Al Gore, Spin, and Hillary Clinton
Wed Oct 12, 2005 at 07:01:01 PM PDT
Yesterday I responded to Chris Bowers' entry regarding a potential Al Gore candidacy for president in 2008. In his rant, Bowers made the flimsy case that Gore is supposedly too unpopular, too lackluster a candidate to win the White House. Significantly, he based his entire piece on data that is more than three years old, roughly equivalent to a century when converted to media cycles.
We now see that the lines have been drawn--not by the grassroots but by those who inform them, and it is apparent that 2008 will indeed be Hillary Clinton vs Someone Else. But I believe, as a Democrat, that this potential civil war is entirely beside the point. My fervent advocation of an Al Gore presidency has nothing to do with stopping Hillary Clinton, as Bowers and Kos have pitifully attempted to illustrate. No, I have an entirely and siginficantly more important reason for endorsing Gore.
For me, this ain't about Hillary. This is about America.
This evening, both of the left's reknown blogger-journalists, Chris Bowers and Markos Moulistas--whose work I regard with high respect--declared Al Gore's candidacy dead-on-arrival as the man himself issued a
non-statement on his willingness to run for president. Both of these guys, of course, failed to include the following sentence in their spin jockeying:
"I don't completely rule out some future interest"
Now, in the mind of a politician, what might such words indicate? Well, they certainly tell me that he has put some level of thought in the presidency, at the very least. More importantly, however, is not what Gore might be saying, but what he doesn't say: "I will never run for president again." These words, as far as I can tell, have never left Gore's mouth.
The Clinton Crowd wants to make a Gore candidacy about Hillary, and not about fighting for America--which is really where we so-called "Goristas" are at. They have fervently and slyly advocated a 2008 campaign for Clinton in brief and furtive remarks throughout their articles, posts and analyses in the past several months. Today, their objective has been exposed for its homeliness as an attempt by Hillary Clinton to head off a horse race with her most feared challenger of 2008 before he's even left the stable.
It is, indeed, a depressing fact to uncover. But with the advocation of a Clinton campaign now featuring prominently on the front page of Bowers' blog, it is also one that is undeniable and remarkable for the expediency in which it followed a rebuttal of Gore's candidacy.
This sort of underhanded and always, of course, plausibly deniable political maneuvering is unexceptable in a place where open discussion is absolutely essential to defending the Democratic cause. That Bowers and Kos seek to defeat a Gore candidacy through division and derision, without publicly stating their blatant bias for Hillary Clinton, is absurd and offensive, no matter how respectable their work is and has been.
If these accusations are repsonded to at all, such a response will almost certainly contain a plausible denial. They might accuse some of tin foil-hat conspiracy theorizing, but we have seen their brazen maneuvering made public and it is no longer ridiculous to make such assumptions.
The Clinton Crowd would have us forget Al Gore and draw a line between he, reason, and Hillary. They say that we want Gore because we don't want her. And they will say that we are the ones fighting against the progressive sect of the party by battling for the nomination of a man known for his diligence and supposed centrism.
But that is not what we Gore supporters are about. We want Gore not because we despise Hillary Clinton, which many of us do not, but because we want our country back. We want a strong economy again. We want to raise the minimum wage, we want acceptable health care, we want to stop global warming, we want to save the environment and we want to bring our soldiers home. In short, we want the best, and the best is Al Gore.
I do not need to say why Gore is the best. We all know why: because he fights for what he BELIEVES in, and not what will get him elected. It's time for a president who BELIEVES in America's promise. It's time for Democrats to stand up and fight. It's time for the best.
It's time for Al Gore.
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