fwiw, I share your opinion re: Gore. If he did enter, I think he would enter into the top tier of candidates. In the Zogby poll Greenwald cites here, Gore comes in at 40% saying he should run. Prsumably many of that 40% would vote for him in primaries.

Could he win? Theoretically, yes. It would depend on how he ran. If he ran like he did in 2000, he would have zero chance, imo. However, if he ran with the passion he clearly has on the issues (and has shown now for several years in his speeches) I think he'd be competitive. He'd sure get my money.

In spite of reports at Kos that he's absolutely running, I doubt it. I believe he has successfully cured himself of his political professionalism. There are lots of pathways one can take to make progress in the world, and now that he's explored them, he has proven options that Obama, Clinton, Dodd, and the others simply don't have.

"I don't pretend that this is a full explanation. But I hope you'll see it as a decent start."

It's a very interesting perspective for sure. I personally had never envisioned it in the way you've laid it out, and I like the framework. But given Greenwald's topic today, my focus is drawn to trying to explain what is going on in democratic political strategy.

Could it simply be that, politically speaking, the Democratic party as a whole is not liberal at all. Rather, they are centrist. And, being politically centrist, they are more the party of status-quo than they are supportive of movement in any direction, liberal or conservative.

Mine is drawn to his actual topic--the Beltway script.

One cannot decouple the beltway script in Greenwald's piece from its impact on Democratic strategy, and how this has deeply wounded the party in terms of public opinion. Does this fill that small herd of questionmarks for you?

It is the continued impact of the script that causes the problem. That is why Greenwald's piece has the following subhead--"The same people who warned the Democrats they were going to lose in 2006 for opposing the President are saying the same thing now."

Greenwald's entire piece is focused on irrational democratic behavior, and the very last word of his piece is a link to a poll showing new lows in congressional democratic popularity.

"Failing that, can we at least, at some point, talk about a way to fix the system so we at least have a chance of selecting better candidates?"

imo, simple answer--Campaign finance reform. We all know this. We've all said it. It's not as if the solutions were not known. They are clearly and widely known. We are lacking the clear tactics, and a clear strategy, on how to get there.

WT, I dearly hope you are not giving so much away that you are depriving yourself of life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness.

re: the "sainted" al gore (using Bill Owens term), I don't know if you have read "Assault on Reason" yet, but I recommend it. After going though his speeches since 2000, reading the book, and watching Inconvenient Truth, I've concluded he is best qualified.

His mannerisms turn many in the public off. He can seem pedantic. Big ego. Most of all, the man sweats like a lawn sprinkler when he speaks publicly. Jesus Christ on a Bicycle, that man needs a towel 15 minutes into every speech he's ever given.

But he's the best we've got. Or so it seems to me.

Mighty on earth and highly influential in heaven, Jesus' General came out for Dodd today. Only mention it because a commenter mentioned something along line of blogger endorsements yesterday...

What should the people believe now?

Their own lying eyes.

I enjoyed this good piece--thank you for it, and for your great blog at Anonymous Liberal (http://www.anonymousliberal.com).

one thing you mentioned:

It's well past time to force the Iran hawks to settle on one consistent rationale for war; they can't keep having it both ways.

It's depressing to explore the dark side of Cheney's mind (which, in his case, is both sides), but I would bet that he believes he can indeed have it both ways. Because they have had it both ways in Iraq from the get-go. First it was Powell's credibility and WMDs--that gained them the lift-off. And, since then, it has been a long string of secondary or tertiary reasons, none of which made sense, or justified the blood. But the secondary or tertiary reasons for Iraq didn't have to make sense. Because we were already there, and because he has learned that he will not get called on it. Not by Russert, not by the NYT, not by the WaPo. Yeah, the bloggers are onto him, but they don't count for much in the world of Power.

So mission accomplished. Metaphorically, Richard Cheney didn't need to know how to take off, or land. All he needed to know was how to keep level flight sustained. He knows the next poor sucker in the Oval Office is the one who has to actually bring the plane in.

The same may easily be true for Iran. The primary, war-causing argument will be that "they are killing our boys". And, in spite of the fact that there is no good evidence that EFPs are made in Iran (quite the contrary--they are made in Iraq), or that the infamous artillary rockets with filed-off serial numbers came from Iran (I've seen no specific claim by a US general that they have), this will be the cassus belli I bet you.

After the bombing begins, it no longer matters how many times they switch their story. It becomes immaterial--they have already won.