Al Gore: The Next 44 Days

One of the most heartfelt columns I've ever read.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-boyce/al-gore-the-next-44-days_b_56543.html

Al Gore thinks he is a lousy politician, he's right. He is. We need some lousy politicians who say what they mean and mean what they say. We need some lousy politicians who can't stop themselves from rolling their eyes when a member of the press asks a moronic question. We need someone who points out how stupid the captions are on t.v. shows. We need Al Gore.

Al Gore lost a race in 2000 that shouldn't have even been close. I love this about him as a potential candidate. We need someone who has run the race and lost because only someone who has lost can win in 2008. Why?

Someone who has lost will laugh when the consultants tell him what they want to charge. (20 million for six months work in the McCain campaign for example, that's what these people think is reasonable and those assholes will get jobs with someone else just you watch.)

Someone who has lost will stick to what they think. Someone who lost and left in DC will look at DC and say hmm, I lived there? What was I thinking?

Al Gore did lose in 2000 and it pisses me off that anyone on a progressive site is still writing it

10,000% correct! :toast:

GORE WON IN 2000! GORE WON IN 2000! GORE WON IN 2000!

I am dismayed to encounter - at least once every couple of weeks - people who believe the corporate media lies and omissions regarding AL GORE'S WIN IN 2000.

Yes, I want Gore to run in 2008.But more importantly, I just want the truth to be known! I want us all to have the self-discipline to speak the truth even if it differs from the common beliefs. Al Gore won, hence, Al Gore is a winner.


Gore's Victory

By Robert Parry -- November 12, 2001
<http://www.consortiumnews.com/2001/111201a.html>

So Al Gore was the choice of Florida’s voters -- whether one counts hanging chads or dimpled chads. That was the core finding of the eight news organizations that conducted a review of disputed Florida ballots. By any chad measure, Gore won.

Gore won even if one doesn’t count the 15,000-25,000 votes that USA Today estimated Gore lost because of illegally designed “butterfly ballots,” or the hundreds of predominantly African-American voters who were falsely identified by the state as felons and turned away from the polls.

Gore won even if there’s no adjustment for George W. Bush’s windfall of about 290 votes from improperly counted military absentee ballots where lax standards were applied to Republican counties and strict standards to Democratic ones, a violation of fairness reported earlier by the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Put differently, George W. Bush was not the choice of Florida’s voters anymore than he was the choice of the American people who cast a half million more ballots for Gore than Bush nationwide.




Media Matters: Barone repeated 2000 Florida recount falsehood
<http://mediamatters.org/items/200502220004 >

U.S. News & World Report senior writer and principal coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics Michael Barone repeated the false assertion that former Vice President Al Gore would have lost the 2000 presidential election under any recount scenario.

From Barone's February 21 nationally syndicated column:

In other words, Gore sought new counts only in areas where he was likely to gain votes and would not take the risk of a statewide hand count, where those gains might be offset by others for George W. Bush.

We know now that, thanks to the news media consortium that recounted ballots in every Florida county, recounting under any method and any criterion they tested would not have overturned Bush's exceedingly thin plurality.


In fact, the 2001 news media consortium study of the disputed ballots in the 2000 Florida recount found that there were at least four recount scenarios under which Gore would have won the state of Florida. A November 12, 2001, Washington Post article reported on the findings of the study: "If Gore had found a way to trigger a statewide recount of all disputed ballots, or if the courts had required it, the result likely would have been different. An examination of uncounted ballots throughout Florida found enough where voter intent was clear to give Gore the narrowest of margins."

The news media consortium that sponsored the study, which was conducted by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center, included the Associated Press, The New York Times, and CNN, as well as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post Company, and the Tribune Company (which owns the Chicago Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel, and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel).

Other conservatives who have repeated this false claim include Wall Street Journal op-ed columnist and author John Fund, FOX News host Bill O'Reilly, syndicated radio host Glenn Beck, and The Wall Street Journal editorial page.



NORC Florida Ballots Project - Read the original report!
http://www.norc.uchicago.edu/fl/index.asp

Even if their other arguments are good, they either look like they aren't paying attention or they are weaseling for somebody.
It's a red flag for me, smart people should stop it if they want to be taken seriously.

obviously, for whatever reason legal or otherwise, he didn't
and Bush became President. It doesn't do any good to dwell
on it. It only gives you a sour stomach & you'd probably have
that anyway just putting up with the absurdities of the day.
It's time to retire the absurdities of then & concentrate on the
absurdities of now.

But for this particular article, that's not the point.

that since the nation has been founded to very bad effect. Don't worry about the past - just focus on the future. The damned Democratic Party isn't taking effective action to make sure that people are not disenfranchised, that votes are counted accurately because they are afraid that if we know the truth then we will feel as if our vote won't count and we won't go vote. This is a case of the Democratic Party treating us like little children -- this is bullshit.

People break laws and there are no consequences - bullshit. Nixon should've been forced to admit he had broken the law and he should've gone to jail.

How about if your daughter/sister/mother is raped -- should you tell her not to worry herself about prosecuting the rapist? It would be too stressful to press charges? Just try to forget it ever happened? Bullshit.

The supremes appointed bush after ruling that Florida could not conduct a recount.

vs did

when anyone claiming to be progressive doesn't want to confront the fact of fixed elections.

I think that's all she means here.

But, yeah...

Jimmy Carter 4/18/2007 at the Univeristy of Iowa, Iowa City Iowa.
Standing ovation from me!

He knows the 2008 elections are fixed. Just like they were in 2000 and 2004. Read between the lines when he says he can be a leader without being the president.

Gore didn't lose the 2000 election.
He won it.

The Supreme Court made sure that all the votes were not counted.
They selected Bush.

Bush is not, repeat not, an elected president and he does not,
repeat not, represent the people.. but rather the corporate interests
and hatemongers that made sure the votes were fraudulent or
not submitted in some instances and ultimately not counted in Florida.

Sue

he's written in defense of Gore.

IMHO the replies I'm reading here, while technically correct of course, are neglecting the broader point. Yes, it was stolen; and in the only count that should matter anyway, Gore won the country by about a half million votes, but in our bizarro-world system here, the guy with fewer votes gets to win. Boyce's article talks about Gore seeing "how they win". Not defending the legitimacy; but the sad fact is that George Bush and not Al Gore, became president. That's the ultimate definition of "winning the election" The point is that it was a lame enough campaign to allow an idiot like bush to be close enough for them to steal. I barely was able to make myself vote for Gore; everything at that time looked and sounded like the same old republiklan-lite we've all witnessed from our party for so long...debates where they seemed to agree on almost everything etc...The Al Gore I've witnessed in recent years bears only a passing resemblance to the one I barely voted for. And that is the main point here; he's learned exactly why he wasn't installed as president, from the theft , to listening to all those "insider" handlers who successfully masked who and what he really is. He's speaking out forcefully and fearlessly in a way that to me , is saying that he knows damn well that had he been the real Gore in 2000, it wouldn't have been close enough for those bastards to steal......By the way, not unlike Kerry's handlers seemed to have done... I have a friend who's an ex-staffer for a Republican politician, (who's finally seen the light about what his former party has become--the friend, not the politician)), who also happens to know Kerry for many years. He says that Kerry is probably the single funniest person he's ever known and that when he saw Kerry on his presidential campaign, his first thought was "what have they done with John, and who's that lifeless pod they've replaced him with?"

He's definitely more real now than he was then. You've summed up my feelings exactly.

I don't want the climate crisis to take a back seat as it would should it not be his primary focus now and running to clean up a huge mess that was made by our indifference to it in the first place with the past instead of the future being the focus because he would be running up against the same brick walls and bs. He should not have to spend his years now back in this crap after he has already paid his dues in this system. To me he owes nothing else to this ungrateful system but to work outside of it to change it since staying in it did nothing to bring results for all the years he gave to it.

I don't want this man who finally has the momentum on this that he has been waiting thirty years to have to see it ruined by political operatives, people only using him for their own advantage, and entering a political system that has already been lost since people only write about him running just to get a readership and not about what THEY are going to do to change it first.

And I do not want him to turn his back on his destiny, and I truly believe the personal fire he has gone through was to bring him to this point in his life and to see where his place is in its future. He has even stated that what he is doing now just feels right and that it is what he should be doing, and I agree with him.

I know in my heart in a political system envisioned by our forefathers that there is no one else I would rather see take an oath of office because then I would believe he wouldn't be spinning his wheels and he would truly be appreciated for his vision... but not in this current system as his book The Assault On Reason so aptly described, especially since he is now respected for his vision outside of this system and is just beginning to make a headway in getting that grassroots surge we need to take on this crisis which is more important than titles.

I don't understand why people are so obsessed with him running now when even he obviously doesn't see it as the be all end all regardless of any comments he has made about the presidency out of obligation to it and no one has proven that on this crisis it is so... so perhaps he sees that as well as his actions prove otherwise because he knows as well as many do and even as Thomas Jefferson did that the title does not make the man or the moment, but the man or woman certainly can make history with or without it. Live Earth already proved that. And as he has also stated many times, this isn't about him but our planet. I believe also that the main focus is making progress, and if that progress comes quicker and better from out here, that is where he will be.

I also live in the real world as Mr. Gore does, and see that the influence he now has as a private citizen without political motivations but more importantly as a statesman and an environmental advocate can move mountains if we but give him our support in this instead of just writing countless romanticized articles about him running that really do nothing to further any other discussion. Where are the articles about solutions to this crisis and how we can help implement them now? Is Live Earth forgotten now? Are there Gore supporters who really want his efforts out here to fail because they think that will force him to do what they want him to do regardless of what he may want?

And to the author of this piece... he did not lose in 2000, he won, which was the rancid side of this political system showing its true face... a face that many including this author still refuse to see and change, yet think he should return to.

Mr. Gore has moved beyond that as have I finally, because I see that there will be no grand "restoration" regardless of how hard some fought to see it and were mocked for it. There will be no reversal of the USSC decision as people on the whole in this country seem quite content to just let it go. There will be no grand enmasse movement to bring back what was lost through anyone in this current political system unless the people are educated and informed enough to be outraged and incensed enough to DEMAND CHANGE. So calling on Al Gore to run in this decrepid political system where he would only be spending his time and money in the same system that took that freedom from him when we now have a crisis that far surpasses that seems like a fool's errand, and I stand by him 100% in working for his goals because to work from OUTSIDE that system now is definitely in my view the strategy we now need to have success.

But of course, people don't really want to write about that. They don't really want to give proper credit to his work now or see that what he is now doing surpasses the work of a "president" bound at the feet by lobbies, corporations, thugs, and now a "unitary executive" that seeks to tempt his soul. They just want to continue writing about the presidency as if it is some golden coveted prize, when in reality it is nothing anymore but about being the chairperson of a military industrial complex that lies and kills. There will be no sudden epiphany in the next couple of months enmasse by the peope of this country to change that either, so he is taking the only road he knows to lead to that change regardless of how long it is because it is the right one. Perhaps the next article this author should then write is that he joins him on that road instead of like so many others badgering him to take their road. Personally, I trust his map because he knows where the other road can lead.

Oh, and when you write things like this from the article:

"he needs a kick the ass on this one"

Just what is your true motivation? "Heartfelt?"

Why are you always questioning everyone else's motives just because they disagree with you? :eyes:

The author stated that Mr. Gore needed "a kick in the ass." I don't happen to find that heartfelt at all as it was described by the OP. I actually find it to be BS. You got a problem with that? Tough.

Also had the corporate media not been intent on slandering and trashing Al Gore while camouflaging and enabling Bush to power, the race wouldn't have been close, Al Gore would've won in a landslide.


Kicked and recommended nonetheless.

Thanks for thread NYCGirl