I was in southern Vermont this last weekend, outside Brattleboro, to speak about Al Gore to a leaf-peepers' dinner at the Kopkind Colony (named for the great radical journalist who died in 1994) and came face to face with one of Gore's big problems as we close in on polling day. His name is Marty Jezer, author of a fine book on Abbie Hoffman, now being filmed as "Steal This Movie." I've known Marty for years. He's a left organizer who still argues eagerly to all who care to listen and dispute with him that the Sixties radicals made a huge mistake in 1968 in dissing Hubert Humphrey, thereby opening the door to Richard Nixon.

My view has been that from the radical point of view, between H.H. and R.N., Humphrey probably would have been worse, but that's not the point at issue. Down the years, Jezer has told his fellow progressives in Vermont that while Carter/Mondale/Dukakis/Clinton may not have been everything that a radical might desire, they were a better bet than their Republican opponents. This time, in his influential weekly column in the Brattleboro Reformer, Jezer has shifted. He's no longer telling the radicals to do the sober thing. Tacitly (no one likes to admit career error), he's indicating that a vote for Nader is OK.

Pushing Jezer towards this posture is the fact that Vermont's radicals are finally getting over their long infatuation with self-styled "independent socialist" Bernie Sanders, and have seen him for what he is: an opportunist Democratic hack politician. Sanders used to be the candidate of the "progressive coalition," which has now become a third party, the Progressives, of which Sanders is not a member. The party already has four reps in Vermont's state house, as well as any number of elected people at the local level. This time around, the party has a slate of statewide candidates, including Anthony Pollina, who is aiming to unseat Democratic governor Howard Dean.

Not being a hypocrite, Marty Jezer can scarcely tout the Progressive Party and still urge Gore over Nader. The latter came to Vermont last week and pulled in 600 people at a meeting in Brattleboro, an incredible turnout for this small southern Vermont town. Nader promptly denounced Sanders as a sellout.

Of course, Vermont is scarcely a major factor in the presidential race if you rate it in terms of electoral college votes, of which it has three. But across the country right now, in many states which are in close play, there are plenty of people like Jezer who, as it comes down to the wire, are taking their final look at Gore and deciding that hell no, this time around they won't go into the Democratic column on polling day. No surprise. What possible reason did Gore offer in his first debate to those left-progressives to come his way?

Like Bush, Gore suffers from exposure. He should shun the public stage, since he's evidently incapable of mounting a podium without firing off a couple of stretchers. In the normal order of things the American people have no problem with that. After all, they wagged their heads tolerantly when Ronald Reagan claimed that he personally liberated Auschwitz. But Gore's fibs play into a larger unease. The guy just doesn't hang together as a human being. Back in the Cold War, the CIA used to promote the theory that the Soviet Union's troubles could be traced to the national habit of swaddling babies. Thus constricted in their early years, Russians supposedly never learned the habits and motions of free people. Same thing with Gore. Something happened to him in his early years that messed him up for life.

In a column in Salon the other day, Camille Paglia had a swing at the problem, discussing Gore's "hothouse upbringing by his dominating parents" and "his prissy, lisping Little Lord Fauntleroy persona." Gore certainly gives the impression sometimes of being under psychic duress, like a closet case from the Fifties, though the closet in Gore's instance is not covert sexual preference, but a life span of uptight hypocrisy, of which his dope smoking and subsequent punitive attitude toward nonviolent drug offenders is a major example.

Bush is just as messed up, and people sense that, too. After the first debate, Nader went up a couple of points in the polls. My guess is that the more people have to look and listen at Gore and Bush, the better Nader will do. "This race is a lot like Nader's nationally," Ellen David Friedman, a long-term Progressive organizer in Vermont, said to me about Pollina's challenge to the incumbent Democratic governor. "It has posed the question: If we want good people to run, and they get on the ballot, what do we want to do with that? Do we wish to use their campaigns to build up a progressive movement, or do we once again want to squander our power on business as usual? People under 30 don't give a damn about the spoiler stuff. Most of Pollina's campaign workers are under 25. They want to be able to work for what they believe in. Demographically, these are the people who will be making the difference, organizing progressive campaigns in the years to come."

That's what the Nader/Green campaign is essentially about.

Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are coauthors of Al Gore: A User's Manual, published by Verso. To find out more about Alexander Cockburn and read features by other columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2000 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.