At first blush, when I saw a report suggesting that Al Gore's potential entry into the presidential election would help Hillary Clinton, I laughed.
Then, when I saw the numbers and analysis (43% for Hillary and 15% for Gore, who was in second place) and learned that in the poll most of Gore's support came from undecided voters or those not supporting Hillary, I was sad.
Finally, when I did a little bit of research and found out the poll was sponsored, conducted, and paid for by a Republican hack -- Newt Gingrich's former campaign chairman -- I got angry.
On Friday night, after Gore won the Nobel Prize, Matt Towery, the CEO of InsiderAdvantage, conducted a poll which he claimed showed that Democrats were not receptive to a Gore candidacy.
The bottom line is that a Gore candidacy, at this stage, seems unlikely given the fact that the best thing that can happen to Hillary Clinton is another man, even one with a Nobel Prize, getting into the race and dividing up the anti-Clinton vote rather than taking votes away from her.
The Hill pimped Towery's storyline:
A new poll shows former Vice President Al Gore’s entry into the Democratic presidential race might not have such a large impact on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) after all. In fact, it might help to further solidify her frontrunner status.
But what The Hill didn't tell its readers is revealing:
- Matt Towery is Rethug hack, Newt Gingrich's former campaign chairman and a former GOP state legislator
- The poll did not ask voters whether they would support Gore if he ran -- it simply listed Gore as a candidate. Since Gore is not running for president -- at least at the moment -- people are not likely to pick his name. For more about this, see Mark Blumenthal's analysis of the August Michigan poll.
- In this poll, Gore was second, with 15% of the vote. This is significantly higher than national averages. For example, pollster.com estimates Al Gore in 4th place at 10.8% when the question is asked the same way that Towery did. In other words, Towery's poll shows Al Gore going from 4th to 2nd and increasing his support by nearly 40% compared to pollster.com's average.
- The reason why most of Gore's support came from undecided voters and supporters of candidates other than Hillary is obvious -- Hillary wasn't above 50% in the firm's previous poll, so most voters were either undecided or supported candidates other than Hillary. This is simple.
I find it very interesting that Republican operatives are out spinning yarns suggesting that Al Gore can't win the Democratic primary, especially when they are apparently not listening to the numbers in their very own polls. As I showed above, Towery's poll actually shows Gore doing better than he's been doing in recent polls -- and he still isn't a candidate. Because this poll didn't ask voters who they would support if Gore would run, it's hard to make much of Gore's relatively weak results.
Obviously, I'm a bit of a Gore fan, even though I think highly of the other candidates in the field, including Hillary. If you're interested in a less biased source of information, check out pollster.com's Al Gore roundup.
Anyway, it's late, so I'm going to sign off and wrap up this diary with the following thought:
When Republicans are pimping negative storylines about a Democrat, they fear that Democrat.
It's been always true. It always will be true. And it's true now.
Matt Towery and other Republican hacks are afraid of Al Gore.
Personally, I don't blame them.
Peace,
Patel1946
George Orwell wrote Politics and the English Language in 1946