7 Year Old Thoughts About Al Gore

    Back in 2008, when I was morally and wholly opposed to nearly every single person from all parties who were running for the office of President of the United States of America, I penned the following.  Please read along, and rejoin today's thought in bold below:

    I had fully expected that 2008 would be Al Gore’s breakout year for the Presidency.  I thought that he was following the path that Richard Nixon took following his loss to JFK in 1960 (a loss that in modern times would have been every bit as controversial as Gore’s loss to Bush in 2000) as best as is possible in this era.  He stepped away from the political arena, grew a beard, filled out like a lumberjack of yore, failed in business, succeeded in film and even won a Nobel Award.  Along the way he managed to not get into too much trouble with anything he said (outside of the whole global warming farce, but there are enough people that believe him that it doesn’t matter that it’s a complete and total fabrication) and just stayed out of the way.  I was genuinely surprised when the early announcements for the Democratic ticket came out and his name wasn’t involved.  As time went on, I expected that he was looking to make a dramatic entry into the race, but that also never materialized.  Finally, I just forgot about the possibility of him running for the Presidency this campaign season.

    That was until the past couple of days when some friends and I were discussing what might go down with the Democratic nomination; most of them were convinced that Senator Obama had the charm to schmooze his way to the superdelegates that are going to be necessary to win the nomination, I was of the opinion that having a former President as a spouse to twist arms at the convention would go a long way to making Senator Clinton their candidate of "choice".  Because as much as party leaders may want her to beg off and get out of the campaign, I simply can’t see it happening.  She knows this is her one shot to become President, and make history in doing so.  If you think she doesn’t want that more than anything in the world, well, we’ll have to disagree (and why should she give up the dream, as previously noted, she’s not that far behind, and more importantly, if Lawrence B. Lindsey’s computations are correct, she’s basically dead even)

    Then we stumbled onto something:  What if there was no clear cut winner? What if with all the wrangling neither candidate could come up with necessary delegates to seize the nomination?  What if there were a brokered convention?  What might go down on the second ballot?  And just like that, Al Gore was back (perhaps against his will.)

    Isn’t it possible that Democratic leaders, tired of the infighting and bickering that has gone on in their primary and just plain sick of the 2 candidates they are left with might decide to think outside of the box and reach back to the glory days for a candidate who might actually be able to unite the party and fend off John McCain’s bid for the White House.  Who else could they turn to except dull, boring (but suddenly the brightest star in the Democratic sky), dependable Al?  It’s so easy to forget about him, because often times he could have been the male counterpart to Dr. Lilith Sternin-Crane.  To say that he was often robotic would be an understatement, but that’s beside the point.  He could be the one man that returns a Democrat to the White House (mind you, I’m no fan of Senator McCain, I just find him slightly more palpable than the current field of candidates), as he would do better amongst Democrats (McCain is running into the 20-something percent range of likely Democratic voters, depending on which current candidate snags the nomination) and might even convince a larger share of Republicans to cross party lines.  Certainly he would fare better with independents than either Clinton or Obama.

    Which leaves me wondering:  if the remaining primaries matter all that much.  Senator Clinton is likely to win handily in PA, Senator Obama will capture some more states, and the delegate disparity will stay relatively even.  Then comes the arm-twisting and other such maneuvers on the convention floor and in the hallways.  Will Al Gore be the beneficiary and emerge triumphant and take the seat that he believes rightfully should have been his?  I certainly hope not, but it makes for an interesting election if that’s the route that is chosen.

     I had written that mostly as a joke, because I could see where the election was going, and I feared for our country.  Then I happened to stumble upon this article that seems to suggest that the now 67 year old Gore is not wholly opposed to the idea of another Presidential bid.  His competition for the Democratic nomination is lame, on its best day, and he is a big name politician that harkens back (in a mostly good way) to the Bill Clinton regime.  Mrs. Clinton seems to never be more than a day or two away from the Big House, and Bernie Sanders is without question the George McGovern of this election cycle.  VP Biden's campaign is over before he has even announced it.

If Gore ran, and if he were to secure the Democratic nomination, it would be a political comeback along the lines of Trickie Dick back in '68.  I await further developments from Camp Gore.