Did you know that Al Gore ran for President in 1988? Or am I the only one

[jillan]

that didn't know that?
That was the year that Dukakis won the nomination.

[illinoisprogressive]

1. I knew. I remember.

[jillan]

2. Look at what a cutie he was.

[IndyOp]

3. I knew. He mentions it in "Inconvenient Truth" - he ran to raise consciousness

about the climate crisis. I don't think he expected to win at such a young age, but did hope to increase name recognition and begin to pull together a political organization for a future run.

[Grandrose]

4. Yes....

Wasn't that the year his son was horribly injured and he pulled out of the race? :-(

[dajoki]

11. Yes n/t

[cmkramer]

20. no

It happened about a year or two later However, it was one of the reasons why he didn't get into the 1992 presidential campaign.

I lived in Maryland back then and you could vote for a candidate but the delegates were a completely separate vote. So I voted for Jesse Jackson for candidate and voted for all of Al Gore's delegates.

[Hart2008]

5. The '88 Al Gore was pro-life, pro gun, and pro tobacco...

but the '88 Gore would have won in 2000 by a large enough margin not to involve SCOTUS...

Anyone in '88 who thought Dukakis would make a good nominee was smoking crack.

[jillan]

6. Hart - as in Gary Hart?

I am reading Biden's new book, and that election was pretty scandalous.

The dems really ate their own.

[Hart2008]

7. Gary Hart: The Sage of Troublesome Gulch. To what other Hart would I be referring?

No comment on Biden's hair.
;)

[jillan]

10. Thanks, I think.

Where is Gary Hart these days?

[Hart2008]

14. Hart is now Chairman of the American Security Project Project & the Council for a Livable World

Letter from The Honorable Gary Hart

The American Security Project has been created to develop a national security vision and strategy for the twenty-first century, building on America’s strengths, restoring its international leadership, and seeking solutions to the new realities of the 21st century before they become crises.

American national security policy is adrift. In the five years since the attacks of 9/11, the United States has toppled autocratic regimes, cast-aside collective security alliances, put its military into the field, expanded its covert battle against terrorists, and simultaneously lost its moral standing in much of the world. While American activism has not always met with approval in the international community, there once was a time when American action made us stronger. Today, however, anti-Americanism is fueled by actions that are seen as diversions from America’s historic path, accepted standards of international behavior, and common sense.

The issue at hand is the appropriate purpose and use of American power. Where the United States has needed strategy, we have been offered tactics. There has been little development of grand strategic thought since the end of the Cold War.

http://www.americansecurityproject.org/about

Hart is also teaching graduate studies as a professor at the University of Colorado, Denver.

Everyone now knows that Hart predicted the terrorist attacks before 9-11 as Co-chairman of the Hart-Rudman commission, but as time goes by, Hart has been proved right on issues he raised in the '88 campaign: The need to reduce dependence on foreign oil, and the need to reinvest in the basic infrastructure here in the USA.

Hart has been consistently right in opposing the Iraq invasion, and predicting that we wouldn't leave quickly:

I never wanted Gary Hart to be right. Heck, the former U.S. senator surely would have preferred to be wrong when he said that American troops could remain in Iraq for decades. "People roll their eyes when I say that, but look, we've been in Korea 50 years," he told me in March 2003.

http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_6048411

Hart, the Sage of Troublesome Gulch, Colorado, remains in Colorado.

[spag68]

12. I like Biden, but

it's not his hair, or at least not head hair.

[Hissyspit]

8. I remember. I really got into the candidate choices that year. I was in grad school. n/t

[jillan]

9. share - my curiosity is peaked

And how did
Dukakis get the nomination out of that group? I voted for him, because he was the nominee. But back then I was one of those that only paid attention after the primaries.

[Hart2008]

15. Bush the elder wanted to run against Dukakis. The MSM made the rest history.

Bush the elder had masterminded the Iran-Contra scandal and needed to change the subject of the national debate to avoid not just electoral defeat but jail time. Any Democrat who could beat Bush was smeared by the MSM, Hart and Biden, or blackmailed into saying out of the race, Dale Bumpers.

The Democratic party lost membership after that election. Dukakis was that bad of a nominee.

[Hissyspit]

16. Well...

it was a long time ago, my daughter. As I recall... Actually, beyond the candidates, I don't recall much beyond Paul Simon's bowtie and the Gary Hart/Donna Rice thing!

This Wikipedia page is a good place to start:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election%2C_1988

It seems like I was big on Simon and Babbitt, if I recall. When Simon started coming in third everywhere, I held out hope he would pull ahead. Don't really remember much about Gore. Oh, my goodness, I had completely forgotten about the Biden plagiarism thing!

• Bruce E. Babbitt, former Governor of Arizona
  
• Joseph R. Biden Jr., U.S. Senator from Delaware
  
• Michael S. Dukakis, Governor of Massachusetts
  
• Richard A. "Dick" Gephardt, U.S. House Representative from Missouri
  
• Albert A. Gore Jr., U.S. Senator from Tennessee
  
• Gary W. Hart, former U.S. Senator from Colorado
  
• the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, civil rights activist
  
• Patricia Schroeder, U.S. House Representative from Colorado
  
• Paul M. Simon, U.S. Senator from Illinois

In early 1987, Senator Gary Hart was the clear frontrunner in the field (Democratic party efforts to recruit New York Governor Mario Cuomo aside). Hart had put in a strong showing in the 1984 presidential election, and had refined his campaign in the intervening years.

However, questions about extramarital affairs dogged the charismatic candidate. One of the great myths is that Senator Hart challenged the media to 'put a tail' on him. In actuality, the Miami Herald had received an anonymous tip from a friend of Donna Rice's that Rice was involved with Hart. It was only after Hart had been discovered that the Herald reporters found Hart's quote in a copy of New York Times magazine. On May 8, 1987, a week after the Donna Rice story broke, Hart dropped out of the race. In December of 1987, Hart returned to the race. However, the damage had been done.

- snip -

Joseph Biden's campaign was also surrounded with controversy, as he was found to have plagiarized a line from one of his speeches from British Labour party leader Neil Kinnock, and then was found to have also engaged in plagiarism in law school. This would lead him to drop out of the race. Dukakis later revealed that his campaign was responsible for leaking the tape, and two members of his staff resigned. The Delaware Supreme Court's Board on Professional Responsibility would later clear Biden of the law school plagiarism charges.<1>

In the Iowa caucuses, Gephardt finished first, Simon finished second, and Dukakis finished third. In the New Hampshire primary, Dukakis finished first, Gephardt finished second, and Simon finished third. Dukakis and Gore campaigned hard against Gephardt with negative ads, and eventually the United Auto Workers retracted their endorsement of Gephardt, who was heavily dependent on labor union backing.

In the Super Tuesday races, Dukakis won six primaries, Gore five, Jackson five and Gephardt one, with Gore and Jackson splitting the southern states. The next week, Simon won Illinois. 1988 remains the race with the most candidates winning primaries since the McGovern reforms of 1971. Dukakis eventually emerged as the winner, with Gore's effort to paint Dukakis as too liberal for the general election being unsuccessful and causing him to withdraw. Jackson focused more on getting enough delegates to make sure African-American interests were represented in the platform than on winning.<2>

MORE AT LINK

[Hart2008]

18. The alleged anonymous source that Miami Herald cited was not a friend of Donna Rice's.

The Herald's alleged informant claimed to be a "liberal Democrat" who equated her claim that Hart was having an affair with the Constitutional crisis of the Iran-Contra affair"

She was a "liberal Democrat," she said, but she couldn't tolerate someone who would say one thing publicly and do another privately. The nation had just seen that happen with President Reagan and the Iranian arms sales, she said.

http://www.unc.edu/~pmeyer/Hart/hartarticle.html

The Miami Herald was outed by the Church commission, of which Hart was a member, for having accepted money from the CIA to publish CIA propaganda. The Iran-Contra affair had roots in Miami, but to the best of my knowledge, the Herald never found them, but it did send several reporters to Washington, D.C. to follow an unnamed woman without a photograph, and after losing her at the airport, to spy on Gary Hart and hide in his bushes. I can write more, but the Herald never got the story right, and it wasn't the Herald story that caused Hart to withdrawal from the race. It was blackmail from the Washington Post. (One Post reporter resigned over the matter.)

The truly sad thing is that Hart received little support from those in the party, despite the fact that gallup polls showed that 60% of the American public thought the Herald engaged in gutter journalism. Richard Nixon wrote to Hart, the former campaign manager of McGovern's '72 campaign, to express his admiration for how he handled an unfair attack by the media with class.

[jillan]

19. I have to respond to the part about Biden's plagerism bs

It was a political operative named John Sasso that brought Biden down.

Here's a link
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0717F6345C0C708CDDA00894D0484D81&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fD%2fDukakis%2c%20Michael%20S%2e

Biden has frequently quoted Kinnock because his stump speech reflected Biden's ideals. Biden had previously always credited Kinnock. But one time he did not.

They used this tape and sent it to the msm. The MSM ran with it. They later found out that one time when Biden was in Law school, he forgot a footnote. The story became an attack on his character.

John Sasso later went to work on the Dukakis campaign.

Later, John Sasso came out and publicly apologized for attacking Biden's character. He said he was sorry.
He said that Biden was a man of strong character, and that Biden had always given credit to Kinnock in the past.


But it was too late.



more about the scandal here
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/simon041104.asp

[Forkboy]

13. I was listening to punk rock and thrash.

We all knew the Gores well. :)

[JI7]

17. he was popular in the South, did very well there

one reason Clinton picked him to be vp. of course he was also more conservative then.

but it shows that Gore's loss in his home state plus other southern states didn't have to do with any problems with himself personally as he was seen as "wooden" and whatever similar things to describe him then also. but he was just more conservative as the voters there are.