Even acclaimed film director Michael Moore recently joined the chorus of those asking Gore to run characterizing it as an opportunity of redemption for America.
If Gore should win the Nobel Peace Prize this fall, there will be even more groundswell for him to run.
For more information about the draft Gore movement in Massachusetts, go to www.MassForGore.org; for New England regional events see www.draftgorene.com.
Lesley Phillips,
New England Regional Draft Gore Coordinator, AlGore.Org
Please share widely!
It’s true that Gore’s the only person who can melt the field. And this is particularly tasty:
But, as pollster.com explains,it may or may not be true that Gore will beat out Hillary. A lot of that poll is in how the questions are asked, and the way the poll itself is structured.
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So, yeah, I think Gore is the only person who could beat Clinton in New Hampshire. And, by the way, I’ve been telling all my friends that I think that Gore is likely to get in the race — if Clinton goes down in the polls significantly either because she screwed up or other candidates chip into her lead. But frankly, I think Gore isn’t going to get in this race unless it is crystal clear that he’d win. He’s already run for president twice. More, he’s sort of skipped the whole presidency thing and gone straight to the honored ‘post-president’ phase, where he can push the agenda he wants and is revered as a statesman.
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For the record, I’d support Gore if he got in the race.
He’s already run for president twice.
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In 92, he wound up winning as the VP, and in 2000 he won the popular vote and arguably Florida and Ohio too. It’s not exactly like he’s 0 for 2.
and that wasn’t to knock him at all, just the reverse. My point should have been elaborated. Running for President is obvious a major event — it drains you emotionally, physically, and intellectually. It’s just a huge time and effort burden that he’s already done — twice (I believe it was actually 1988 and 2000, and that he didn’t run in 1992). Point is, he may not want to undergo that kind of stress again. On the other hand, a lot of the signs say that he might. I don’t know him at all, so of course I cannot say one way or the other, but I hope he does run.
I certainly like Gore and I would vote for him if he were on the ballot.
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The Draft Gore Movement, though, is problematic. Given his public statements, Gore may never accept the draft. If he doesn’t, we’ve had a whole bunch of eager beaver Democrats going around for months telling us that the current crop of candidates is bad and defective. Not good for winning a general election.
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It’s distracting in another way. As Gore himself writes in his recent The Assault on Reason, television long ago overtook print media. As a result, Presidential elections are less and less like issue debates; they are more and more like popularity contests. This fact is not lost on Republicans who “play” the part of President. They are all very manly men willing to blow up lots of stuff to keep us all safe; they’re tough. They’re boneheads too, but the media downplay that. Instead we hear Matthews complain about Hillary Clinton’s voice. Politico does not let go of the Edwards haircut. The most famous thing about Obama may eventually be his middle name. The personal destruction of our candidates is how we keep losing national elections.
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This is something we have got to turn around. Democrats who have not decided who to vote for could spend a lot of useful time pointing out that Giuliani knows nothing about national security, McCain is trigger happy, and Romney lacks principles — or that Hillary Clinton is more careful — because of the attacks on her — than she is “slick” or inauthentic. Or countering any number of attacks on our national figures. MoveOn, VoteVets, and groups could use some energy.
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Winning this Presidential election is going to be very important for climate change, the Supreme Court, Middle Eastern peace, instability in Pakistan, and defusing Salafi extremists. Winning the general is hugely more important than who we choose in the primaries.
are [jumping ship http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/special/forums/%5D. I agree that this is MUCH more interesting.
REAL REPUBLICANS ARE JUMPING SHIP!!!
Signed, a Republican who HASN’T jumped ship.
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Best,
Chuck
that we can count on you to go down with the ship.
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… is that Gore really doesn’t want to run, but that he’ll run if he feels he has to, i.e. if the other candidates don’t treat his issues with what he imagines to be a sufficient degree of seriousness.
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I don’t know, I go back and forth on getting into the Draft Gore movement. I really love the guy, and he’d be my #1 in a heartbeat. But he’s really gotta want it — somewhat unfortunately, that’s a prerequisite for the job.
See Gore.
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See Gore Run.
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Run, run, run.
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See Guiliani.
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See Guiliani Run.
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Run, run, run.
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See Gore lose.
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Lose, lose, lose.
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See Hillary.
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See Hillary Lose.
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Lose, lose, lose.
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See crap occur.
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Occur, occur, occur.
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What this country doesn’t need is a good five cent seegore.
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Best,
Chuck
TPM reported a recent round of polls showing match ups between the top three Democrats (HC, BO, and JE) and the top three Republicans (RG, JMcC, MR). In those nine matchups, Democrats won all nine.
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There are interesting sociological effects in which people develop systematic misunderstandings about what everyone else is doing or thinking. The most well-known example has to do with sex in high school: most kids think more of it is happening than is in fact happening. Similarly, there is an odd, widely shared belief that the country is more conservative than it is. The media — stuck perhaps in Reagan Revolution — still seems to believe this. Republicans definitely fan it. Bush, for example, tells us that the American people want whatever screwed up thing he is doing in Iraq. Polling on the immigration issue, for example, shows very surprisingly that Republicans are not representing the majority view.
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The double-spaced triumphalism to which I am responding is a similar effort to get us to believe things about public opinion that polling does not confirm.
That’s why we have a pandemic of STD’s in high schools, BJ’s on school buses, sexual assaults in high schools, 40 year old teachers screwing 16 year old youths, ‘Hooking up”, and a birth rate of among youb black females that is puzzling etc.
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Conservatism—ever been to any state other than CA, MA, CT, NY, WA ? USA’s population is greying rapidly. Folks over forty aren’t well known for being “liberals”.
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The amnesty bill for illegal aliens was the product of the demented fool in the White House. He should have been checked for syphilis before being sworn in. George Bush should back his bags and sneak out of the White House. They don’t want him around Crawford , so Kennebunkt might take him in. Another year in office and he will have us in global thermonuclear warfare. Global warming will no longer be an issue, nuclear winter will.
My point, after all, was that people’s impressions don’t match the facts. You seem to have given us a lot of your impressions. I do trust polling to evaluate liberalism more than, say, thought experiments or tourism reports about 53 year olds in Virginia and Minnesota.
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To take an example of heuristic bias, I notice that lawn signs in Cambridge, Somerville, and Medford always tend to be more lean more conservative than the vote.
but if you think that the USA is actually far more liberal tan perceived, in my opinion your observations are inaccurate. I would suggest that USA is as conservative as perceptions would suggest.
I think that Americans are far more liberal than is commonly portrayed. The polling on Bush’s popularity went negative long before TV folk stopped referring to him as a “popular” president. Similarly, the polling on immigration shows America much more liberal than Republicans would think. Remember likewise the misestimates on Schiavo: Delay was wrong, but the media misguessed the public mood too until the polls came out libertarian.
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Despite polls showing Americans progressively on issues and expressing eagerness for the Generic Democrat rather than the Generic Republican, there are a number of reasons Democrats and liberals don’t do as well in elections as public opinion might indicate. These reasons have only a weak basis in ideology. A top-of-my-head, random listing:
From The University of Pennsylvania.
Here
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the majority of states have recently passed amendments or measures locking gay people out of major civil institutions. so i feel safe in saying that the majority of voters is not progressive. they can’t even get behind basic civil rights, which you shouldn’t even need to be progressive to support.
The majority of Americans may hold a collection of progressive opinions. That doesn’t mean the majority of Americans are going to join Democracy for America tomorrow or support Donna Edwards over Al Wynn or send a check to the McCabe campaign.
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Despite the favorable issue polling, far fewer Americans identify as liberal than identify as conservative. In fact, it’s worse. The majority of Republicans say they’re conservatives, but the majority of Democrats do not say they are liberal. The electoral terrain has just gotten a whole lot better.
He managed to lose an election as a member of the administration that had presided over one of the greatest economic expansions in U.S. history — powerful, broadly based … a huge fraction of the population was better off than in 1992. That really is just incredible. Yet he did it. He distanced himself from popular Clinton. He flailed around in the debates — remember the “bad Gore,” and the “good Gore?” Then, when the chips were down, he was not in my opinion as aggressive as he might have been in Florida (although this is the least of my criticisms). He is a fine fellow, and I have huge respect for his post-election work on climate change, but I have a lot of doubts about his effectiveness as a 2008 Presidential candidate.
Despite not running a great campaign in 2000, Gore won the popular vote and if not for the election fraud, he would have won Florida and the Presidency. Given this and all that has happened to raise the Goracle’s stock since then, I believe he would be a formidable candidate and surely win this time!
A lot of Gore’s lousy campaign can be attributed to the fact that he had really, really lousy campaign people.
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If he ran left and ran with his issues, anti-war and pro-climate, I have no doubts he’ll walk away this primary unscathed. August and September are fast approaching. He should jump in by then if he will, at all. I have heard that he’s cancelled 6 months worth of events, leading me to believe that he’s now seriously considering a run.
… and any sane way of counting votes in FL would have made that clear. Let’s not forget that.
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That being said, you’re right about his (and his campaign’s) squandering of an excellent hand at the hands of a snotty, mean-girl media. They just didn’t know how to handle that. And if he runs again, he better have a better plan, and a team of bad-ass attack dogs to tame the press. Edwards actually seems to be modeling behavior of how to do that.
We have all these coy undeclared candidates running around – not in debates, not subject to scrutiny as to whether they had pre-marital sex, abused dogs, or had shaky great-grandparents. Just tabuale rase where people can project their own ideas and dreams.
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Why not let Gore run against Fred Thompson for the Jed Bartlett Presidency?
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Then Mitt can beat Hillary and get down to actually running the country.
Al Gore clearly has the resume’, the knowledge and the passion to be a great president. Possibly one of the best. But one thing he doesn’t have (yet), that he will need to really tackle Global Warming, and the resurrection of US stature in the world, is a Mandate. A HUGE Mandate. See, to really, actually turn Global Warming around, he will need to change 100 years of Industrial Revolution attitude about our place in the world, our whole way of thinking about consumption, and America’s corporations’ understanding about what is of value besides simple profit. He will need the backing of a clear majority of voters, and the backing of a clear majority of consumers, to bring about the changes in Big Business, and ourselves, that will be needed. He’ll also need to have the media on his side, instead of sniping at him at every opportunity.
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For this to happen, he cannot be seen to be elbowing into this crowded race. He will need to be asked. This is where the Gore Draft Movement will play the biggest part, NOT in convincing Gore to run, but in helping to convince the power brokers and media to ask him to. Once he senses that the he has the backing necessary for the battle ahead (NOT the battle to get elected, mind you, but the REAL work beyond that), then he will answer the call.
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The real question we should be asking ourselves is not, “Will Gore run?”, or “Can Gore win?”, but rather, “Do I want Gore to be my President, and what am I willing to do to make it happen?” I want Gore to take his rightful seat in the White House, and I’m trying to help that happen by running the web-site DraftGoreNE.com, a clearinghouse for New England Draft information and communications , along with DraftGoreNH, Mass4Gore, and a number of as-yet-unnamed local groups and individuals. Have a look, and see what you can do to help.
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When America calls, Gore will answer.
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What about you?
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Mac
DraftGoreNE.com
Mass4Gore.org