Is It Over Yet?

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Mom's phone work is an indication of the all-out war over the nation's fourth biggest basket of electoral votes. It is a state Bush can't afford to lose, especially with the humiliation that would come from tanking in a place where brother Jeb is Governor. But Gore, sniffing blood in the water, has sharked up and down the state trying to make the kill.

So how does it break down? MacManus sees it this way: Gore takes South Florida by dominating among elderly voters, many of them liberal Northeastern transplants. Bush grabs the conservative Panhandle up north. And the race is decided in the I-4 corridor between Orlando and Tampa Bay, where people are less inclined toward blind faith in their own party. It's an area full of transplanted boomers from the North and young families drawn to relatively affordable housing and good jobs in high-tech fields, health care and financial services.

Gore is probably fine in Tampa, provided he gets a good turnout among blacks, Hispanics and working-class whites. Many of the Cuban and Italian graybeards who drink big, foamy cups of cafe con leche and talk politics every morning at the La Ideal Cafeteria and the West Tampa Sandwich Shop said they are going to stick with the Democratic ticket, even though Gore is like a bowl of black beans without the onions and spice. "I like Gore on Social Security and the environment," said Carlos Reyes, 55, who runs a medical-billing company. But Reyes says people will have to be dragged to the polls, disgusted with "politicians who would sell their own children" if there were money or votes in the transaction. Look at the Firestone scandal, Reyes said, in which consumer protection was a secondary consideration in the regulatory process. "It's because of all these lobbyists buying protection for their clients."

Wayne Garcia, a Tampa political consultant, believes the race will be decided east of the city, in places like Brandon, a microcosm of the mostly white middle-class suburbs along I-4. Brandon, with roughly 120,000 people and a mall instead of a downtown, is America. It's a sprawling, unincorporated, amorphous mess, as devoid of soul as the candidates themselves. With two Waffle Houses within a mile of each other and tract houses sprouting like mushrooms, the place is still growing daily, and the politics of growth is always more conservative than the politics of decline.

Tom Lee, the Republican state senator who won his last election in the district 61% to 39%, says people care about tax relief, education that includes choices for their children and the moral direction of the country. Not good news for Gore. On the subject of moral direction, people act as if Al had been in the room with a Polaroid while Bill turned Monica into a patriot, as if the only way for America finally to exorcise the beast and move on is to drive a stake through Gore's heart.

"I'm tired of the moral degradation," said Joe Spencer's wife Nancy, 52, a switchboard operator. "In my book, what you do in your personal life does matter."