The 08 Fantasies

Assuming there is a presidential election in 2008, and that it isn't rigged or manipulated as the last two were, it's still too early to talk about it---unless you're in the business of raising money. It's fantasy at this point. But we know we can't lose this one, if there's any hope left. So when some glimmer of possibility arises, you perk up a bit.

So this is in the nature of a perked up a bit report. Right now the most likely race is Hillary Clinton v. John McCain, and McCain probably wins that one. McCain is the strongest candidate in either party.

The Democrats don't seem to have anybody to get excited about, that would bring together the party base with the rapidly developing "net roots." The net root analysis is the party has been weakened and self-defeated by corporate collusion and especially by a group of political consultants who keep getting employed to run campaigns and campaign strategy, even with a record of losing most if not all the important races they run.

So given all that there is some cheer in a poll showing that without doing a thing or raising a cent to run, Al Gore is second to Hillary. Dick Morris , who is very much hit or miss on politics, does point out an interesting historical fact (if it's true): presidential candidates who won the popular vote but lost the electoral all came back to win the presidency.

Gore not only won the popular vote, he won the election. There's a lot of voter remorse right now, and particularly in Florida, where Katherine Harris is catching the brunt of it in her doomed attempt to run for Senator based on her performance as vote-killer in 2000.

And Gore in 2006 is not Gore in 2000. He has transformed himself as a communicator. His speech recently on Bush's imperial presidency was rivetting and memorable. It was very dramatic and effective. But perhaps even better, he seems to have distanced himself from the political consultants and party strategists who screwed up his past two campaigns for the presidency. After the first---a run in the primaries in 1988--he wrote in his book, Earth in the Balance , that he'd gotten into the race to alert everyone to the issue of global warming, but at the behest of consultants, didn't push it forward. He wouldn't make that mistake again, he wrote. And then he did. His 2000 campaign didn't stress it. And the Clinton administration did not do the job making it an important issue to the public that they had 8 years to accomplish.

So if he has finally learned this lesson, I'm all for him. He's been out there on his own on this issue the past several years---as a new documentary apparently shows---and that says something. Plus he's been a steadfast opponent of the Bushwar and the Smirk's approach to terrorism. Not having been in office, he doesn't have any votes to defend.

Despite John Kerry's efforts to build an Internet base, his campaign in 2004, rightly or wrongly, has made him very controversial among the netroot Dems. Gore's 2000 campaign is evidently far enough in the past to be forgotten. He's got a lot of potential netroots support.

When I think of that speech, I realize that this was the only time in recent memory I felt that there was something special going on. There may not be a Lincoln or an FDR out there to save us this time. But I don't see any other candidates for a 2008 equivalent but Al Gore.