Why is it *my* #%^*ing fault?

[beerandjesus]

258. KCR, you're assuming that all 2000 voters were as well-informed as you are.

I'm 41 years old, which means I was just the right age to feel that it was MY music being targeted by the PMRC. I was already a fanatical record collector by then (yes, at age 15), and I resented the hell out of what they were doing. So did a lot of my peers--a hell of a lot--and in our young minds, "Tipper Gore" became synonymous with government meddling and overreach.

Now, I started subscribing to The Nation when I was 17, but not a lot of people I knew did. But a lot of people my age--who were much less politically engaged--had a big problem with Gore being on Clinton's ticket in 1994, and an even bigger one when he ran in 2000.

Frankly, your central assertion (to me, anyway) is obviously true: It totally wasn't worth sending the whole country to hell over stickers on records. But for many, many, many people of my generation, the PMRC was an indelible stain on the Gore name; and even if the business about Bush II "being the guy you'd want to have a beer with" was bullshit, when you contrast that with the guy who helped his wife "try to censor records", well.....

Finally, don't forget that young voters are precisely one of the demographics Democrats rely on. in 2000, I was 28. I was also a political junkie. But a hell of a lot of my non-political junkie peers were absolutely NOT going to vote for the guy who had tried to take away their AC/DC records 12 years earlier, and were sure as hell not going to put Tipper Gore in the White House. Unfair? To a certain degree, for sure. But that's the way it goes. If only highly-informed people voted, Nader probably would have won in 2000!

This is why I assert that the PMRC cost Gore more votes than Nader possibly could have.