The veep's forces have dispatched their own version of minutemen to warn that George W. Bush is a cross between Adolph Hitler and the Waterboy. If any advertisement could qualify as a hate crime, this one would. And it has become the template for the final-stretch Gore campaign. Gore's problem, as I have noted before, is that Democrats don't give a rip about him. His debate performances made him look weird, not presidential.
Voters respond to various kinds of incentives.
Some flock to the polls out of pride and idealism. John McCain sought to inspire his charges this way. Some appeal to the party's yearning for victory. This is the Bush approach. And some scare the bejabbers out of voters by portraying the political opposition as the incarnation of all known evil.