DRAFT AL GORE

I voted for Barack Obama in the California Primary. I was thrilled when he was elected. I supported him while not agreeing with much of what he was doing -- and I remain an enthusiastic supporter of him on social issues and Supreme Court nominees. If he is our party's standard bearer again in 2012, I will vote for him again.

Nevertheless, his economic and national security policies are disasterous for our country and our party. As a loyal Democrat I want to have a means of letting the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party express ourselves meaningfully.

Draft Al Gore.

I'm sure he will say he doesn't want the job. That is the point of a draft. The country needs him and our party needs him.

Yeah, that'll work.

:rofl:

McGovern 2012!

:hide:

Exactly what national security policies are disastrous for our country and party? What makes you think Al Gore would do anything different?

for starters is a disaster for our country.

If you like his national security policies, you should be happy. Good for you.

That's foreign policy. :eyes:

on national security grounds. War on Terror, dontcha know.

And I'm pretty positive Gore would've made the same decision concerning Afghanistan.

And bin Laden is dead.

It wasn't based on national security, it was retaliation and a foreign policy decision was made. Second point, do you think Gore would've reacted differently?

What I object to is the fact we're still there, 10 years later, haveing beheaded the snake. I don't give a rats ass if Afghanis want to kill one another. We have no business there now. But the on-going justification is "national security". We haven't been attacked in 10 years. It's time to come out from under the covers.

I'll acknowledge, in advance, the "Florida/Supreme Court stol the election" responses. The bottom line is that he was a mediocre candidate who offered no compelling message for campaign (tell me what message, slogan or theme YOU can remember), and managed to lose a dozen states Clinton had one, any one of which would have made Florida irrelevant.

and vice versa.

Too damn bad, and in fact one of the major flaws in our system--that and the purchasability of both politicians and the elections that create them.

Information Superhighway

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

*SIGH*

*SIGH*

*SIGH*

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Sadly, what people remember isn't always what people tried to campaign on.

there are times when i think how different our lives would be if he had been allowed to rule as he should have

but he is not up for the challenge, his time passed

he was not in the elite bushco clique and they never let someone rule that isn't in that upper echelon

Didn't work last time and it certainly won't this time. I won't waste my time again like I did for a year for the last election.

Both Gore and Hillary are incredibly smart people and both on paper could have been good candidates. Of the two, Hillary had the easier race to win - and she lost. Major elements of the party and the media had pushed for a Hillary Presidency since 1992. 2008 was a year where the Democratic nominee was almost sure to be the winner. Hillary really would have likely won if she and Bill could have controlled themselves enough to keep to the "inevitable" campaign, treating all opponents with "kindness", showing no fear that they could take it away. She started to lose some support after the Philly debate where she whined that it was the guys ganging up against the girl and Bill Clinton spoke of it as swiftboating. The brittleness of Hillary and the anger of Bill could have remained hidden. Even then, with decent campaign strategy, she still could have won.

Gore ran at a time when there was almost a lack of interest in who would win among large groups of people. Some have said it was Clinton fatigue - I think it may have been fatigue period. The passions of the previous 8 years were exhausting - at least on our side. There were few issues where people not paying much attention saw big differences - and there were no passions. (Even Gore's life long passion on global warming was kept very low key. NEITHER candidate generated any strong support that year, suggesting to me that it might have been the time as much as Gore.

She & Bill did not take Obama seriously until it was too late.

I think that for anyone to have beaten HRC, they would have had to gain speed completely under the radar. This in essence ruled out anyone like an AL Gore or John Kerry, both of whom were discussed as possible in 2006.

I assume that by mid 2007, when the field was known, the Clintons likely saw both Edwards and Obama as not competitive as neither had a strong resume, but saw both as having enough going for them to split the anti-Clinton vote.

(If any in the second tier managed to gain traction, that would also have helped HRC by possibly denying Obama or Edwards the 15% needed to get any delegates in some states.)

HRC started with as much as 40% of the Democrats saying they were for her, she had the top fund raisers from the Clinton years (ignoring that Dean/Kerry raised most of their money from small donors on the internet -and Obama, using the same method, outraised HRC.) In addition the huge barrier of something like 20 states being decided on SuperTuesday was designed to advantage Hillary. The thought was no one else had near the same name recognition and the fact is that it was logical to think that no one could come close to the Clintons in free media exposure as Bill and Hillary together anywhere would get national news that Edwards or Obama wouldn't. They had every reason to believe that Hillary would be the de facto nominee the evening of supertuesday.
That they were certain of that can be seen in the lack of resources committed to the caucuses that day and the fact that they had very little preparation for the states the week later. (Obama did, because his strategy had to be to survive SuperTuesday with his delegate count near hers - and then good results.) The Clintons likely expected to lose Iowa, but to get a huge bounce out of a big win in NH where she was 20 points ahead the week before. She actually got an extremely narrow win.

Oddly, this almost worked. Imagine what would have changed if Kerry and Kennedy had stayed neutral. The first change is that Obama would not have gained whatever gravitas he gained by being endorsed by two respected leaders in the Democratic party. He also got Kerry as an excellent surrogate - and probably the only one who could have called out Bill Clinton on some borderline comments. The combination likely pushed the Clintons, especially Bill, to show their worst sides. So, at the end of the primary before SupoerTuesday, you had Bill Clinton in SC making comments that were beneath him. This (and the way Kerry was treated by them after his endorsement) led Kennedy to endorse along with Caroline. That led to the weekend rallies by the Kennedys in CA and MA - well covered by the media.

Now, you could say that Clinton won those states and NJ and NY. That is true, but polls a few weeks earlier showed her getting far higher percents of the vote. Those percents would have translated to a much higher number of delegates. Had she gotten that many, she would have still been the overwhelming front runner, in spite of the caucuses.

y'all have gone off the deep end! :rofl:

accept a draft but if he did, I would support him. nt

he is a strong voice in the climate change camp

for doing it.

Not to mention, Gore was the first DLC recommended Presidential candidate in 1998 - and you likely would have found reason to be intensely angry if he were President. Not to mention, there are plenty of people here who very likely criticized his campaign when he was running - though as this is before DU, it is very likely there is no record of this. The fact is that we are just a little more than 4 months from the primaries. Far too little time for anyone to start a campaign against him.

IF Gore or your favorite Democrat ran and got elected - how long would it be before enough members on DU were totally disillusioned with him/her and begin the "Should we primary" talk?

I say 6 months.

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Al Gore is an excellent man that was robbed in 2000. :cry:

2000 was the first election I was eligible to vote in and I was so bummed when the election was stolen from Gore.

What a first time election experience that was for me x(

- Sorry, but the thought is laughable and even SNL would take advantage of it.

:eyes:

WE NEED SOMEBODY WHO CAN GET US ANOTHER 8 YEARS OF HELL AGAIN.

Really?

He's not quite old enough, but he negotiates much better.

Who does not want the job.