The NY Times.com is reporting that tonight on 60 Minutes, Gore will say he will not run for President in 2004.
So, who will get the nod?
Is is John Kerry? Gray Davis? Al Sharpton ;)?
Who will get the nod?
Not the American people, for sure.
Shame. If he ran I might almost care enough to vote in this election.
Feingold !
Well, it won’t be Sharpton or Davis, that’s for damn sure.
This is a very smart move for Gore, and one that I kind of expected.
Think about it - right now, you’d have to say that Bush looks pretty tough to beat in 2004. Sure, his Dad lost after having high ratings, but his ratings were very thin - they were high during the war on Iraq, and faded almost immediately after. Bush the younger has been consolidating his gains and making his support as wide as possible. The Democrats got killed in the mid-term elections, in defiance of history. It looks to me that barring a major catastrophe, Bush is as close to a lock in 2004 as it’s possible to say two years before an election.
So Gore sits out, and lets another Democrat stand up and lose. This creates another leadership vacuum, and Gore can become the ‘elder statesman’ of the party, and put some distance between himself and the 2000 election. When the Republicans become vulnerable again in 2008, Gore will be perfectly positioned.
But if he had run in 2004, and lost, that would have been the end of his political career. And that was a highly likely outcome.
Oh, and one other thing - now that he’s not a candidate, I predict that conservatives and Democrats alike are going to be much more charitable about the guy. Last night’s SNL appearance was a good start towards a ‘new’ Al Gore. I think his future is much brighter now than it would have been had he tried to run again in the next election.
Of those three choice, dismal as they might be, I’d have to go with John Kerry. Throw Leiberman into the mix and the answer would be the same.
The “liberal” press hates Gore passionately. He’d be creamed just as bad as last time. He can’t change his socks without pundits declaring that he’s “re-inventing himself.”
I would have voted for him.
BTW Sam, Bush’s approval rating has been dropping 11 straight months, and for the first time since 9.11 a majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the direction the nation is headed (cite). Unless supply-side economics causes a turn around (not bloody likely), and an Iraqi invasion makes us any safer (likewise) I’d say he’s well on his way to start a family tradition.
Lieberman?!? Lieberman!!! Never!! Never ever! He has all the charisma of creamed corn and no political principles he wouldn’t jettison in a heartbeat. Standing next to Al Gore, he makes Al postively sparkle!
I’m a little troubled lately by Kerry. I really respected how he refused to bring up his 'Nam vet status as a political point, but I heard a speech of his a few weeks ago and he brought it up, albeit obliquely, three times. Not enough to ditch him, but troubling.
I really like the Kucinich guy, he’s smart, well informed, and holds his own. He deftly disembowled that little snot Tucker Carlson a few weeks ago on Crossfire. If only he wasn’t quite so, well, goofy looking.
I suppose there’s no chance we can talk Mario Cuomo into it. Pity.
My god, I hope ** Sam’s ** wrong. 4 more years of Bush is a thoroughly terrifying thought.
Oh, not another one!
Get used to it. Yes, Bush’s ratings have slowly declined - they had to. They were in the stratosphere. But now they are stabilizing up around 60% somewhere, and that is still a very high rating for a president. I believe Clinton was under 50% before his second election, and he won that one pretty handily.
When Bush the elder lost, it was an unthinkable thing. An amazing occurance for someone who was so popular three years before to lose. It’s not likely to be repeated, especially since Bush the younger learned a lot of lessons from his Dad’s mistakes. Remember when Bush I was taking heat about the state of the economy? His response was to go on TV and say, “Message: I care.” Literally. That’s what he said. How lame is that? Bush takes heat for the economy, and his response is to fire his economic team. The guy is determined to not be caught nappin’ like his Dad was.
Bush I also put together what was possibly the worst re-election campaign in history. It was so bad I remember commentators at the time actually suggesting that perhaps Bush didn’t really care if he was re-elected or not.
With the team around him, does anyone expect Bush II to come up with a lame re-election campaign? Even Bush’s critics generally acknowledge that he and his team are great politicians.
Of course, two years is a long time, especially during a war. If there is a major attack in the world (i.e. nuclear or biological), all bets are off. If the Middle East explodes, all bets are off. If North Korea does something incredibly stupid like attack South Korea, all bets are off. There are lots of things that could happen to derail the Bush presidency if he handles them poorly. But that’s all speculation. Going by what we know today, Bush looks awfully tough to beat in 2004.
Does he hide under your bed, wearing a scary mask, and jump out at night and scare you?
I don’t believe Gore will have a better chance in 2008. It is impossible to predict how the country will look and how many will actually remember Gore and still value him as a leader! Throw in Hillary and John Edwards to the mix and something tells me Gore’s political aspirations are over.
What makes you think it’s stabilizing?
Bush fired his economic team because they wouldn’t sell his economic policy. Snow will. Tax cuts for the rich, deficit spending, deregulation, the whole megillah. Regardless of who is sitting behind the desk at the Treasury, you either agree with Reaganomics-style supply-side policies or you don’t. I don’t, and I think it is only going to accomplish a widening of the inequality gap (now at its greatest point since 1920 and on track to surpass). Bush has 2 more years to improve unemployment, the markets, and growth. So far he’s failed to impress.
Which is developing into its own problem. With the DeIlulio resignation word is getting out that the Bush team is great at politics, piss poor at policy. Maybe they can spin their way out of that one as well, but Bush has false started on handling corporate malfeasance, the economy, and his faith based initiative and voucher program. The Gallop poll shows people are getting tired of empty rhetoric and are looking for some results.
You got that right, and Bush is walking head first with his eyes closed and his gun drawn into all of those things with his hardnosed, isolationist foreign policies.
From where you’re standing maybe.
P.S. I messed my earlier link. Here it is again: cite
He’s wrong. Bush’s approval was in the toilet before 9-11, and will be back there again by the time the election rolls around. It’s already well on the way. His approval rating is entirely based on how well he handled the immediate aftermath of 9-11 and the fact that people aren’t (yet) blaming him for the economy. But both of those things are trending in the wrong direction.
Carl Rove can dress up a turd with the best of them, but at the end of the day it’s still a turd. People tend to notice the smell after a few years. All of the latest moves by the Bush administration are about fresh coat of paint for the turd rather than discarding it. A radical change in direction could save him, but I just don’t see it happening.
I have to say I’m disappointed that Gore won’t run again, but I’m not sure it wasn’t the right decision. Just this last week the ‘librul media’ was already manufacturing new lies about him and his family in an effort to take some of the attention off the Lott issue. It’s damned hard to run a successful campaign if the press want’s to get you so bad they are willing to lie to do it. With Gore out of the way, we can find out whether they will do this to every democratic front runner, or if he was a special case.
Uh, what evil lies did the VRWC dredge up regarding Gore? You wouldn’t happen to have a cite, would you?
Citing every single lie told by the VRWC about Gore would be like trying to give all the inhabitants of an ant mound an individual name.