That's what I want the most. Inside the Gore camp, things are increasingly fractious. In one particularly nasty meeting recently, campaign chairman Tony Coelho lashed out at his senior staff, and there are once again hints that firings are in the offing. Gore operatives argue, rightly, that it is far better to face the Bradley Moment in late September than in late January. Sources tell TIME they are moving onto a war footing.
More jabs are sure to come.
In the South, Midwest and everywhere else but California, that's not who the Democratic primary voter is. All of which leaves them counting on the back pages of the primary-season calendar. That is a far different scenario than the quick blowout they expected earlier this year when they decided not to take on Bradley at all because several key players, including Gore, thought he might drop out. That was not the only miscalculation by a candidate who cites chaos theory as a favorite scientific principle. Gore spent the first six months of 1999 surrounded by a virtual asteroid belt of orbiting pollsters, message advisers, family retainers, backseat drivers and policy hangers-on.