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There are three major categories to look at in a Presidential candidate, and nobody but Gore has all three in their favor:
1.) Experience - - nobody but Gore can say they served both as an executive (8 years as VP) and a legislator (8 years in the House and 8 in the Senate). Nobody has Gore's proven record of achievement (most obvious example - - if you can read this, you can thank Al Gore for the Internet). Nobody else was central to the economic success of the 1990s.
2.) Electability - - nobody but Gore has ever won a Presidential election. And he did it under almost impossible circumstances. He began his race 20 points behind, was outspent nearly 2 to 1, did not have 527s like ACT or MoveOn to help (the law which made them possible wasn't passed until 2002), he had unbelievably hostile press, he had a divided party that did not support him - - and he still won.
3.) Ideas - - Gore is the only major Dem who's been on the right side of every issue in the last six years. He opposed the invasion of Iraq before it happened, he opposed the Patriot Act before it was passed, he opposed the tax cuts for the super wealthy, he opposed the endless string of environmentally harmful laws and acts, he was speaking out about the corporate corruption inherent in the GOP even before Smirk was elected, he has been working to get the Dem party to be more grassroots driven, and more focused on the problems of "the people, not the powerful"... and he's been working to split off part of the GOP base who are libertarian or libertarian leaning as well as the GOP moderates.
It is this last category that makes Gore the most "dangerous" for the party establishment. A primary without Gore can be a primary without real introspection. If everybody who runs voted for the invasion of Iraq (for example), the candidates can ignore the war - - or if they have to discuss it, they can claim that they were mislead by Smirk. Nobody has to face the difficult questions about why there were Democrats in and out of office who were not mislead by Smirk, who opposed the war from the moment it was suggested - - and who knew that the justification for the war offered by the Smirk admin was totally bogus at the time Smirk offered it.
Ditto the Bush tax cuts, or the reorganization of FEMA into a death trap (including the confirmation of Chertoff by a 98 to 0 vote in the Senate), or the Patriot Act, or any number of very bad votes that all of the Dems in office made during Smirk's first term - - even before 9/11 came along to be everybody's catch-all excuse.
A primary without Gore will accept that being duped by somebody who has been lying to you for two years straight is a quality America appreciates in a Presidential candidate - - or that allowing an enemy attack to bleed you of your common sense and political courage is a Presidential characteristic - - because anybody other than Gore who tries to say "I was against the war" or "I never would have voted for the Patriot Act" because they can be shouted down by the following two excuses:
1.) You don't have the experience on the national stage to realize that my actions were the correct ones
2.) So what, you're not electable and I am
It is the second argument that will end all real discussion in the primary, because it feeds into the media's story line about Democrats - - we can't win.
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