Gore Appeals to the People’s Court

With the polls showing a tight election, Vice President Al Gore on Thursday said the choice for president will come down to two sides: “the people” and “the powerful.”

Speaking to voters in Chicago, the presumed Democratic nominee echoed a popular union song from the Depression with the question: “Whose side are you on?”

It is a question he asked at Thursday’s stops and one that has been on the lips of his campaign staff all week. And it came as he opened fire on his Republican rival, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, for planning to spend “not a single dime” of a projected trillion-dollar budget surplus on shoring up the Medicare system.

“In this election for president the fundamental question has to do with whose side are you on,” the presumed Democratic nominee for president told a group of senior citizens in suburban Chicago. “I’m on your side. I want to fight for the people.

“The other side fights for the powerful, and that is why the big pharmaceutical companies are supporting Gov. Bush. That is why big oil companies are supporting Gov. Bush. That’s why big polluters are supporting Gov. Bush. That’s why the HMOs and insurance companies are supporting Gov. Bush.”

Gore plans to devote $339 billion over 10 years to cover health care for seniors, fund health care providers such as nursing homes and long-term care facilities, extend Medicare’s solvency and add prescription drug coverage to Medicare. His proposal, he said, is on the “right side,” the side of the “average American worker.”

The populist rhetoric, which has been building in recent days, came during a week when he spoke to members of his core constituency: teachers, African Americans, Latinos.

Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said Gore’s remarks were a sign that the vice president “is looking over his shoulder at Ralph Nader” by recasting himself as a “class warfare warrior.”

“America wants a president who works for the people,” Fleischer said. “Not a president who pits people against each other and finger points.”

In an election year in which many voters have complained they can’t tell the difference between the candidates, Gore on his “prosperity and progress” tour has spent the last month attempting to spell them out.

The main topic this week: Medicare and prescription drug benefits.

Gore drew a strong line between his 10-year, $255-billion plan to secure prescription drug benefits for the elderly and Bush’s position. With charts and graphs, the man who is often criticized for being professorial and wooden was in his element in a detailed talk Thursday at a senior center.

Gore pointed to a graphic intended to illustrate that new expenditures proposed by Bush, including spending on defense, Social Security privatization and tax cuts, would dwarf the $1.47-trillion budget surplus projected over the next 10 years.

“If you add up what he has already proposed, you can see that it swamps the amount of surplus that is there,” Gore said.

The Bush campaign countered with a charge of its own: that the Clinton/Gore administration has failed to work on bipartisan reform of Medicare.

“Al Gore’s charts and graphs can’t hide the fact that the Clinton-Gore administration opposed bipartisan Medicare reform,” said Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett. Bush, he said, favors adding a prescription drug benefit for seniors through private health care plans.

Gore aides believe the week has gone well. He has been embraced by enthusiastic crowds at every stop. In Chicago, the small crowd of seniors listened intently to his hourlong speech and question-and-answer session.

Virginia Niedziela, 72, said the vice president wasn’t what she expected.

“I liked what he had to say. He wasn’t a fast talker,” she said. “And this crowd is a bunch of chatterers; they’ll get up and walk out if they don’t like it.”

At a National Education Assn. meeting at a lakefront convention center, a crowd of 13,000 seemed to foreshadow the convention. Supporters waved “Gore for president” signs in a massive hall decorated with red-white-and-blue bunting, carpet runners and balloons. The powerful teachers’ union, which Gore noted accounts for 1 in every 100 Americans, formally endorsed him earlier this week.

To the teachers, Gore, as he did the day before when he spoke to the American Federation of Teachers in Philadelphia, vowed to block private school vouchers, reduce class sizes and “treat teachers like the professionals that you are.”

He also said more stringent gun legislation needs to be passed to protect schools from violence, saying it would be a “more lasting memorial” to Barry Grunow, a Florida teacher shot to death by a student earlier this year.

Gore travels today to Pittsburgh, where he plans to talk more about his health care proposal.