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Just asking

29 comments on Just asking

Just asking

: I haven’t seen anyone else asking this but I’ve been wondering lately…

Would the Democrats be better off with Al Gore as their candidate?

There’d be less mud; one presumes (hopes) that was to be slung was slung last time.

Gore has a clearer record and stronger accomplishments and clearer stands. Those stands are in starker contrast to Bush’s (including on the war, where Gore has become rather, well, vitriolic).

And for sport, both sides would probably relish the rematch of Florida 2000 (while most of us would probably sooner forget it). But at least that would bring out voters eager to prove that their man was the true winner; it’s like voting in two elections at once.

When you get right down to it, Gore has more personality than Kerry (sorry to damn with faint praise).

I wonder whether Gore regrets not running and whether some Democrats regret it, too.

Just asking.

29 responses to “Just asking”

  1. Kate Avatar
    Kate

    When you have less personality than Al Gore, you might want to check your pulse. Why not MOndale–he’s dull, too.

  2. Brett Avatar
    Brett

    “There’d be less mud.”
    Jeff, have you read any of Gore’s speeches?

  3. Jeff Jarvis Avatar
    Jeff Jarvis

    Brett:
    Good point.
    I did use the word “vitriolic,” didn’t I?
    Maybe it’s just the year for mud. I keep wishing it weren’t. But that is, by definition, wishful thinking, eh?
    j

  4. Capt.John Avatar
    Capt.John

    After watching Gore’s recent speeches, can anybody be glad he wasn’t President the last four years?

  5. Easycure Avatar
    Easycure

    Most of the mud-slinging is from coming from the Left…

  6. nick petras Avatar
    nick petras

    Not Gore but you’re definitely on to something. With the Ds stacking the primaries early and with the occurrence of the Dean bubble, Kerry walked to the nomination without much scrutiny. The Ds would be much better off with a Biden or even a Schumer as candidate.

  7. Chris Josephson Avatar
    Chris Josephson

    I voted for Gore last time. Yes, he’s boring and all that. I don’t know if I’d consider him again. Probably not. I’m not sure.
    I would have strongly considered Lieberman. I like his positions on Iraq and the wider War On Terror. I like some of his other positions as well.
    I never considered Kerry at all because I’ve known him as my state’s senator for far too long. I neither like or dislike Kerry. My problem with him as my senator is I don’t know what his core values and beliefs are.
    Kerry is like the ‘Invisible Man’ as far as senators go. We don’t need someone so invisible as president. Perhaps Kerry is the greatest person to lead us we’ve ever known? If he is, he needs to change to demonstrate that he is. If I don’t know Kerry after about 20 years of observing him, there is a big problem with communications.
    I’d vote for Ted Kennedy for president before I’d vote for Kerry. At least Kennedy’s values and beliefs are pretty well known. You know where Kennedy stands on issues.
    I’m not saying that I would pick Kennedy over Bush for president. I’d pick Kennedy over Kerry. Kennedy has been a pretty good senator.

  8. Brett Avatar
    Brett

    You did indeed say vitriolic :)
    I wish that we could get past the mud and get into the issues as well. Personally, I’m learning a lot by digging into each candidate’s plan. But I guess that’s the thing: if the media won’t air the details of each plan, I at least have the net to access the plans and compare them. Prior to the Internet, there was no way to access these plans but through the media. Now there is, for those so inclined.
    My chief gripe this campaign season is mostly the media. I continue to use my custom tool to view the headlines and it’s day in and day out favorable toward Kerry. The footprint for press that’s favorable to Bush is always smaller.
    I think if the press were not so obvious in its slant, the mud would be reduced. But blogs have risen up because the media left a void of reporting.

  9. Brett Avatar
    Brett

    Gore/Moore/Dean pulled the party to the left.
    Joe Trippi, as you blogged, Jeff, thinks there will be a third party in 2008.
    I would think that if the DLC gets hold of some rein post-election to pull the party back to the center, the anger of the Gore/Moore/Dean faction might become this third party.

  10. pete the elder Avatar
    pete the elder

    I am still wondering why if the democrats were going to nominate someone who supported the war in Iraq (as Kerry does depending on the day) they didn’t nominate Lieberman. Sure he is boring (so is Kerry), but he was their VP candidate last time, he is generally respected, and republicans and independents who were frustrated with Bush would be much more likely to vote for him than for Kerry.

  11. Tom (American Voter) Avatar
    Tom (American Voter)

    Almost anyone would have been better than Kerry. I would have loved to have seen Dean because while I disagree with jsut about everything he stood for, at least I knew where he stood. Dean would have been willing to go down in flames. With Kerry we see way to much waffeling as he tries to fine tune his stance with the lastest poll results or focus group test.

  12. Keith Avatar
    Keith

    The biggest problem, imo, is the redefinition of “mud” (your word, Jeff) and the redefinition of “attacks on Patriotism” and such. The fact is that the Republicans aren’t allowed to say *anything* about JFK’s record in the Senate, what he voted for or against, criticize his refusal to take a single stand on any issue and stick to it, etc. without being accused of ad hominem attacks by Kerry, and us hearing the vast right-wing conspiratorial Republican Attack Machine in action.
    Normally, these objections and pointers to Kerry’s record (after being characterized as personal attacks) are followed by REAL ad hominem attacks: Bush is a liar. Cheney is a Nazi. (Gore’s line about how bloggers are “digital brownshirts” should be included since Jeff’s post here is about Gore.) Zell Miller is a racist redneck. The Swiftvets are corrupt, redneck has-been cronies and GOP operatives. The forgeries on 60 Minutes were planted by Carl Rove. Teresa tells the reporter who dares ask her what she meant by something, “Up yours!”
    This summary doesn’t even address things like F9/11, books fantasizing about ways to kill President Bush, accusations of Bush being “AWOL”, being an “idiot”, “being worse than the terrorists” and so forth.
    I have a lot of respect for you, Jeff, and your insights on how blogging will change the world are brilliant. But the fact that you see both factual criticism of a voting record and “Up yours!” as equivalent “mud” is somewhat disappointing.

  13. Andy Avatar
    Andy

    Gore has gone bull moose looney. Can you watch him or even read his speeches and not be glad that he is no where near the strings of authority?
    Losing the election has caused him to become unstrung.
    He has now become a very scarey person.

  14. Andy Avatar
    Andy

    Gore has gone bull moose looney. Can you watch him or even read his speeches and not be glad that he is no where near the strings of authority?
    Losing the election has caused him to become unstrung.
    He has now become a very scarey person.

  15. Kenny Avatar
    Kenny

    “I would think that if the DLC gets hold of some rein post-election to pull the party back to the center, the anger of the Gore/Moore/Dean faction might become this third party.”
    Thats an interesting thought brett, cause i believe the Republican Party will split, when John McCain seeks the Republican Party nomination and doesn’t get, thereby forming is own 3rd Party
    how interesting would that election be….4 canidates…Dean, Hillary, McCain, “some republican”

  16. jackson Avatar
    jackson

    Jeff,
    Did you notice how many people actually responded to your question, and how many used it to sling more mud? I’ll answer your question; damn skippy I’d vote for Al Gore. But I can’t, so I’ll vote for John Kerry.

  17. Joe Maller Avatar
    Joe Maller

    re: Kenny’s point about the Republican Party splitting:
    I held that theory until recently, now I think the Dems are going to split. The fringe is tarring the establishment. Terry McAuliffe’s poor excuse for leadership will destroy too many political careers if left unchecked.
    I voted for Gore in 2000, but he absolutely scares me now and I’m thankful his team wasn’t as competent as Bush’s during the recount (or the campaign).
    I’m voting for Bush this time, partly because he’s earned my respect despite disagreements, but also because I believe a total defeat is the only hope for the Democratic party. If the Dems are not absolutely crushed for embracing lunacy and absurd conspiracy, their tactics will be vetted and proved acceptable. We need two viable parties, in the near term I don’t see the Dems contributing much of anything and often taking down a number of causes I believe in. Divisions within the Republican party seem more likely to result in progress than anything from the Dems in the past three years.

  18. Brett Avatar
    Brett

    Kenny,
    If the Republicans do indeed take firm control of the Senate, and if Bush, as it now appears, wins the election, and if Republicans have full control of the House as they do now, no one in their right mind would give up that power to form their own party and immediately diminish their influence.
    On the other hand, people who lose power and find their methods ineffective and unpopular will go for a change. If Joe Trippi is right, that third party is more likely comprised of Dems.
    McCain is valuable in this election because he straddles the fence. The media, who is enamored with McCain, seems less likely to influence the next election without serious reform/re-engineering. After the election, during all the post-mortems, the whole 527 thing will blow up in McCain’s face and his influence will become less so.

  19. aaron Avatar
    aaron

    Jackson, which of these comments do you consider “slinging mud?”

  20. brandon davis Avatar
    brandon davis

    Gore? Ha! “Bring it on” indeed …the only better candidate would have been Dean (from the perspective of the GOP).
    Heck, the way Gore’s been ranting of late, you might as well suggest Carville. “Smell the roses” indeed.
    You’re missing the point …serious ticket viability isn’t going to come from the Left (or the center-Left) side of the political spectrum in a time of War (regardless of whether you and your inner circle of friends think we’re in a serious, civilization altering conflict, the vast majority of the electorate thinks – and will be casting their vote – on exactly that supposition).
    But …hmm …if the Democrats actually had wanted a serious ticket, one that would have had a serious chance against Bush/Cheney …?
    Okay. The dream Democrat ticket – the only ticket with a possibility of pulling the center, the center-right, and even some of the disaffected right – from Bush/Cheney would have been Miller/Lieberman.
    You guys prob’ly (inevitable, considering your faith in your world-view) scoff at the suggestion …but, umm, isn’t the uh, “wisdom” (yeah, wisdom …that’s the ticket!) of having originally thought Kerry/Edwards was a viable contender this election cycle …beginning to be just a little bit suspect?
    What’s it gonna take for a wake-up call – a Bush/Cheney 49 state blow-out? The loss of even more seats in Congress? (Admittedly, this would be a neat trick …but the suggestion was offered as a jest, as a contrast of the depths of the difference in perspective that the Left has with …everyone …else).
    Hell, I would have given a great deal of serious consideration to Miller/Lieberman (this may come as a shock to y’all, but not everybody on the right side of the spectrum is happy with everything the Bush administration has done the last few years). At the very least, I would have respected them as a viable, adult alternative …and wouldn’t have been deeply troubled at the significance of an electoral victory of that particular Democrat ticket.
    Yeah, now that would have been a real race.
    But a Gore reprise of 2000? After 9/11? Surely you jest.

  21. Kenny Avatar
    Kenny

    Brett…yes a democratric party break would give more reason for the republicans to stick together, cause it would guaruntee the majority vote (replay of 1992) However i think McCain selfishness is an issue here. A Democratic Party break up would give McCian even more incentive to run as an independent…the splitting up of the votes between far-right, far-left, and moderates would be the ideal situation for him. There are plenty of McCain supporters out there to validate his run for president regardless to what happens to the republican party. McCain wants to be president, and there’s no way he’s got the republican base support for that nomination, and he know’s in any election he would have the media on his side which is a huge advantage. He’s basically this day in age Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy didn’t care that his running in the 1912 election (or was it 1914?) would get Woodrow Wilson the presidency, and McCain is the same way….at least i believe

  22. BarCodeKing Avatar
    BarCodeKing

    Gore’s gone completely off the rails, so I don’t imagine that many Democrats would really want to vote for him. They might like his anti-Bush rantings, but it’s just too scary to think about someone who sounds THAT unbalanced with his finger on the nuclear button.
    Now, do they wish they’d nominated EDWARDS instead of Kerry. I’m sure they do. I had one of my LLL friends tell me that she’d heard some of her friends talking about a new “Camelot” when they talked about Kerry-Edwards. I asked her if was going to be “Camelot,” why did they put JOHNSON on the top of the ticket?

  23. Brett Avatar
    Brett

    Kenny,
    That’s a good point, even if it’s not McCain. That if the Dems do split, some opportunist on the Republican side would seek to create his/her own party, believing that the dilution might be enough to obtain the most votes of what is then 4 parties.

  24. pdq332 Avatar
    pdq332

    Jeff:
    I actually think that the underlying dynamics of where the two parties stand on the issues determines the amount of mud this year.
    First off, the Democrats are throwing much more mud at the Republicans this year than the other way around. I am not indicting Democratic party in particular, or saying that liberals are somehow dirtier than conservatives; in fact I think the Republicans were guilty of the same thing 10 years ago with Clinton. But even before this election cycle, Bush has been accused of stealing an election, foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks, and going to war in Iraq for personal reasons or to boost Haliburton’s bottom line. Bush has been compared to Hitler. Colin Powell has been called a “houseboy” by a famous Calypso singer, and Condoleeza Rice has been accused of not having enough men in her life by formerly progressive cartoonists. Bush has been denounced directly in many many books and at least one “award” winning feature length documentary. This certainly crosses the former bounds set by the Clinton haters in rhetoric at least if not in personal loathing. So the current level of vitriol in the 2004 electiuon cycle did not arrive out of thin air.
    But what accounts for it? Can it all be due to the mere fact that the Democrats have lost control of all branches of the federal government? I think that is a piece of it. Can it be due to a minority of tinfoil hatters who can see a conspiracy in every coincidence? That is another piece, but it has somewhat more prominence than it should because of entertainment industry pros like Michael Moore fishing for dollars out of it. I think it is so bad because we really are witnessing the breakup of the Democratic party after 9/11.
    And I say this without any triumphalism in mind, just pointing out the arithmetic. A sizable minority of Democratic party supporters honestly believe that 9/11 was a historic response of the world to US hegemony, and they despise President Bush for asserting that hegemony in the face of it. They view the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as an escalation instead of a response in its own right. I happy to disagree with that view, sometimes heatedly, but it is undeniably there. Another sizable minority of Democrats, ie. the Zell Millers, do not see it that way, To summarize breifly, they are the ones who are more centrist in their views and see themselves as responding to a vicious attack on 9/11 that was unprecedented in scope and implementation.
    Incidentally, this fracture was not created by 9/11. It was there in 2000 when Nader won a few percent of the vote away from Gore. It has been simmering in the anti-globalization movement for many years. However, 9/11 proved to be a defining example for both sides: one side saw its Hegelian logic vindicated in the peoples of the world rolling back American hegemony and financial power, while the other side saw America as the righteous victim. The Democratic party is trying to satisfy boh camps, going so far as to nominate a war hero who is against the war he fought. And the vitriol is really aimed at corralling the Democratic defectors, who maybe will side with the centrists in this election. I for one am very disenchanted with my former party for having all but abandoned the good fight against human rights abuses in places like Iraq and Sudan, against gender apartheid in the Muslim world, and against optimism for the world in general, carping from the sidelines doing nothing to help.
    What does it have to do with mudslinging? Well, they can’t articulate what they don’t like about Bush in the above regard for fear of losing the centrists, so they call him Hitler instead. Kerry can’t engage Bush on the war in Iraq (Curious that he has not yet done so, eh?) for fear of fracturing his base, so he goes after Bush’s history as a pretty boy of priveledge. And the MSM has marching orders from Kerry headquarters to exploit issues that won’t fracture the Democratic base, hence the forged TANG memos.
    As I said, I do not mean to be triumphalist. This will happen to the Republicans too eventually, as the centrists gain more power and marginalize the social and fiscal conservatives. Maybe even in the next election cycle!

  25. Yehudit Avatar
    Yehudit

    I was virulently anti-Bush and voted for Gore in 2000. I came around to an appreciation of Bush as I watched him handle 9-11 and pursuing the deposing of Saddam. I was planning to vote for Bush since about 6 mos. after 9-11, but I was open to switching to a Democrat since I don’t agree with many of Bush’s social policies. The only Democrat candidate who addressed the issues like a growup was Lieberman. Oh well.
    So . . . Gore. Gore used to be a grownup, but he regressed after losing the election. I don’t like how he stabbed Lieberman in the back, and I don’t like how vindictive he’s become, and I think most of his accusations are unhinged and deeply irresponsible. He has turned into a demogogue. I would vote for the old Gore over Bush, but not the new Gore.
    A good test of character is how you handle adversity and defeat. Gore failed that test for me.

  26. Richard Bellikoff Avatar
    Richard Bellikoff

    If Gore couldn’t manage to win as a member of an incumbent administration in 2000, why would he do any better in 2004? He didn’t carry a single Southern state, including his own home state and Clinton’s. This time around, he’d likely lose some of the swing states he won before — although Kerry may give him a run for his money in that department.
    The Democrats should have had the courage of their convictions and nominated Nader.

  27. shark Avatar
    shark

    Based on the shrill, hysterical parody Gore has become, how do you even have the guts to ask this question?
    Yet one more bit of proof that you’ve learned nothing since the last election.
    Honestly, what is wrong with you man??! I’ll chalk this post up to your illness.

  28. Reid Avatar
    Reid

    I posted a note in a thread above about Democrats and the 5 stages of grief. This is the first instance I have seen of full blown Depression taking hold. Pining for Al Gore is hitting rock bottom.
    When Acceptance arrives, maybe we will see the rebirth of the once proud Democratic party, and a reversal of the slide through Clintonian adolescence to the childish land-o’-make-believe in which the party has dwelled since September 11, 2001.

  29. pele Avatar
    pele

    When I speak to a lot of my Bush hating friends in the UK about Kerry they all seem to know very little about him and nothing of his policies. They all know more about Al Gore. Unless Kerry can make more of an impact Bush will win again.