Gore's not running. I just saw yet another diary entry with a poll including Al Gore as the main candidate on a Democratic ticket, and frankly, it's heartbreaking. Heartbreaking to see so many desperate members of the party clinging to false hope. It's bad enough to see it in the Obama camp; his rabid supporters think he's the second coming of JFK, and they absolutely will not abide any criticism of him no matter how legitimate. Never mind that if he's the second coming of anyone, it's Bill Clinton -- a Democrat who talks a good game but can't deliver on his lofty rhetoric of hope and change.
But to see Democrats continue to latch on to the myth that Al Gore will somehow decide, all of a sudden, to get in the race, just chokes me up. Look, I wanted him to run, too. I thought he should have run in 2004. But Gore's window of opportunity closed around September, October last year. If he was planning to run, he'd have announced then. But the man has truly and permanently become too disgusted with politics to bother running for anything ever again. He's not running for president, and no amount of wishful hoping is going to make him.
And even if by some miracle he changes his mind today, and declares his candidacy tomorrow, what makes you think he'd have time to get on the ballot this late in the game, having had no organization, no campaign, no raised money? Super Tuesday has come and gone, and between the two of them Clinton and Obama have divvied up enough delegates to make it nearly impossible for Gore to get the nomination even in the highly improbable event neither of them manages to win so much as a single state from this point on.
Give it up, people. Gore's not running. I know you want to cling to some kind of hope, something that lets you continue getting up in the morning instead of going outside to play in traffic. But you're pinning your hopes on the wrong thing, the wrong man, and at the wrong time. Find something, someone else to pin your hopes on. Focus your hope and energy on making Obama and Clinton grow up and move to the political left instead of bickering with each other like little children trying to out-Clinton one another. Better yet, focus your energy on running primary battles against DINOs and cowards in Congress, who have reneged on their promises to end the occupation of Iraq and impeach the shrub and his gargoyle.
Focus your hope and energy on something else. Clinging to the false hope of a Gore candidacy this late in the game is as useless and wasteful as trying to keep Ralph Nader off the ballot. Just ask Kerry supporters from 2004.