic remark. Now, Carol, there are a lot of questions here. Mrs. Clinton and the president firmly deny that she ever made that remark. The credibility of the source is questionable. The Clinton campaign, as we reported, released copies of a handwritten letter he wrote to Mrs. Clinton three years ago in which he begged her forgiveness for telling lies about her. Also, this remark was made 26 years ago. Why didn't it come up before? Why have other authors failed to report it? Is there a statute of limitations after 26 years? And finally, I think there is a question of relevance. Is there any reason to suspect, from her record or from her behavior over the past quarter-century, that Mrs. Clinton is a bigot, that she exploits prejudice for political advantage? This is the dark side of politics: personal destruction at its worst.</s>LIN: And timing is everything sometimes in these things. Thanks so much Bill Schneider. For much more from the campaign trail, check out our political Web site. The address is cnn.com/election2000.