Should this actually be their policy, they are barking up the wrong tree. If anything does Bush in, it will be the economy. By keeping this up, they will indelibly stamp themselves as sore losers.
Democrats play for the long game
By Toby Harnden in Washington
DESPITE their rhetoric about the "will of the people" and "every vote must be counted", Democrats on secondment to Florida and playing backstop in Washington privately accept the near certainty that the game will very soon be up.
Al Gore and his running mate, Joe Lieberman, face almost insurmountable legal obstacles and public opinion is turning against them. Given these realities, the five hours Senator Tom Daschle and Representative Dick Gephardt spent in Tallahassee this week championing Mr Gore's cause was a surprise.
"Hey guys, how are you?", asked a studiously casual VPOTUS (Vice-President of the United States) seated at his dining table in Washington at the start of a televised conference call between "Tom and Dick" and "Al and Joe".
But contrived as it was, the call showed that Mr Gore's battle for the prize he has yearned for since childhood is, paradoxically, about more than him and more than the presidency. Even if - or perhaps because - Mr Gore will never become POTUS, Democrats have judged that there is much to gain from spinning matters out.
Put simply, the more resentment there is towards a President George W Bush, the more likely Republicans will be to lose control of both Houses of Congress in the mid-term elections of 2002 and the White House two years later.
This explains why the comments of Mr Gephardt, who nurses ambitions for the presidency in 2004 and is a long-time foe of Mr Gore, seemed calculated not to boost Mr Gore's legal case but to push the argument that Mr Bush could never be a legitimate president.
He said: "Under the Freedom of Information Act somebody can come here, a professor or some other academic, and count these votes in the days ahead. So if we don't find out who won and who had the most votes, we're going to find out later.
"Wouldn't it be a terrible thing for the country to find out a month or two from now that you already had the national popular vote by 300,000 votes in the country? How terrible would it be to find out that you also had the most votes in Florida and should have won this election?"
The fact that Mr Gore narrowly won the popular vote is an irrelevancy because the person who wins 270 electoral college votes in the victor. But Democrats have repeatedly been using this statistic to undermine Mr Bush. Even more insidious was the threat that some "independent" individual could come along after Mr Bush was inaugurated, decide every dimpled chad from Miami-Dade had been a vote for Mr Gore.
One Democrat in Washington said: "This is payback time for the Clinton impeachment. They tried to unseat a Democratic president so we'll try to screw a Republican one before he's even started
Democrats play for the long game
By Toby Harnden in Washington
DESPITE their rhetoric about the "will of the people" and "every vote must be counted", Democrats on secondment to Florida and playing backstop in Washington privately accept the near certainty that the game will very soon be up.
Al Gore and his running mate, Joe Lieberman, face almost insurmountable legal obstacles and public opinion is turning against them. Given these realities, the five hours Senator Tom Daschle and Representative Dick Gephardt spent in Tallahassee this week championing Mr Gore's cause was a surprise.
"Hey guys, how are you?", asked a studiously casual VPOTUS (Vice-President of the United States) seated at his dining table in Washington at the start of a televised conference call between "Tom and Dick" and "Al and Joe".
But contrived as it was, the call showed that Mr Gore's battle for the prize he has yearned for since childhood is, paradoxically, about more than him and more than the presidency. Even if - or perhaps because - Mr Gore will never become POTUS, Democrats have judged that there is much to gain from spinning matters out.
Put simply, the more resentment there is towards a President George W Bush, the more likely Republicans will be to lose control of both Houses of Congress in the mid-term elections of 2002 and the White House two years later.
This explains why the comments of Mr Gephardt, who nurses ambitions for the presidency in 2004 and is a long-time foe of Mr Gore, seemed calculated not to boost Mr Gore's legal case but to push the argument that Mr Bush could never be a legitimate president.
He said: "Under the Freedom of Information Act somebody can come here, a professor or some other academic, and count these votes in the days ahead. So if we don't find out who won and who had the most votes, we're going to find out later.
"Wouldn't it be a terrible thing for the country to find out a month or two from now that you already had the national popular vote by 300,000 votes in the country? How terrible would it be to find out that you also had the most votes in Florida and should have won this election?"
The fact that Mr Gore narrowly won the popular vote is an irrelevancy because the person who wins 270 electoral college votes in the victor. But Democrats have repeatedly been using this statistic to undermine Mr Bush. Even more insidious was the threat that some "independent" individual could come along after Mr Bush was inaugurated, decide every dimpled chad from Miami-Dade had been a vote for Mr Gore.
One Democrat in Washington said: "This is payback time for the Clinton impeachment. They tried to unseat a Democratic president so we'll try to screw a Republican one before he's even started