I was watching The Chris Matthews show this morning, and in his "tell me something I don't know" segment, John Heilemann of New York Magazine had this to say:
Heilemann: A guy I spent a lot of time with last year, Al Gore, before his movie came out or right on the cusp of it, just won the Nobel prize. And there's going to be a lot of people who are going to want to get him into this race, there always have been. Umm, it is not going to happen, it is NOT going to happen. And he's going to endorse Barack Obama.
Matthews: When?
Heilemann: Six weeks.
Matthews: Do you think there's a chance that if the Democrats lose this round John that Al will be back in politics next time around?
Heilemann: Yes.
So there are actually several interesting nuggets of information I picked up from Heilemann's comment.
- Gore isn't going to run for president this cycle. I added italics because Heilemann added
heavy emphasis to those words.
- Gore will endorse Barack Obama sometime in mid-November
- Gore expects to "be back in politics" sometime in the future, which actually echoes what an unnamed source
recently told CNN. But it also obviously contradicts said source's statement that Gore thinks Hillary is "unstoppable."
Now, all the usual caveats apply. We don't know that Heilemann is close to Gore now, and a whole heckuva lot has changed since An Inconvenient Truth was released. So it's still speculation.
Still, Heilemann isn't some unnamed source -- he's a credible journalist who has actually spent time with Gore. And while that doesn't mean we have to take his view as gospel, it does, in my mind, mean his view bears at least some consideration.
UPDATE: Should've watched the rest of the show on TiVo before hitting the Publish button. Matthews did a roundtable at the end of the show, and asked, if Gore does not run, who will he endorse?
Elisabeth Bumiller (NY Times Correspondent): I wouldn't be surprised if he endorsed Obama, and don't forget he endorsed Howard Dean, and don't forget that Dean said afterward that he thought it hurt him.
Heilemann: I'll just add to my comment about Obama that the one person he is not going to endorse is Hillary Clinton. They were incredibly intense competitors in the White House for Clinton's affection, his attention, his time, when they were both there. It was a co-vice presidency and that annoyed the heck out of Al Gore. And then, in 2000, one of the big complaints they had was that she sucked a lot of attention and energy and money away from him in the 2000 campaign. The problem wasn't just Bill Clinton's infidelity distracted from Al Gore's campaign in their view, but Hillary Clinton continuing the picture of the Clintons in American politics -- this is their view, by the way. It annoys him to no end, and I just could never see it happening.
Anne Kornblut (Wash. Post): I'm going to set myself up to be wrong here, but I think there's a good chance he wouldn't endorse at all. Having just won the Nobel, he's kind of risen above it, he's become an elder statesman all this time. He saw what happened in 2004 where it didn't matter in the end.
David Yepsen (Des Moines Register): I agree with Ann. I don't think Al Gore will endorse. He understands he can't deliver anything to anybody, particularly in my state of Iowa, and I think it could only hurt him, just simply raises expectations for somebody. And finally, if he endorses, he makes somebody mad, he wants to keep his own options open for someday in the future.