A Detroit News/WXYZ-TV Poll shows that Michigan voters favor Al Gore (36%) over Hillary Clinton (32%). Gore’s apparent level of support is extremely interesting when considering that this state is home to the Big 3 American auto makers, a big target of Big Al’s in the climate change fight.
Further analysis by another blogger on Daily Kos.
This poll is also interesting in light of the Suffolk U/WHDH poll from late June indicating that if Gore were in the race, he’d beat Hillary 32-26%.
Please share widely!
Oh he’s just so coy.
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Run, Dammit!
He’s the only candidate (aside from Dodd, who of course doesn’t have the money/access for a serious run) that offers a sufficient reason to not go with Hillary in my opinion. He’s still relatively young, though. Plenty of time for him to run yet.
To all in the Gore-as-Saviour camp: If Gore couldn’t win in 2000, with a popular president, strong economy, and working foreign policy at his back, why would he be able to win in 2008, after having been out of the game for eight years?
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I like the guy, but he’s having more hopes, wishes, and dreams projected onto him than Santa Claus.
Besides, the same question could have been asked about Nixon in 1968.
In Florida, the margin of victory was within the margin of error for an election with 5.8 million votes. I imagine had every vote been counted in Florida, yes, he would have won by 900 votes. Bush’s hustle in Florida doesn’t take away from the fact that it really shouldn’t have been this close.
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Gore lost Tennessee, Missouri, Colorado, and New Hampshire. He barely scraped by in the Upper Midwest. A decent candidate would have made this a landslide, which Gore didn’t. I just don’t see how things would be different in 2008.
as we were in 2000? Is Al Gore a different person than he was during the 2000 election? Gore is not the savior of the Democratic Party. But people do look at Gore differently these days, that just simple fact.
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Based on your comments Reagan couldn’t even win the primary in 1976, so he can’t win an election (wish that were true). But things do change, he’s not the same nor are we as a country. I don’t think that we can just point to the 2000 election in this case.
Just because the country has changed in the past doesn’t mean it will change again. Yes, Reagan won on the second try…Harold Stassen didn’t. I really don’t see what Gore offers that is not offered by at least one of the eight candidates now running, aside from a canvas blank in many places upon which would-be supporters are projecting their own feelings.
…Reagan won the presidency after his second try at the nomination. In 1976, Reagan didn’t win the nomination. In 1980, Reagan won both.
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In 2000, Gore had won the nomination, but didn’t win the presidency
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There is a difference.
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I’m sure that Gore would have been a better president that the idiot that we have now, but he didn’t get into office. Should he run for the office now? I’ll opine this way. As far as I can tell, he would be running largely based on a single issue–the enviornment. Reagan ran on 3-4 issues in 1980.
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Establishing an opinion on a few issues and beating on them doesn’t hurt.
… all of your points above and as much as each of your points pains me, I do think the situation has changed in Gore’s favor. At the time Bush was campaigning and getting installed, we as a country didn’t seem too worried about our economy, our standing in the world, the future of popular government programs. Since that election we’ve had, Iraq, Enron, Katrina, Drug “benefit”, Lending Crisis, Gov’t corruption cases, etc. Hell, even his pet campaign issue of strengthening the military was a load of Bull in practice. The lesson has been clear… policies matter… policies have consequences… a good economy isn’t invulnerable from a ideological assault on the policies that created it.
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The question is… did voters learn the lesson and if not, can they learn during the campaign?.
Clarifications
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First of all he didnt win in 2000, had he won hed be President, granted he won Florida and technically won the election, but had he actually carried his home state or even tiny NH he wouldve won. Had he been a better candidate he would never have even been near to losing to someone like Dubya.
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Second the to sabutai the Nixon model is incredibly important here. Nixon won in 1968 because while the country did not personally trust him (they never did, for good reason) they no longer trusted the Democrats to deliver. The Dem Congress was at war with itself, HHH a great guy and any other year a sure fire great President got stuck with having to support a war he no longer supported. And of course rioting cities and a resentment to civil rights fueled Nixons victory.
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Id say Gores in a similar position, the war is likely to continue to drag on and kill GOP chances, people actually do personally trust Gore so that isnt a problem, and the modern equivalent to civil rights backlash in my view is the backlash to the GOP on the domestic front. Katrina, the mining disaster, Minneanopolis, global warming, all of this shows a government unable to do anything. American power due to Katrina and Iraq looks at its weakest. If we cant defeat a little 3rd world guerilla force or rebuild our own cities we arent the great power we used to be. Gore could easily rebuild that confidence.
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That said he aint running so I invite all potential Gore supporters to support Obama!
And he is smart not to run; all the glowing press he’s getting now would evaporate very quickly.
… of a Gore candidacy is the question of whether the press will treat him fairly and factually this time. I think the voters can be brought along on a Gore presidency, but the task of bringing them there is an uphill battle against a press that, in an effort not to be proven ‘wrong’ about him in 2000, continues their sabotaging coverage of him.
I’d give it a 7 if I could.
i didn’t think that comment was worth a “6”, but i gave it one more “6” to try to create a “7 substitute.”
… I can hardly take credit for the idea as original. Several months ago Eric Alterman at his Media Matters Blog (Altercation) highlighted that he would really like a Gore/Obama ticket, but highlighted the fears that I have mentioned above.
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If the media are to be brought in line the only way to do it would be with a groundswell of support so large they would be left with the choice of getting on board or being left behind. Unfortunately the biggest item in the race that could thwart such a groundswell is the very moneyed campaign of Hillary.
… but I believe anti-Gore bias in the 200 election coverage was studied and demonstrated. Maybe Dan Kennedy knows.
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As afertig block-quoted above, Gore keeps the door open to a run. The most likely scenario I see happening is, sometime between October and the end of the year, Gore coming forward to say that since none of the Dems are putting climate change front-and-center in their campaigns, that he has a moral obligation to run for president in order to push the issue, since he repeatedly states that it’s the most critical issue of our era.
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The likelihood of Gore running would be further boosted by polls like the recent Michigan poll and the June New Hampshire poll indicating that he would beat Hillary. Numbers like those can’t be ignored.
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The biggest X-factor in this equation is what the Nobel Committee announces this October (which is why I mentioned October above). If Gore is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, I see no reason how Gore would be able to keep himself out of the race. Further, Gore won’t definitively announce either way until the Nobel Committee makes its decision, since they likely wouldn’t award him the Peace Prize if he has already announced his candidacy, since that would be perceived as political interference.
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Should Gore run, especially as a Nobel Laureate, he would have the pull necessary to quickly assemble a campaign and finance network and would very likely grab support away from Obama and the third-tier candidates. As rumors have circulated in recent months, the dynamic could then shift to a likely Gore-Obama ticket to combine the strengths of the two candidates (Gore’s experience and vision, Obama’s charisma and energy), as well as offset their perceived weakness (Gore’s relative lack of charisma, Obama’s inexperience). It could be the only way to stop the Hillary juggernaut.
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Of course, this is all speculation at this point.
The only way a Gore candidacy (not gonna happen, by the way) would “upset the Clinton juggernaut” would be if the other candidates, particularly Edwards and Obama, withdrew. If it were the three of them plus the five dwarves vs. Hillary, then Hillary would still come out on top…all Gore would do would be to further split the “not-Hillary” vote.
I think he rates high on polls because there are so many candidates. “Who do you support, Biden, Dodd, Clinton, Edwards, Kucinich — “
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“Um — Gore! Next question.”
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He doesn’t need a Nobel Peace Prize to do that; he could do that today, if he wanted to, if he decided as a whim he’d run for President. Certainly, fundraising wouldn’t be a problem. He could raise at least Hillary money, if not outraise Obama himself.
when I’ve seen him, Gore looks happy to be out to the political arena. He says he can do what he wants, even though he had lots of perks as vice president. His answer comes so easily and obviously.
He laughs, kindly, at the people who want to twist his words.
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Do you think he wants to be president? It sounds like being vice president, and running for office, was like being tangled up in a straight-jacket.
I think in large part he was living up to the expectation of his father, but that he is more comfortable with what he is doing now.
…the US doesn’t have a directedly elected Minister for the Environment. If it did, I’d vote for him in a New York minute.
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The problem with a Gore candidacy for the presidency, in addition to the fact that in 2000 he seemed to have run away from his primary thing–that he was associated with Clinton–is that he has turned into a one issue candidate.
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I’ll not belittle the fact that his issue–the environment–is not unimportant, but if he wants to run for president, there are other issues that need to be addressed.
Did you read any of his new book? It’s not even about the environment – it’s about the politics of fear, how it arrived and how we can stop it. Furthermore, he was an outspoken critic of the Iraq war before we ever went to war with Iraq. If you think he’d be a one issue candidate, that’s more a display of ignorance than even wild assumption.