I'm tremendously pleased and satisfied by Al Gore winning, well, pretty much the highest honor a human being can get. It's a huge statement that gives the issue of global warming immense status — status only commensurate with the size of its threat to our existence.
And of course, this will provide more stimulus for the Draft Gore folks, of which I suppose I'm one. Although I'd work for him in a heartbeat, I'm not anticipating he'll get in the race. I think polls underestimate how much he would upset the current dynamic of the campaign, but on a practical level, the time to jump in was some time ago. Instead, he may well get to play kingmaker — but not by endorsing any particular politician, but by making clear the parameters by which we can evaluate the various candidates' proposals. This is a case in which the normal give-and-take of negotiation in a democracy is quite likely to produce a result that's inadequate to the problem: We simply can't accept half-of-the-baby.
If Gore endorses one candidate or another, it's good for that candidate, but not necessarily good for Gore's cause: It would necessarily distance the other candidates from his positions — and his status. Say, for instance, that Gore endorses Obama: It's terrific for both if Obama wins the nomination; but if Hillary wins anyway, she will have demonstrated that she didn't need him. And then his eventual endorsement of her in the fall would seem pro forma as opposed to enthusiastic — sacrificing the enthusiasm for her candidacy that will be necessary if she's going to take up the issue with any seriousness.
The bottom line is that we need to have all Democrats and many Republicans on board with a dead-serious policy that decisively tackles our climate crisis. As Gore says, it needs to be an issue bigger than partisanship. (Look to the example of Bono with world poverty to see someone who is able to discuss grave and “inconvenient” issues with both parties, with patience, passion and perserverance.) With Nobel in hand, Gore has gained a unique, perhaps unprecedented status: as one in politics but not of it. I don't know what his next move is, but it seems he should use the considerable gifts that's he's got, in as many creative ways as he can imagine.
The cause is too important for him not to.
It’s too late.
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A lot of polls show he’d jump into first place in particular states, immediately.
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However, even of the polls that don’t show that, he still gets top-tier type support and the polls can’t take into account the fact that I think Al Gore would get a huge bandwagon effect. He jumps in, lots of people follow, lots of people follow them. I can’t see how anyone is all that excited with the current options: none of them are particularly great on Iraq (I don’t care what Obama says, the fact that he said he was against the war in one speech long before means pretty much squat to me… he could do a lot more in opposing it now, but isn’t).
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The great thing about Al Gore is not only does he have a rock-star environmental following, but he’d be the bonafide antiwar candidate. I can still remember his many speeches that the media mostly ignored while President Bush was invading Iraq. They were brilliant.
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So, he’s going to get the anti-war votes as well as his rock-star-crowd votes, plus all the people who will follow that. That, my friends, should be plenty to win the primaries, even against Hillary and even when you come late into the game.
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But as I’ve said in the past, he doesn’t even have to win it. If he wants Global Warming to become the defacto issue, his committment to the race would do that. His stump speeches could still be like his environmental speeches and he could try to kill two birds with one stone.
… the problem is I don’t trust the press to treat him fairly this time, and although it may not be too late, it could be too early to give the press this much time to develop its narrative. Of course starting later to mitigate this might be too late for other reasons.
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Don’t get me wrong,… Gore is my dream candidate.
The press will treat him more fairly than they did last time – and considering he won the plurality before he ever won a nobel prize or was associated with an academy award winning documentary (not to mention the leader of a burgeoning movement), I like our chances.
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Gore comes across the media as much more of an elder party statesman this time around, without the baggage of a scandal-ridden white house and with the knowledge that these past 8 years would have been totally different with a Gore presidency instead of a Bush one. It will be much harder for the mainstream press to treat him the way they did last time around.
i mean, you may be right and some of the press may try to vilify him. but they’ve already spent so much vilifying hillary for the GOP that if they pile onto a second major dem, people might start to see what they’re doing for what it is.
…scenario.
it really isn’t going to happen.
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Too bad.
Screw Obama. He was a gimmick and won’t ever live up to his potential, at least until he learns some hard lessons. He tried to mask himself as some anti-war candidate at first and it just didn’t jive, which is an honest reflection of where his campaign is at. Obama’s going to have to drop anyway, sooner or later; Gore need not concern himself with whether or not Obama is going to be graceful about it.
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I’m so tired of all these candidates that I hope Gore would pick someone entirely different, if he were to run and win. I don’t even want him to pick my default choice, John Edwards, because he’s too coward-like to actually support key positions (and instead has his wife do it for him, as if that would make me more excited to vote for him – I’d rather vote for her!). I’m sure there are some decent Democratic Governors out there, aside from our own, who needs to stay put, or maybe someone who isn’t in the government at all, but is popular with the public and well respected for their opinions and points of view.
Endorsing a particular candidate (especially himself) would lower the issue of climate change in the media’s narratives to just being Al Gore puffing himself up.
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The way it is now, with Gore out of the race, every Dem candidate has to push hard on global warming, and the Republicans who deny or delay on it, like Ron Paul, can be slammed for being anti-science–justifiably so.
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Gore’s learned a few things from 2000 and 2004. He’s been right about global warming, the Iraq War, and now he’s right about staying out of the race.
Do they? I wonder. Haven’t seen much evidence of it yet in debates or otherwise, have you?
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Seems like Dem strategy now is to use rhetoric “Global warming is a grave concern” but then try to create something where voters don’t need to sacrifice themselves (ie, let’s build a giant research fund — and get oil companies to pay for it).
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I know he wouldn’t do it, but I wonder if Al Gore could run a purposefully and openly LOSING presidential campaign, where at every stop, he outlines the unpopular stuff that really needs to happen.
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Then maybe his losing effort shifts the political discussion to the point where 50% of what needs to happen can actually happen, instead of current debate (should we do 0% of what needs to happen, or 5%?)
None of these issues are being taken seriously by the Democrats. They just voted to label Iran as a terrorist nation, days before Bush started talking about doing a little bombing over there. Um… hello?
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Hillary’s Iraq war plan would involve keeping tens of thousands of American troops in there. Edwards and Obama still plan for thousands, but their language still offers plenty of loopholes to keep even more.
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Only Al Gore really hit hard on Iraq, when it mattered. He wasn’t taken seriously then, but he was right once again. Add to that the fact that I’m not hearing the environment as one of the key issues in this campaign and I really have to agree with the Draft Gore movement: if Gore cares about the things he says he does, he has a duty to run and make a difference. At the very least, he loses, but makes these extremely important issues throughout the rest of the election. At the very least, all three of these top-tier candidates can be challenged on their moderate to left-of-moderate positions that definately don’t jive with most of the party. At best – and there’s a solid chance of this happening – Al Gore goes in the race and wins and can really push the envelope in office on everything he cares about, from Global Warming to the Iraq War.
I meant to say right-of-moderate. Stupid and inneffectual would have been accurate too.
…”center-right.”
i shouldn’t write past my bedtime =p
I think he makes a much better advocate for the environment in his outsider role than he did as VP or a candidate in 2000. If he were to become a candidate again this time around, his stature would diminish overnight.
Any reasons or facts to justify that?
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All we know now is that Al Gore was right and George Bush was wrong, that Al Gore is the leader of an entire environmental movement – he’s brought it to the mainstream for the first time ever. Suddenly, that’s going to go away overnight? I highly doubt it.
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If anything, running for President would allow him a bigger platform in which to advocate for these things, thereby gaining stature in the long run.
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Oy. What a slap to anyone who admires Rachel Carson, Jane Goodall, and Patrick Moore. I realize that your number one candidate is Gore, but he’s not the first mainstream environmentalist. He is maneuvering well in an age where everything, including the environment, is now a “brand”. But people were recycling before Gore made his films and books.
There’s more than one environmental movement — and the one Gore leads is not the movement of long-time activists, but rather the huge group of people who are concerned about climate change and want their government to do the right thing and “solve” it like was done with the ozone hole and CFCs.
Insofar as he is the leader of “an” environmental movement and not “the”, I can accept how I was mistaken. Apologies to Ryan.
If anything is a slap at environmentalists, it’s calling Patrick Moore a leader of them!
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[Jane Godall’s work] is priceless, but she does not lead a movement. And Rachel Carson died in 1964.
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I agree that calling Gore “the” leader of “the” Environmental Movement is a bit off base, but really what we need is more leadership like his not less.
I’m going to try once again the reasons why I will forever condemn this global warming concept. My objections lie in the totalitarianism of it all. We are just replacing the war on terra meme with a war on the enviornment meme. A war is still a war.
The same people who rally on about the neo-cons and their war on terra also tell me with the very same dedication of Faux News viewers that my conversion from $600 every ten days for oil to a pellet stove is just not good enough? WTF? I was told wood pellets rely on machinery?
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For most this is the only green solution.
http://en.wikipedia….
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Big Al Gore with his massive compassion for humanity could have rallied himself with thousands of other completely worthwile causes. Depleted uranium is one of them. Perhaps a real investigation solving the questions more and more people have about 911. How about why media has supressed information about a simple drug that kills multiple versions of cancer.
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Simply not, the establishment must remain the establishment and carbon trading as the new Wall Street will be justification for the massive repossetion of the western world’s modern lifesyle.
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Meanwhile carbon exempt China and the factory building gold rush continues to churn out contaminated dog food, lead laced childrens toys and lipstick.
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Blow me Big Al!
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