Daily Show episode in which Al Gore discusses his new book, The Future: 6 Drivers of Global Change

[No Elephants]

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-january-30-2013/the-nuevo-deal

[Enthusiast]

1. Thanks for calling our attention to this.

Brilliant minds-both. I can't help but wonder how things would have changed had the 2,000 election not been stolen. I know Al Gore is subject to the same evil corporate influences that President Obama is. But I don't think his trust (love?) of Wall Street criminals runs as deep.

I should put this on for the spousal unit. I should have my PC piped into the TV. Too many wires and my body doesn't like to crawl around the floor and stuff.

[No Elephants]

2. I don't think you should wonder too much.

I know that you are not doing this, but a lot of people idealize the imaginary Presidency of Al Gore to show all the good things Nader cost us. I voted for Al Gore because I liked him as a person and mostly because he is a Democrat. And I sure wasn't going to vote for Dummya, even if no Democrat had run against him. So, Gore it was.

"But, I was so much older then. I'm younger than that now."

I don't know what the imaginary Presidency of Al Gore would have been like. I'm guessing a lot like Bubba's. Everyone assumes that Gore would never have reacted to 911 the way that Dummya did, but we don't know that, do we? So easy to say since no one can prove us wrong (or right), isn't it?

Well maybe. But, Democrats seem to have been made very shy by Republican chickenhawks' calling Democrats weak on defense--despite WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam. So shy, that both Clinton and Obama can't seem to get them enough of Republicans and former Republicans heading their respective Departments of Defense. I cannot eve begin to imagine a Republican President's appointing a Democrat to head Defense (or Treasury),

So with all that shyness, who knows how Gore (and HIS Republican Secretary of Defense?) would have reacted to 911? Would he have been as calm and collected when he went to Ground Zero on 911 after being up in Air Force One all day as we love to imagine? Or would have left Air Force One with all guns blazing because (a) he was President and responsible for our safety and not some Monday morning quarterback and (b) by gum, no one was going to call him weak on defense when Americans had just been attacked on their own soil on his watch?

I don't know.


However, there are some things I do know for sure (as Oprah might say).

Al Gore was a co-founder of the DLC, just like the Clintons, Lieberman, Robb, Warner, Nunn, Gephardt (top Obama campaign advisor), et al.. Gore was Clinton's VP for 8 years and I don't recall his disagreeing with Clinton about much of anything. The biggest grudge that Big Al seemed to have had against Bill in 2000 was that Bill's shenanigans may have tarnished Al's chances of winning his own stint in the Oval Office.

A DUer who used Gore as an avatar once posted that Gore later disclaimed the DLC, but I don't recall any link being given in support of that claim. However, whether he disclaimed it or not, in 2000, Gore picked to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency, one Joe Lieberman. As far as I know, Joe was the most Republican of all the DLC co founders. So......

For all we know, the imaginary Presidency of Al Gore, which exist only in an alternate universe, would have ended with President Joe Lieberman sitting in the Oval Office.

As of 1997, the New Republic was calling Gore the DLC's man while Gephardt was considered "an apostate."

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/93596/democratic-leadership-council-al-from#

(article is enlightening in general, but I think Gephardt was safely back in the fold in 2006- 2007, when encouraging Obama to run for President, but not paying taxes or obeying the spirit of the law about lobbying).


For all the damage that Dummya did to his country, politically he damaged only the Republican Party and the Republican brand. If anything he unified Democrats, both those in Congress and ordinary Dems like me, as never before in modern times. He tried to cut Social Security, but Democrats stopped him.

A few years later, a Democrat talks about cutting it and Democrats started talking about it as though it were both necessary and inevitable, indeed, their patriotic duty. I think going into the hustings to campaign in 2012 brought that to a halt. At least I hope so. We will not know until this whole debt ceiling thing plays out fully and finally. That may not be until May or beyond.

Anyway, I don't know what the imaginary Gore Presidency would have been like. But, from what I do know, I don't necessarily envision it as all rosy from the perspective of a traditional Democrat.

[No Elephants]

3. P.S. I do feel sorry for Gore, though. He is trying to promote his book, but

he never really gets to get into the drivers of global change about which he writes.

All anyone wants to talk about is how omeone who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his environmentalism could have sold his station to Al Jazeera for $100 million in oil money.