Drafting Gore, October 24

Steve Novick

OK, so I need to know (please email me at [email protected]) who wants to help me make "Draft Gore" signs over the next few days, and wave them around at the entrance to the Rose Garden Tuesday night. The "Draft Gore" team at this point includes Jeff Merkley, Jennifer Sargent, John Russell, Mark Wiener, Kari Chisholm, Susan Castillo, Leslie Carlson, Mike Litt, Jeff Cogen, Amy Hojnowski, Kristin Teigen, Eric Stilwell, Mary Conley, Todd Foster, Mark Gardiner, Charlie Burr, Noelle Hurley, Keith Creech and H. Wayne Dobbins. (It also includes others whose full names I do not have because all I had was their blogging monikers, which I don't think counts.) If you want to add your name to the list of those calling on Gore to run in '08, please email me. I note for the record that if Gore had not taken the initiative in helping to create the Internet there would be no such thing as text-messaging and therefore Mark Foley would never have been caught and we might not be about to win Congress back. So Al really deserves the nomination for that reason as well as the many others previously listed. Thanks, everybody ...

  • sasha (unverified)
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    Please, please, please draft Gore.

    The entertainment value would be immense. Imagine Gore running against Hillary? How fun would that be? By the end of it, 98% of Americans would hate both of them.

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    I think it would be great if Gore, and Kerry for that matter, ran again. There is no reason that a prior defeat needs to disqualify you from running a second time.

    That being said, I don't think Gore is a viable candidate. His high water mark was in 2000. I'm still pulling for Edwards.

  • Julie (unverified)
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    Another donation to Ted! Wow, you trolls are gonna bankrupt me.

  • KISS (unverified)
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    Gore is so far from reality that he makes McGovern looks like a rational thinker. Kerry is my choice..if Hilliary runs she will win. Christ! Another Clinton? Grounds for a third party.

  • Righty (unverified)
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    Too bad you deleted my respectful comment. Don't like my opinion? I simply said that you need someone with personality to win, someone who people are comfortable with.

    Gov. of New Mexico would be your strongest candidate, maybe Edwards.

    Gore and Kerry don't have the personality to win.

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    Righty, I don't think anyone deleted your comment intentionally. I don't even know how, and I know Kari didn't. Besides, I like Edwards. Richardson too although he had really bad luck as Energy Secretary.

  • Joe12Pack (unverified)
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    Another troll's take (though I prefer "Independent Maverick") on the D's best shot at the White House in '08. Weighing all factors at this early stage, my Candidate-O-Matic chugged out the following report:

    1) John Edwards

    2) Barack Obama

    3) Bill Richardson

    4) Hillary Clinton

    5) Evan Bayh

    6) Al Gore

    7) John Kerry

    Pretty light on output at this point, but keying in all the variables on those punch cards is a pain in the ass.

  • Rob Salzman (unverified)
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    Sign me up.

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    I'll see yours and raise you by 2 bucks:

    1. Wes Clark
    2. John Edwards
    3. Barack Obama
    4. Anyone but Hilary Clinton
  • Joe12Pack (unverified)
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    Ah yes, former NATO Commander General Wesley Clark. So noted, though that infernal Candidate-O-Matic doesnt like his odds of going all the way. See your two, raise 5 and take one card.

  • marcia (unverified)
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    You can sign me up. After watching "An Inconvenient Truth" I say Al's my man.

  • Tamerlane (unverified)
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    All right, well, my name's Keith Creech and I guess I've gone and signed myself up. Tell me what I should be doing. This weekend is very busy for me, but I should be fine for Tuesday -- in that I've gathered that you think we should make an appearane at the Rose Garden. Give me some lead time, and maybe I can gather a posse from the college.

  • Tom Civiletti (unverified)
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    I'll support Gore if he promises to make Kucinich Secretary of Peace.

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    Barack Obama?! One great speech, and everybody wants to run the guy for president?

  • Joe12Pack (unverified)
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    Kari,

    It's more than one great speech. Call me crazy (and you may be correct), but Obama has a certain mojo about him. He's your next rock star. Don't keep that horse in the stable for too long. Hell, start him out as a VP candidate.

    Speaking as an ex-Democrat, allow me to remind you of the dud duo of Mondale-Ferraro, a low point for Democrats. Hell, even I voted for Bush #1 and would have done it again had he not sold out to the religious right.

    Do you honestly believe that you can trot out Gore or Kerry again and have a realistic chance at winning the White House? If you're going to go far-left, guys like Edwards & Obama are your best bet. Hillary may have raised the dough, but she has alienated too much of your base and would draw few moderates. Richardson is capable of that, but the so-called progressive base would cool to him. Wake up, dude. Obama is one of your hottest commodities right now.

  • Mister Tee (unverified)
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    Does anybody remember Thomas Eagleton? Geraldine Ferraro? Johnnie "One-Term" Edwards (perhaps the most unlikely co-sponsor of Senate Joint Resolution 46: "Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq"?

    Why would you wish to condemn Barack Obama to the dustbins of Vice-Presidential history? Even if he wins, his job description is limited to attending funerals of foreign dignitaries, and eating lunch with the President once a week (if he's lucky). If you want to give Obama a fighting chance, then at least put him on a "sure thing" winning ticket: imagine Powell/Obama...The nation's first all african-american Presidential slate.

  • Joe12Pack (unverified)
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    Powell? Colin Powell? Right, that's about as likely as the R's running a Gingrich/Kucinich ticket.

  • Mister Tee (unverified)
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    halfrack:

    you think we'll never see a "split" ticket of a disgruntled R and a disgruntled D running as independents? Perot was a verified fruitcake and he still got 18.9% of the popular vote.

    Stockdale make Obama look like Nobel Prize material. Never say never. 5

  • Joe12Pack (unverified)
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    Pairing up these political odd couples is good for a chuckle, but it aint gonna happen. I have heard more than one pundit throw out the notion of a McCain/Clinton ticket which is laughable, unless the goal is to alienate both the Democrat & Republican base simultaneously.

    A winning ticket needs to have the party faithful behind it and the ability to draw some votes from the center. That's why I didnt quite get the Kerry/Edwards pairing. Guess they were hoping that anti-Bush sentiment alone would get 'em the moderate votes they needed. How'd that work out?

  • Tamerlane (unverified)
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    Is this thing going to happen or not?

  • leftofcheneyisnotleft (unverified)
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    From: http://www.counterpunch.org/frank05312006.html

    Perhaps Al Gore's greatest blunder during his years as vice president was his allegiance to the conservative Democratic Leadership Council and their erroneous approach to environmental policy. Gore, like Clinton who quipped that "the invisible hand has a green thumb", extolled a free-market attitude toward environmental issues. "Since the mid-1980s Gore has argued with increasing stridency that the bracing forces of market capitalism are potent curatives for the ecological entropy now bearing down on the global environment," writes Jeffrey St. Clair in Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: The Politics of Nature. "He is a passionate disciple of the gospel of efficiency, suffused with an inchoate technopilia."

    NAFTA allowed existing environmental laws in the United States to be undermined. Corporations looking to turn a profit by skating around enviro statutes at home moved down to Mexico where environmental standards and regulatory enforcement were scarce.

    Gore and Clinton capitulated to the demands of Western Democrats and yanked from its initial budget proposals a call to reform grazing, mining, and timber practices on federal lands. When Clinton convened a timber summit in Portland, Oregon, in April 1994, the conference was, as one might expect, dominated by logging interests. Predictably, the summit gave way to a plan to restart clear-cutting in the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest for the first time in three years, giving the timber industry its get rich wish. Gore, again, said nothing.

    The Clinton administration's Salvage Rider, known to radical environmentalists as the "Logging without Laws" rider, was perhaps the most gruesome legislation ever enacted under the pretext of preserving ecosystem health. Like Bush's "Healthy Forests" plan, Clinton's act was choc full of deception and special interest pandering.

    Around the same time Clinton and Gore, after great pressure from the food industry, signed away the Delaney Clause, which prohibited cancer-causing pesticides and ingredients to be placed in our food products. And after pressure from big corporations like chemical giant DuPont, the Clinton administration, with guidance from Gore's office, cut numerous deals over the pesticide Methyl Bromide despite its reported effects of contributing to Ozone depletion.

    As for Gore's pet project, global warming, he did little to help curb its dramatic effects while handling Clinton's enviro policies. In fact, Gore and Clinton made it easy for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to back out of the Kyoto Protocol by undermining the agreement in the late 1990s. "Signing the Protocol, while an important step forward, imposes no obligations on the United States. The Protocol becomes binding only with the advice and consent of the US Senate," Gore said at the time. "As we have said before, we will not submit the Protocol for ratification without the meaningful participation of key developing countries in efforts to address climate change." Sadly, Gore stood by his promise.

    So while Al Gore flies a polluting jet around the country and overseas to preach to the masses about the dangerous effects of global warming and its inherent threat to life on Earth -- you may want to ask yourself whether the hypocritical Gores of the world are more a part of the problem than a solution to the dire climate that surrounds us all.

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