Could Al Gore become our version of Richard Nixon?

[0rganism]

Forget the Watergate breakin and the southern strategy for a moment, I'm thinking electoral patterns.

Nixon served as Eisenhower's VP before running against Kennedy in the 1960 election and losing in what was, at the time, quite the nail-biter. Kennedy was murdered, and Johnson took over. bush is still alive at the moment, but it's pretty obvious that Cheney is calling all the shots that matter anyway. In 1964, Barry Goldwater, a republican senator, lost to Johnson decisively, and Johnson went into his 64-68 term with both houses of congress in partisan alignment. In 2004, Cheney won re-election and solidified both houses of congress for the republicans.

Now let's think about '68. Nixon ran against Sen. Humphrey, the majority whip from '61 to '64. Now do we know anyone from the current senate republican leadership who might well be running for preznit in 2008? Bill Frist, perhaps? The Democrats of 1968 faced the task of supporting Johnson's Great Society programs while their party fragmented over the Vietnam war and the "states rights" racism represented by Wallace. Could the republican party be due for a similar splintering? Clearly, the rise of the religious right is an uncomfortable situation for the more moderate republican bureaucrats, and some (e.g. Chafee, Specter, and Snowe) are going to be like strangers in their own homes next year. The republicans also face fallout from an increasingly unpopular war and a droopy economy. This could pave the way for a "northern strategy", wherein Ohio and Pennsylvania not only turn increasingly to Democratic presidential candidates but start sloughing off their religiously insane senators as well.

So, in 2008, it's conceivable that Al Gore could be running against Bill Frist as the northern states ditch the GOP, in a near-perfect inversion of the 1968 election.

[Rhiannon12866]

1. I see exactly where you're going with this

Actually, that was my first thought when I saw this forum, though you've put together a well thought out and detailed comparison, while this was just something that popped into my head. I honestly can't see Gore running again, since 2000 had to have been such a nightmare for him. But he does seem, for want of a better word, rejuvenated. I think it began with the MoveOn speech. That speech totally blew me away, he was so articulate and passionate and much more confident and relaxed than he was during the 2000 campaign. I happened to read FR, at around that time, and even they were saying positive things about that speech! Also, if he ran again, he'd have the added advantage of Clinton supporting him. I thought for sure, when I saw the way people reacted when he campaigned with Kerry, that Kerry had it all wrapped up.:shrug:

I hope that Gore decides to run again. He'll certainly have my support and my vote. And thanks for this post! It's an excellent articulation of the similarities and it's one for the bookmarks. I just hope that it happens in the way that you outlined, and with Gore, we have the added advantage of not having to worry about another Watergate!:D

[ClevelandSportsCurse]

2. If Dean can become DNC chair, that will pave the way for Gore

After getting screwed in 2000, Gore saw the need to change the Democratic Party and aligned himself with Dean to accomplish this. Their efforts failed for now, but if Dean can become DNC chair, he can shake up the party, ship out the establishment, and create the ideal party conditions (strong base and support) to enable Gore to launch a successful run in 2008. Gore would be able to be himself and not the DLC canned candidate that he was in 2000. Remember that in 2002, Gore stated that if he could do it all over again, he would "say to hell with the media and polls, and just let it rip." He probably felt that 2004 would not have been a good place for him to do that, thus he left it up to Dean to take on the DLC, but if the conditions change over the next four years (that is, if Dean can reform the party), then perhaps Gore will step up again.

[Cheswick2.0]

3. I see that too

I am so tired of losing at this point that I am frustrated with the party. It seems like I have been upset since the impeachment and all this caution in the party is not getting us anywhere.
I know that no matter who runs the media will smear them. I would love to see Gore as President. Then when Howard is finished with the DNC he could take a cabinet job.
Who knows what will happen... but other than Dean, there are no other democrats who ran last time that I would be happy about supporting.

[janx]

4. No matter what happens, I'll always admire Al Gore.

He and Dean, at this point, are the only national Dems I can trust. They'll stick together.

[Rhiannon12866]

7. That makes perfect sense, and I support Dean for DNC chair

I think that he'd be just excellent, with his ideas, his following and his fund raising abilities. Yes, we do need need real reform. We need to come together. I'd support Al Gore, anytime, if he chooses to run, but he needs solid support before he'd consider it, again, I'm sure.

[Mabus]

5. On a related matter

It was during the Nixon administration that the EPA came into being. It would be just another coincidence that Gore is a man who has been quite vocal about his environmental concerns.

Here's to Mr. Ozone (as Poppy used to call him) :toast:

[Rhiannon12866]

15. And we sure could use a president who's concerned about

the environment. I take part in a lot of environmental "actions," and am well aware that Bush* is the worst environmental president, ever! Despite his boasts, he sides with the corporate polluters, everytime.:grr:

[Robeson]

6. I have to say that I'm...

...increasingly coming around to the thinking that Gore is our best hope for 2008. That was not always my thinking. I also think it would serve notice to the Republicans that we arent' going to roll over regarding voter theft and fraud. Unlike Kerry, Gore would not go into the good night lightly. Therefore, I don't think the Repugs would be as brash with their antics. Also, Gore has a built-in "instant" base of support within the party. He would start out as the front runner within the Dems by simply announcing he's running. There is also the loyalty factor that many Dems would have towards Gore, since most feel he was/is the legitimate winner of 2000. And after 4 more years of the crap we have in the White House now, the Clinton/Gore years are going to increasingly look like our last Golden Age - much like people looked back to the Ike years with nostalgia, when they voted for Nixon in 68.

[Cheswick2.0]

8. Even some Nader voters from 2000 have changed their thinking on Gore

They claim he has changed. I think he is the same guy he has always been and that they wouild know that had they not been listening to Nader. Either way he would get more support from the left than he did in 2000.

[Robeson]

9. I think you may be right...

...and Gore represents, in himself, a protest vote against the system, since he was a victim of the system.

[0rganism]

10. Yep, you can count me in with that sad lot

Gore suffered on the left due to the various excesses and triangulations of the Clinton administration. It was NAFTA and the Telecom Act that turned me against Clinton and his operation back in 1996, but everyone had their own reasons, I guess. We didn't know how good we had it back then.

After 4 years of Bush Malaise, Al Gore's lookin' pretty sweet.

After 4 more, he'll seem like an angel of Truth descending from the clouds to spread his message of peace and light among the earthbound mortals.

But I do think Gore's changed his tune, as well. Being robbed of the presidency had some effect on him -- I mean, damn, the guy came within a few hundred corrupted votes of being the most powerful man in the world. That's gotta sting, but I think it liberated him too. He's not as confident in the system to be self-correcting. His rhetoric has become a lot more populist, braver, even a bit firey. No news whore could call him "stiff" anymore with any credibility.

Or maybe I'm just optimistic. I may not have liked Gore back then, but everything I've seen from him in the past 3 years has been -- dare I say it? -- gutsy and inspirational. Now he needs two things, in my estimation.
1) a strategy to solidify the rust belt and northern farming states for Democrats, and
2) a simpler, more evocative metaphor for handling social security funds than "lockbox"

[Mabus]

11. I don't think Al changed his tune

I think you're finally seeing through the MSM spin & seeing the Al that many of us have supported for years. You should really check out the DailyHowler.com. Somerby documented the bias against Democrats for years. His criticisms of the press's treatment of Gore before, during and after 2000 is both documented and accurate. In particular take a look at http://www.dailyhowler.com/h041000_1.shtml which addresses an article by the Washington Post ombudsman, E.R. Shipp about the 2000 election.

It starts,

Why do we say this year's race almost seems to involve a "script?" Because we've noticed, in recent years, that scripts are the way of the press corps. We thought the Post's ombudsman, E. R. Shipp, was right on point when she wrote this in her March 5 column (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/7/00):

SHIPP: But The Post has gone beyond that kind of ("who's winning the horse race") reporting in favor of articles that try to offer context—and even conjecture—about the candidates' motives in seeking the office of president. And readers react—sometimes in a nonpartisan way, more often not—to roles that the Post seems to have assigned to the actors in this unfolding political drama. Gore is the guy in search of an identity; Bradley is the Zen-like intellectual in search of a political strategy; McCain is the war hero who speaks off the cuff and is, thus, a "maverick"; and Bush is a lightweight with a famous name, and has the blessings of the party establishment and lots of money in his war chest. As a result of this approach, some candidates are whipping boys; others seem to get a free pass.

(Somerby's comment) It's hard to read the press corps' coverage of the candidates—coverage which is remarkably uniform, by the way—without being drawn to the metaphor of a "drama," or script. Our press corps tends to "novelize" news—tends to make stories simpler and more pleasing (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 10/7/99). And once the hopefuls' roles have been cast, evidence which would tend to contradict assigned roles finds its way down the memory hole.


The theme of his campaign in 2000 was "The people, not the powerful," so I don't think he's populist streak is new. One of the things that struck me back in 2000, post-election was the weak support of both the DNC and the DLC. After a while it occurred to me that the reason for the tepid support was because Al spent more time courting the people than he spent towing the party line.

If you also compare the election maps from 2000


to the election maps this year


I think you'll see that Gore took more rural counties in the heartland land than did Kerry. Look at the number of counties in Oklahoma (!), Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan that Gore carried in 2000! Not to mention the southern states. Compare Oklahoma in 2000 and 2004, there were absolutely no counties that went for Kerry this year. That indicates Gore did connect with rural areas throughout the country in spite of the media treatment of him. You've also got to remember the anti-Bush sentiment was no where near as strong as it was this cycle and the "there's no difference between the Dems and Repubs" argument, while there this year, wasn't as prominent as it was back in 2000. So, Gore did an amazing job despite all the factors then against him.

As for a catchy name, other than "lock box" there has to be some acronym we can come up with that would pithy enough to be self-explanatory.

One last comment, the MSM likes to try to portray Gore's passion on the topic he's addressing as he's "lost it." They've been trying to portray him as "out of it" for years. Poppy used to call Gore "Mr. Ozone" because of Gore's strong environmental concerns. I also remember seeing rallies on CSPAN during 2000 where Gore was as stiff as he was in front of the MoveOn crowds but you didn't see those on the MSM because it they didn't fit the role the press had cast for Gore. Besides, if the MSM had shown that footage it would have been accompanied with a reporter's disclaimer (mantra) that Gore was reinventing himself. :crazy:

[0rganism]

12. You could be right about the MSM presentation

It was incredibly slanted against Democrats, I could see that even at the time. Much of Gore's "stiff and inhuman" persona was media-slanted charicature through selective broadcasting, but that was the image that came across. And for that, we have Clinton-approved telecom deregulation to thank, among others. Sadly, Clinton was far too cooperative and good-natured in his workings with the republican congress to give Gore a running record on trade protections or even environment -- ostensibly his strong suite -- that would have stood out. To the extent that what you say about the unbroadcast Gore is true, the greatest tragedy of the unsupporting left in 2000 was that we are almost all staunch environmentalists.

What stands out most, for me anyway, on the map comparison is how very similar they are. This suggests that the difference between running a populist southerner with a moderate new england Jew and running a liberal new england Catholic hawk with a southern lawyer amounts to the loss of a few counties in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee and Missouri, in return for gains across New England, South Dakota, Montana and a couple in Indiana, of all places. Whether this was compounded by the infamous "moral values" vote or the various other races might be worth a look-see, but I do agree with what I take to be your overall point: Gore in 2000 had more appeal for the farming center of the nation than Kerry in 2004.

Whether or not Gore has changed, I think there's no question that the American left has changed. We were much less critical of Kerry this year. While the argument that the difference between republicans and Democrats is insufficient still carries a lot of weight, the notion that there was an insufficient difference between John Kerry and George W. Bush would have been laughed off the stage. It is probably this same perception of a difference that matters which brought the rightwingers out in hoards for Bush's republicans even as the Green voters swung back to the Democrats. I think Kerry is currently making a strategic mistake by being so damned invisible and conciliatory at this time, but once again that may be an artifact of the mass media.

One network that stands to make a big difference in future elections is C-Span. While they do have a nasty penchant for rebroadcasting AEI and Heritage Foundation events, they also have a practice of full uninterrupted coverage. That matters. By 2006, it's possible that more people will understand how Social Security works and what Gore meant by a lockbox six years back. The midterms are crucially important in checking Bush's power with a retake of the senate, and the republicans will be fighting like mad to knock out at least 4 Democrats to roll their war machine over the filibuster point. The best chance we have is in getting a Newt of our own, or rather a herd of newts to turn out the voters on the basis of accurate information.

[Mabus]

13. My idea, that I posted on the media list a while back is

to get someone to do liberal media bias in the form of a tabloid. Think about it. For years we have read about the indiscretions of members of the Democratic party on the front pages of the tabloids. Everything from the theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination to Clinton's alleged (discredited) love child have come from the tabloids. We may not buy the tabloids but the headlines are there to subliminally seep into your mind about how bad liberals/Democrats are. Where else is Mrs. Right Wing Church-goer going to hear about Hillary's alleged lesbianism? When they are standing in line waiting to buy their groceries or pay for their gas.


How do we fight back? By telling the truth (not the tabloid fodder) about the RW, its members and its future "stars." Imagine having Laura Bush's accident crammed down their throats every time they try to resurrect Teddy and Chappaquiddick. They were both accidents but to shoot down Teddy (or any of the Kennedys) the RW normally trots out their "Teddy got away with murder story." Instead of letting them get away with "love child" stories let's hit back with several about Henry Hyde's or Strom's. If they try to insinuate that one of ours has had an affair, let's rehash Ryan's divorce. The biggest difference is that our stories would be based (and told with) on the truth.


About blaming Clinton for the telecom deregulation I think we should place the blame where it really lies, the Reagan administration's doing away with the fairness doctrine. Getting rid of it allowed Faux News and Limbaugh to florish. You should check out the Parry brothers at consortiumnews.com and read up on Perception Management & how the RW has successfully used old army psy-ops techniques to help target and control the populace. (Which are another great thing about tabloids, you don't have to get anyone to buy it to get the message out.)

I agree about the Newts. We need people with spines to stand up and call the GOP on its bull. Unfortunately, we also need a press that's willing to stand up and report it. One of the infuriating statements I heard on CNN before the election was "Where's Edwards?" They acted like he was at home in his bath robe swilling coffee and taking it easy. I checked the websites and did a quick search only to find that Edwards was indeed out working his butt off. In fact, he had been for some time. CNN had chosen not to say that Edwards was still out on the campaign trail. Instead the language they used indicated that he was a slackard which went well with the pictures of Kerry skiing in Idaho. Overall message: Democrats aren't trying hard enough.

Then there was the whole issue of flip-flopping with Kerry. To me it was basically a rehash of the MSM myths of Gore re-inventing himself and Gore is a liar. It worked before in 2000 so the RW trotted it out again this year and damned if the press didn't run with it.

All in all some of the biggest appeals for a Gore 2008 run to me are that he is the poster child for abuses of the press, stolen elections and he is willing to stand up and say what needs to be said. He's been right most of the major issues that stood out this election cycle, from voting for Iraq I, speaking out against Iraq II, to negotiating the Kyoto Treaty. He is symbolic of everything from out of control/biased courts with an agenda other than upholding precedents to the morality issue (married once/no hint of affairs).

Finally, Gore got more of the black vote than did Kerry. I saw Gore speaking in black churches in 2000 and he had the places rocking. He can do those fiery talks so well because it's something he's far more familiar with than Kerry was. I saw a yahoo article in the past year that showed that Gore got the secondest highest percentage of black votes. LBJ had the highest. Gore got a higher percentage of black votes than Clinton who is often called the first black president.

[Cheswick2.0]

14. Either way, welcome to the group of people who

would support Gore in 2008.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

16. True

[Rhiannon12866]

17. I would vote for Al Gore, again, tomorrow. We need him more than ever,

right now, to try to clean up after "the worst environmental president, ever," if nothing else.;(