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Gore running in 2008

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Posted: December 10, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern


� 2003 WorldNetDaily.com


Why did Al Gore endorse Howard Dean?

It was a shrewd political move calculated to position him for another run for the presidency in 2008.

Right now, Hillary Clinton is the proverbial 800-pound gorilla-ess in the Democratic Party.

When her name is added to presidential preference surveys, she blows away the competition.

If Gore is to have a shot at another run for president, he needs to position himself as the heir apparent in 2008. He just did that with the endorsement of Howard Dean.

Here's the way it works: Win or lose � and he will lose � Howard Dean will be the head of the Democratic Party upon acceptance of the nomination this summer. With that acceptance comes the party apparatus � in addition to the base of support Dean has built in his campaign so far.

Gore's endorsement of Dean likely comes with an agreement that the nominee will throw his support behind Gore in 2008. Thus, Gore would have something even Hillary Clinton doesn't have for her likely race � the loyalty and support of the head of the party and all that brings with it.

It's a bold move for a politician not known for making bold moves. He may have outmaneuvered "the smartest woman in the world" and his old mentor, Bill Clinton.

To do so, he was forced to betray Joe Lieberman, his own running mate, who has been unable to establish any traction as a candidate in 2004. But that's politics.

The endorsement of Dean wasn't the only political move Gore made this week. He also weighed in on the heated San Francisco mayor's race, indicating again Gore is not through with politics.

Gore, whose presidential ambitions suffered when a Green Party candidate siphoned liberal votes, endorsed Gavin Newsom, a city supervisor fighting his way through a stiffer-than-expected run-off against Green Party contender Matt Gonzalez.

Politicians make endorsements for one reason � they expect a quid pro quo. If Al Gore is going to teach, make speeches, run a cable TV company and write books, he doesn't need to get involved in the messy business of political endorsements. The fact that he is doing so strongly suggests he has plans for the future.

Gore altered the political balance in his party with his endorsement of Dean, but he also established his own heavyweight credentials as a major player in the party post-2004. His endorsement of a surging front-runner may have sewn up the nomination for Dean, who has had trouble getting the backing of the Democratic Party establishment.

The timing of Gore's move is also important: It comes just hours before the nine Democratic candidates meet for a debate in New Hampshire, less than six weeks before the first votes are cast � and at a moment when the former Vermont governor is seeking to consolidate his early support and bathe his candidacy in an aura of inevitability.

After lending his endorsement to Dean, Gore traveled with the candidate to Iowa where caucuses are scheduled for Jan. 19. Dean has been running neck and neck with Rep. Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., in recent Iowa polls. The Gore endorsement could make all the difference. Political observers believe if Dean wins Iowa and New Hampshire � where he is leading handily � the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination is all but over.

Dean has become the Democratic front-runner by building a powerful grass-roots campaign based on strong opposition to the Iraqi war and strident criticism of Washington-based Democratic candidates who voted to authorize it. In addition to making himself competitive with Gephardt in Iowa, according to three recent polls, Dean has opened up a huge lead over the field in New Hampshire, where the first presidential primary will be held Jan. 27.

While Hillary Clinton has been saying the U.S. must stick it out in Iraq, Gore and Dean have offered blistering criticism of the war effort.

Al Gore is running for president in 2008. And he's running against Hillary Clinton.

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Gore, whose presidential ambitions suffered when a Green Party candidate siphoned liberal votes,

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The Bible in which I believe, in my own faith tradition, says, "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

Four years ago in August of 2001, President Bush received a dire warning: "Al Qaeda determined to attack inside the US." No meetings were called, no alarms were sounded, no one was brought together to say, "What else do we know about this imminent threat? What can we do to prepare our nation for what we have been warned is about to take place?" If there had been preparations, they would have found a lot of information collected by the FBI, and CIA and NSA - including the names of most of the terrorists who flew those planes into the WTC and the Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania. The warnings of FBI field offices that there were suspicious characters getting flight training without expressing any curiosity about the part of the training that has to do with landing. They would have found directors of FBI field offices in a state of agitation about the fact that there was no plan in place and no effective response. Instead, it was vacation time, not a time for preparation. Or protecting the American people.

Four years later, there were dire warnings, three days before Hurricane Katrina hit NOLA, that if it followed the path it was then on, the levees would break, and the city of New Orleans would drown, and thousands of people would be at risk. It was once again vacation time. And the preparations were not made, the plans were not laid, the response then was not forthcoming.

In the early days of the unfolding catastrophe, the President compared our ongoing efforts in Iraq to World War Two and victory over Japan. Let me cite one difference between those two historical events: When imperial Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt did not invade Indonesia.

I personally believe that the very fact that there has been no accountability for the horrendous misjudgments and outright falsehoods that laid the basis for this horrible tragedy that we have ongoing in Iraq, the fact that there was no accountability for those mistakes, misjudgments and dissembling, is one of the principal reasons why there was no fear of being held accountable for a cavalier, lackluster, mistaken, inadequate response to the onrushing tragedy that was clearly visible - for those who were watching television, for those who were reading the news - what happened was not only knowable, it was known in advance, in great and painstaking detail. They did tabletop planning exercises, they identified exactly what the scientific evidence showed would take place. Where there is no vision, the people perish.

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n 2005, the Associated Press reported that Richardson has informed party leaders that he intends to run in the 2008 U.S. presidential election [5].

The Albuquerque Journal reported on June 12 2005, that a New Mexico State Auditor concluded the Governor used Enron type accounting after his adminstration "circumvented the Legislature and proper accounting procedures when it opened the office in 2004 because it used money intended for the Taxation and Revenue Department to pay for the governor's Albuquerque digs." The Governor had allegedly opened an office in Albuquerque five minutes from the airport to meet with potential out of state donors for his 2008 Presidential campaign without inconveniencing them with the two hour round trip to Sante Fe.

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America's sense of itself - its pride in its power and authority, its faith in its institutions and its belief in its leaders - has been profoundly damaged. And now the talking heads in Washington predict dramatic political change and the death of the Republicans' hope of becoming the permanent government.

� 2005 The Daily Mirror UK

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But what he [Bernie Sanders] has done is far more than most Democrats or even middle of the road pols to the left of 'em.

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We've seen the headline over and over that George Bush's poll numbers are now lower than they've ever been. By these reports, you would think such low poll numbers were unprecedented. Bush, who once enjoyed high poll numbers, has hit rock bottom of late. Blame for Katrina, Iraq, gas prices and on and on. An average of his approval rating among various polls is about 40%. Low? Yes. Unprecedented? Hardly. Let's look at the lowest approval rating of previous presidents:

Bush Sr. 29%
LBJ 35%
Clinton 37%
Reagan 35%
Nixon 24%
Ford 37%
Carter 28%
Well, at an average 40% approval rating low, it looks like George W. Bush has bested the lowest approval rating of his predecessors. Besides, who cares about Bush's approval rating? He's a lame duck...it's not like he's going to ever be running for office again.

Leave it to the media to continually report a non-story.

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Hillary is unelectable. She is too polarizing and has high negatives with women. I'd like to see the Dems run someone like Evan Bayh. He's not radical enough for the Hartmann board but who is?

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If Kerry�s running mate disagreed at the time, he didn�t say it publicly. But now John Edwards has become the first high-profile Democrat to say that he regrets his vote to give Bush that authority. �I was wrong,� Edwards wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed. Edwards� admission has spurred questions for the other Democrats preparing to run for the presidency in 2008: among the potential candidates, votes in support of the war were cast by Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Evan Bayh and, of course, Kerry. (Russell Feingold is the only potential candidate who voted no.) These candidates will inevitably be asked, knowing what we know now, would you still have voted for the war? Clinton has been asked this question, and her response is that if we knew then what we know now, there would have been no vote at all. This response is certainly clever (and probably accurate), but it doesn�t answer the question, which is why Democratic voters are unlikely to accept it as sufficient.

One wonders why Kerry, or any other candidate, would hesitate at all before answering, �Of course I wouldn�t have voted for it.� The answer can be found in the Washington conventional wisdom, which says that a Democrat who favored and continues to support the Iraq war is �strong on national security,� while a Democrat who opposes it is �weak on national security.� Discussing this issue on the ABC show �This Week,� George Stephanopoulos opined that Hillary Clinton would never do what John Edwards has done, because �it�s an article of faith to both Clintons that you have got to be strong on national security going into the 2008 elections.� One could substitute the word �wrong,� or perhaps �stupid,� for the word �strong� and articulations of this idea would make no less sense. But don�t go looking for logic in the DC conventional wisdom.