For the past three weeks, I have grown extremely interested in a possible Al Gore candidacy. In late September, a few things happened that pushed me in that direction. First, John Edwards, who appears to be the most progressive candidate among the top three, accepted public financing, which gave me grave doubts on his ability to win the general election. Second, after six months of trying, along with the Richardson campaign we here at Open Left finally managed to push the residual forces argument into an open, public debate, but it didn't seem to change anything like I thought it would. Third, not only does Hillary Clinton keep rising in polls and money, but she just doesn't really seem noticeably worse to me than Barack Obama, or really any other candidate, on pretty much anything There are a few of things, virtually all related to foreign policy, but not many. Fourth, worries about Clinton's electability have all but disappeared, at least relative to the rest of the field, as she polls better than Obama against Republicans (see here and here) and won't be financially hamstrung like Edwards. Fifth, neither Dodd nor Kucinich were receiving any traction, and I'm not going to support someone at 2% in the polls. The way I see it, there is simply too much else to be done in politics to bother with that. So, basically, I started looking at Gore because I wasn't sure how else to shake up the campaign, which pretty much seemed like Clinton pulling away from a group of candidates who were neither ideologically nor electorally superior to her.
But now, I'm off that bandwagon, too. In fact, despite his leadership on climate change, health care, Iraq and opposing Bush, I don't think Gore should even run. The reason is that I just don't think such a run would be good for him, at all. Consider the first post-Nobel prize poll that includes Gore, showing virtually no bump in his numbers whatsoever:
In the new update of national Democrats' and Democratic-leaning independents' preferences for the Democratic presidential nomination, 14% select Gore as their first choice when he is included in a list along with the eight announced Democratic candidates. Clinton leads with 44%, while Obama is next at 19%. Gore finishes slightly ahead of Edwards, who is supported by 10% of rank-and-file Democrats. (With Gore support factored out -- Gallup's standard reporting of the Democratic ballot -- Clinton leads Obama by 50% to 21%.)
In the pre-Nobel Prize reading of the ballot including Gore, taken Oct. 4-7, 10% of Democrats chose Gore as their first choice, so the win may have increased his support slightly, but the four-percentage-point bump is within the poll's margin of sampling error. Any bump Gore received appears to have come at Obama's expense, who is the only candidate to show evidence of a drop from the prior poll.
After an incredible flood of positive coverage, Gore still didn't move up very far in national polling. In fact, after the Nobel, not only is Clinton still tripling his numbers, but he also trails Obama and is barely ahead of Edwards. In short, the support for a Gore run just doesn't seem to be broad enough among the Democratic electorate nationwide for him to have a chance to win. Further, I have no doubt that Gore would perform even worse in Iowa than he would nationally right now, making victory an even longer shot than the above linked Gallup poll implies. Keep in mind that there are only eleven weeks before Iowa right now. By way of contrast, when Clark announced in 2003, there were eighteen weeks left before Iowa.
Gore shouldn't run if he can't win, or at least come close. Right now, it seems as though he could do neither. Not only would that look bad, it would actually hurt his ability to advocate on behalf of important causes. Over the past few years, Gore has done a great job of always saying what needed to be said and doing what needed to be done. I don't want to see that ability go away in order to pursue a quixotic, eleven week Presidential campaign. I would rather have the Al Gore that we have right now than a further defeated Al Gore whose national image would be permanently damaged by a crushing primary blow. In fact, I think one accurate way of putting it is that I don't think Gore should run precisely because he is so great right now.
The 2008 Democratic Presidential primary has been reduced to one state: Iowa. Clinton is the clear frontrunner everywhere else, but Obama and, to a lesser extent, Edwards, both still have a chance of stopping her there. Gore simply has no such chance, and should stay out of the campaign as a result. That is the fairly boring way I see things right now. While I will continue to search for other ways to shake up the campaign, I don't think Gore is the way to make it happen. For me, it is on to other topics.
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