Run, Al, Run
Jul 30th, 2006 at 10:23 pm by Susie
From a columnist in the St. Pete Times:
Al Gore, where have you been all my life?
Oh, I don’t mean the alpha-male wanna-be, that scripted, stiff, uninspired candidate for president in 2000. I mean the self-effacing movie star with man-of-steel conviction from An Inconvenient Truth, who is trying to shake this country by the shoulders over the dire consequences of global warming. From the ashes of his overhandled “be everything to everybody” campaign rose the real Al Gore, a confident, wonkish, accessible intellect who has a supremely important question for inhabitants of Earth : How long can you tread water?
This is the man, with his charts and facts and rising seas message, that the Democrats should enlist in 2008.
Others have succeeded in winning the presidency after suffering defeat in general or primary elections, Nixon and Reagan to name just two. And Gore wouldn’t have to go up against the Hillary Rodham Clinton big-donor fundraising machine. As Howard Dean demonstrated, the Internet is a gold mine of small-increment moneyraising that can produce huge sums - $59-million in Dean’s case. As long as a candidate is in the race to be a leader as opposed to “not a loser,” there are plenty of concerned Democrats of average means willing to give.
A candidate who operates with the candor, sincerity and smarts of someone not beholden to focus groups and polling data is what rank-and-file Democrats desperately want. By all accounts, Gore understands this now and would resist any reformatting by consultants.
America is ready for an adult like Gore to take charge and put the nation back on sensible footing: a footing where deficits do matter, where energy conservation is not sneered at as a “personal virtue” but is an aggressive national policy, and where science, facts and reality drive public policy, not the Christian Right’s neo-medieval agenda.
Feingold for VP!
I used to work at the Times — good paper, owned and operated by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, one of the few remaining papers not gobbled by the corporate chains. IIRC, Blumner was an ACLU attorney before the paper hired her.
‘America is ready for an adult like Gore…’
I wish that were true, but unfortunately things will have to get a lot worse in America before people stop believing the Noise Machine. Something like 45% of America has an unfavorable opinion of Gore.
Oh, I don’t mean the alpha-male wanna-be, that scripted, stiff, uninspired candidate for president in 2000.
Someone needs to inform Ms. Blumner that the whole storyline she states here about Gore in the 2000 campaign is crock of bullshit.
I remind Ms. Blumner and her colleagues in the so-called “liberal” media that Al Gore WON the popular vote in 2000.
Since the release of “An Inconvenient Truth”, pundits like Chris Matthews and Maureen Dowd are ponitificating on television or writing columns stating who much better off the country would be had Gore been (rightly) sent to the White House in 2000. However it was these same pundits who were so eager to spread the lies about Gore 6 years ago.
Even today, too many people still believe that Al Gore said he “invented the internet”, “discovered the Love Canal”, and was advised by author Naomi Wolf to wear earth tones. (I would be willing to bet these people make up much of the 45% Raoul Paste mentioned, who have an unfavorable view of Al Gore.)
It’s easy to blame the right-wing “noise machine” but the sad truth is that all of these fabrications and distortions were propogated by the so-called “mainstream” media. Matthews, in fact, was one of the worst offenders along with hacks like Ceci Connolly, Katherine “Kit” Seelye, and Brian Williams.
I’m sure it would greatly surprise Ms. Blumner to learn that those of us who supported Gore back then know that he has always been “a steely man of conviction.”
Right, like there’s gonna be an election in o-eight. As if it were to make any difference anywho - Gore sucks at the same Israeli apenditure as the rest of them. What kind of kool-aid are all of you east of the rockies drinking? (bonus points to those who actually know where “drinking the kool-aid” comes from) America is over, thank you very much.
Israel, is the enemy.
bonus points to those who actually know where “drinking the kool-aid†comes from
I’m disregarding my policy about responding to trolls to answer this one.
The term originated in the 1960’s with the so-called “Merry Pranksters” and referred to drinking LSD-laced Kool-Aid (hence the title, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”).
However the current usage comes from the Jonestown massacre when followers of cult leader Rev. Jim Jones drank a powdered kids’ drink (which was actually “Flavor Aid” rather than Kool-Aid) laced with poison. In this context, the term means to blindly embrace a political position or philosophy–no matter how strongly the facts run against you.