Alterman on Huff Post re potential Gore comeback in 2008.

Pirate Smile

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Wed Feb-22-06 09:21 PM
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Alterman on Huff Post re potential Gore comeback in 2008.

Edited on Wed Feb-22-06 09:25 PM by Pirate Smile

Eric Alterman mentions this on his diary on Huff Post. He links to them. I'll post a little because, even though they are sleezballs, the possible 2008 Gore comeback interests me.

"Sleazeballs for Gore? Interesting: From "The Note:"

G.O.P. operative Roger Stone writes in the New York Observer about the "uncanny parallels" between Al Gore in 2008 and Richard Nixon 40 years earlier. LINK http://www.observer.com/printpage.asp?iid=12404&ic=Wise+Guys

His touting of global warming over the last years, Sen. Clinton's position on the war in Iraq, and the popular perception that he was "robbed" of the White House, might just be what it takes for Al Gore to make another go of it, writes Dick Morris in his column in The Hill. LINK http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Comment/DickMorris/022206.html"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-alterman/can-you-say-permanent-ba_b_16190.html

Stone in NY Observer:

"Nixon’s ’68 Comeback
Offers Clues for Gore

By: Roger J. Stone Jr.
Date: 2/27/2006
Page: 5

Several weeks ago, former Vice President Al Gore told the Associated Press that he “had no plans to seek the Presidency in 2008.” His words were eerily reminiscent of a quote from another former Vice President, Richard Nixon, who told the same Associated Press in November of 1965 that he “had no plans to seek the Presidency in 1968.”
Many years later, in 1992, I chatted with Nixon in his Saddle River, N.J., home. He told me that “no man who narrowly misses the brass ring ever stops dreaming of another shot at it.” If Nixon was right, Mr. Gore may be positioning himself to be the one Democrat who can defeat Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2008 Presidential primaries.

-snip-
Nixon’s book Six Crises was a cathartic exercise that Nixon wrote after he lost the 1960 Presidential election—one that maintained his place on the national stage. Mr. Gore’s new documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, thrusts him back to the center of the political life.

Like Mr. Gore, Nixon lost a Presidential election in a photo finish, and many felt the Presidency was stolen from him. Later, both men withdrew gracefully when further challenge to the result was fruitless. The grace with which each withdrew and accepted defeat was considered an act of statesmanship amid partisan furor.
Both men also chose to sit out the next Presidential race, fearing they could not win—but both made important endorsements that year. Nixon made 141 campaign appearances for the Barry Goldwater–William Miller ticket (more than Goldwater himself). His strong endorsement earned Nixon a conservative base that proved vital for his nomination and election four years later.

Mr. Gore’s early endorsement of Howard Dean in the 2004 primaries earned him a new and growing anti-war constituency. Despite Dr. Dean’s collapse as a candidate and his weekly gaffes as the Democratic National Committee chairman, one fact remains clear: Mr. Gore was an early and articulate critic of the war in Iraq and supported the most anti-war candidate in 2004. He has since made notable speeches questioning the war, becoming the darling of the MoveOn.com crowd, and is now best positioned to be the “peace” candidate in 2008."'

and

The toe-sucker:

"Look out, here comes Al

Like a completely refurbished “pre-owned vehicle,” Al Gore seems to be positioning himself to Hillary Clinton’s left and as greener than John Kerry for a run at the 2008 Democratic nomination for president. His slogan might well read “reelect Al Gore.”

The former vice president’s slashing attacks on the administration and his stalwart, if misguided, opposition to the Iraq war leave him without the complications and complexes that will devil Clinton as she seeks to appeal to the unforgiving left of the Democratic Party.

And Gore may be a man whose time has come in his party. It was he who warned of climate change and predicted its consequences. Hurricane Katrina was just a fulfillment of the prophesies Gore wrote about in his late-1980s book Earth in the Balance. He has been an energy-conservation nut for years, and his obsessions with alternatives to oil will play better and better as we come to realize how our addiction to oil has led us to dependency on the dealers of this particular drug — Iran, the Saudi royal family and Hugo Chavez.

-snip-
History indicates that candidates who won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College have all come back to win revenge in subsequent elections. Andrew Jackson, cheated in 1824, won in 1828. Grover Cleveland, cheated in 1888, triumphed in 1892. Samuel Tilden, who won the popular vote in 1876, never ran again, but he dealt away the White House in a deal for the withdrawal for federal troops from the South, allowing the Ku Klux Klan to take over. (By the way, for a great history of how this era kindled the racism we have lived with since, read Eric Foner’s new book, Forever Free.)"