Did Gore blow it by endorsing Dean?

[libview]

Would he have been better off waiting to see who actually won some of the primaries?

[MercutioATC]

1. No, he endorsed the candidate he believed in.

"Endorsing" a candidate because he's the frontrunner isn't endorsing at all. It's just political masturbation.

[Mairead]

20. Exactly. Which is what most politician endorsements are, and

why it doesn't surprise or dismay me when they're withdrawn.

Gore thought (and presumably thinks) Dean is the right one to be President. He might be right, he might be wrong, but he put his opinion out there for everyone to see, fall the chips where they may.

It makes for interesting reflection: had he done more 'let the chips fall where they will' we might be living in a totally different nation today--one in which an attempted judicial coup by five SCOTUS felons ended with them in prison and a wholesale purge and discrediting of fascist elements nationwide.

How sad to think that, because Gore is a member of the privileged elite that takes care never to rock their peers' yachts, thousands upon thousands of people are dead or maimed for life, and we're windmilling like mad on the edge of The Pit with perhaps only 9 months left to live.

[Tim_in_HK]

2. I don't think Gore blew it by endorsing Dean . . .

Gore blew it by endorsing before a vote was cast.

I think he blew it more becuase of when vs. who he endorsed.

In my opinion, endorsements should be made for who you think is the best candidate, not according to where the primaries are going. Gore thought/thinks that is Dean. So be it. But he should have waited until some votes had been cast.

[libview]

6. I agree endorsments should be made for who you think

the best candidate is, but I guess some of the Unions who are dropping there endorsment of Dean for Kerry don't agree.
I wonder if Gore will do the same thing?

[joshcryer]

16. Goes has more intregity than those unions.

Fact.

[blackcat77]

3. THat's what I think

He was trying to be the first major player to endorse the candidate he thought would be the winner and ended up jumping the gun.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

5. Everyone jumped the gun

But to be honest, I think it was calculated. It forced everyone to pay attention to Dean, and consequently, put all criticism on his shoulders. And without Dean clearing the way to hammer at President Bush, I'm not sure we'd be in as good a position as we are today. Perhaps Dean was an unwilling, sacrificial lamb in all this, or perhaps he was a willing party. Either way, what has occurred is undeniably good for our cause of removing the mindless wonder that is Bush.

[w4rma]

4. No. Dean threatened to break up the media conglomgerates.

...
US political commentators have speculated that Mr Kerry has enjoyed the support of the media community in an effort to head off the challenge of Howard Dean, who has fallen back in the race despite being the frontrunner before the primaries began. Mr Dean made statements last year about wanting to break up media conglomerates.
...
http://media.guardian.co.uk/city/story/0,7497,1144464,00.html

[mrgorth]

7. No but

He should've endorsed him much later, like a week or less before Iowa. It would have been a big last minute push. No one would even have remembered Kerry's first name at the caucuses.

[Tinoire]

8. No - Gore endorsed a decent man running

Gore is probably as sick of S&B, Rhodes, Bilderberg Group, Trilateral Commissions and other such societies, as most progressives are & know that Dean is not part of that machinery. Gore knows EXACTLY what havoc they have wreaked on this world and in his 2000 loss.

Dean is the closest to Gore (because Gore is NOT and never was a populist but he was reasonably honest) and he had every right to endorse him. Gore is no major hero to me and I wish he'd get out there and denounce Clinton & the DLC but I'm glad he endorsed Dean and let people clearly see that he & Dean were not philosophically on board with that Republocrat war machine.

[ibegurpard]

9. Blow what?

The party had already kicked him to the curb...what did he have to lose?

[THUNDER HANDS]

10. he wasn't going to endorse Kerry

I think there's some friction between Kerry and Gore. I think it dates back to 1990 during the Gulf War when Kerry voted against it and Gore voted for it and then Gore, subsequently, was chosen as Clinton's VP over Kerry.

[argonne]

11. Typical Gore.

He was just doing what comes naturally.

Like choosing Lieberman in 2000.

Freezing out Clinton.

[GodHelpUsAll2]

14. Amazing

It amazes me that the "wait and see who gets ahead" mentality is out there as much as it is. Don't go with your first instinct, what YOU truely believe is the right thing to do, wait to see what everyone else does then jump on that band wagon even if it's not what you thought was the right thing to do. That is how this country has got into the mess it's in today. Everyone goes along to get along. It eliminates personaly responsibility and allows us to blame some else when things go wrong. People have an amazing ability to think for themselves. If we all did a little more of that maybe we could shed a lot of those dark clouds that hang over our heads.

[Kahuna]

12. Yes he did. He joins a long list of pols who blew it..

My NJ Gov. McGreevey included. McGreevy has never been popular in NJ. But his numbers took a sharp hit after he endorsed Dean.

I still love and respect President Gore. But many people will consider his endorsement of Dean as removing himself from the mainstream of politics. He will forever be linked to Dean. Pundits will always assign his support of Dean as proof that he is anti-establishment, everytime they quote him or report about his speeches.

[mrgorth]

17. Kahuna

My dad is involved with SJ politics. I am going to do everything I can to get him to endorse/support McGreevey going forward, esp. if Rob "war monger" Andrews runs against him in the prymary.

[dansolo]

18. Have you been paying attention?

Al Gore was removed from the mainstream of politics after 2000. The DLC couldn't get rid of him fast enough. Why do you think they killed his run in 2004? Supporting Dean had absolutely nothing to do with it.

[Minstrel Boy]

13. I respect Gore more now than ever,

because now he's nobody's man but his own. His endorsement of Dean reflects that. He sees, in Dean, the kind of candidate he would have been in 2000 if he hadn't allowed himself to be overhandled.

[DemDogs]

15. What did he have to blow?

Gore had still be unable to define himself in the public eye. He could not "blow" what he did not have.

His screaming in Tennessee this past week cannot help him or Dean, though, as it makes them both look like they are unable to gauge the right thing to do at the moment.

[liberalmike27]

19. This

Like so many other theories, has been put out there to cover up what really happened. The television, corporate media conglomerates, took it upon themselves to destroy Dean. They were never flattering, though they gave him a kind of "wow, look at this Internet guy" kind of coverage at the beginning. After him talking about breaking the media up into smaller components on the Chris Mathews show, the assaults intensified. This was about a month before the Iowa caucus, Dean was still comfortably in the lead. They intensified the already negative coverage, employing a networks-wide, thousand-cuts strategy about two-weeks before, and almost anything Dean did was given intense negative-characterization. Finally, the media blather took hold with a vengeance, sling-shotting Dean downward, past Edwards and Kerry.

Dean was of course disappointed after Iowa, but he took it in stride. Knowing he was still in the hunt, he gave a rousing speech to the also disappointed 3500 Iowa workers, who'd had their hopes of Dean winning destroyed by the media. They took this opportunity as the method for destroying Dean in New Hampshire, just like before horribly mis-characterizing this rally speech, playing it a few-thousand times, and correspondingly, his polls dropped severely. At some point, Dean's campaigning, and what became obvious to most New Hampshire voters, that the media was horribly over-playing and unfairly trashing a guy they had known for over a decade to be a good man, his support had increased again in New Hampshire, for a strong second place finish.

Unfortunately, in other parts of the country where Dean wasn't known to be the good man he was, they weren't lucky enough to have any knowledge of the candidate.

A too long story short, the media had succeeded in destroying the Internet candidate, had beaten back the early win angle, which destroyed the huge money gleaned from mostly poor contributors like myself. I can't speak for others, but I'm really pissed off, the fifty dollars I contributed, while it might not seem much, was a lot to me. Local support has also eroded.

The Gore angle is just BS, in actuality, Deans polls bumped upward upon being endorsed. In essence, they are trying to attribute Dean's decline to almost anything but, what it actually was, the media attacks on a candidate who had declared himself hostile to their further consolidation.