WALL STREET JOURNAL: AL GORE MIGHT RUN FOR PRESIDENT IN 2008

I feel really great about the Democrats' chance of re-taking the House in November and I feel they will do well in the Senate, this despite a decidedly anti-grassroots bias from DCCC head Rahm Emanuel and DSCC head Chuck Schumer, bias that will depress Democratic turn-out. But when I allow myself to take the focus off November and look towards the 2008 presidential race, I'm not nearly as cheery.

If I lived in New York state and Hillary Clinton were in some kind of danger of losing her Senate seat, I'd vote for her. She's not a bad Senator. She's not a great Senator either but what she's really not is a great leader... or any kind of a leader. She has come to be a walking, talking definition of triangulation and she is as wrong for the Democratic Party as anyone could be right now. But she has star-power and she has money. In fact some pundits think she has enough money for them to declare the race a wrap: she's the nominee. And almost every non-Internet poll I've seen shows her the choice of Democrats by a landslide. The polls also tend to show her losing the general election, especially against McCain.

I wrote about why I thought Al Gore would make a better nominee than Hillary back in September. Today the WALL STREET JOURNAL takes a look at the possibility that Gore will run in '08.


To me this is about the profound lifechange Gore has gone through since he was a pompous corporate shill who picked Joe Lieberman as his VP nominee and then, after decisively winning the election, had the White House stolen out from under him by Bush. I believe Gore 2006 is a very different man, and a much more mature man, than that Gore. Other than Russ Feingold, I don't see anyone else on the horizon I feel good about. The WALL STREET JOURNAL article examines the whole thing from a very different perspective. "In recent weeks, he has been on the covers of VANITY FAIR, WIRED (its headline: 'The Resurrection of Al Gore') and AMERICAN PROSPECT, a liberal Democratic magazine. Defeated politically, he nonetheless makes TIME'S list of the world's 100 most influential people; Mr. Gore is featured under the headings 'Heroes and Pioneers' and 'America Takes a Fresh Look at "Ozone Man"'-- the derisive nickname coined by the first President Bush in 1992 after Mr. Gore's previous environmental book, 'Earth in the Balance,' came out. 'His star will never be higher than it is right now with his movie coming out,' says Democratic consultant Karen Skelton, Mr. Gore's former political director. The Gore buzz reflects a sense among even some pro-Clinton Democrats that Mrs. Clinton, considered the prohibitive favorite for the nomination given her support in the party's base of activists and donors, can't win the general election because she is a polarizing figure to many voters. These skeptics believe only someone such as Mr. Gore with the celebrity and fund-raising potential to match Mrs. Clinton could stop her."

I've seen the previews for AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH and it looks great and I'm eager to see the film. The right-wing assholes who write SOUTH PARK-- the only tv show I watch but I really hate those two writers and I would never go see anything else of theirs (I just like the SOUTH PARK characters)-- have already dedicated an episode to skewering Gore and the film. "Among those said to be pushing Mr. Gore are billionaire venture capitalist and high-tech entrepreneur John Doerr and Laurie David, a global-warming activist and producer of the film, and wife of 'Seinfeld' and 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' creator Larry David. 'When people see this movie, I know they're going to see the real Al Gore, and they're going to demand that he run,' Ms. David says. But, she adds, he changes the subject whenever it comes up, and had to be talked into making the movie when she pitched it. I have a feeling she may be right-- about half the people. The other half (the assholes like the guys who write SOUTH PARK) will demand he not run.

The WSJ article closes with an interesting proposition. "There would be no small irony in Mr. Gore re-emerging with a crusade against global warming. In 2000, he played down the issue he had so long been identified with in Congress, on his consultants' advice. They feared the younger Bush, like his father, would use the issue to reinforce an image of Mr. Gore as a bloodless wonk, and make it a jobs question for voters in swing industrial and coal-mining states. 'The campaign took this issue off the table and robbed him of seeming "big" and visionary,' says former Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta. 'I think he regrets that.'" Even more ironic was a speech the other day that the little turd-brain from the Oval Office made at graduation ceremonies at the University of Oklahoma. Bush said something about how today's gas-fueled cars would soon be as obsolete as rotary phones and black-and-white televisions. Al Gore wrote that in a book back when Bush Jr. was still trying to re-invent himself as a man of God instead of a good-for-nothing drug addict and alcoholic and was ridiculed by Bush Sr. as "Ozone Man" and viciously attacked through 2000 for his prescience.