Letters to the Editor
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Gore
I'd like to see Gore endorse a candidate. Enthusiastically endorse, complete with his giving a full and, hopefully, enthusiastic explanation as to why he is endorsing that candidate. Maybe he do well by the candidate to stump for the candidate frequently along the way.
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Timberman @
Do you work for Hillary, or another establishment Democrat? :)
But other than that:
From my point of view, however, he's come to the true religion rather late in life, and an excess of piety now, when little is at stake for him personally, doesn't make up for his earlier deficiencies as far as I'm concerned. Frankly, both he and Hillary have more in common than the conventional wisdom among his supporters would suggest. YMMV.
As to your first point; That is Gore coming to his "religion rather late in life", as you put it, if you are referring to global warming I reject that out of hand as he wrote Earth in the Balance over fifteen years ago, and as for the rest of his missteps, my hope would be that he was too much under the influence of the establishment consultants and village circle jerkcrowd, aka the Bob Schrums of the world, and he has since told them, rightly so, to go pound salt.
As to your second point, that "Frankly, both he and Hillary have more in common than the conventional wisdom among his supporters would suggest." **; examples please...
And it's Sunday morning, my mind is a little fuzzy, what is YMMV?
** I love the verbiage, it kind of rolls off the lounge. Good writing.
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Who Should Stop Her?
Who do you think should stop her? Who has inspired anyone to get behind them? People didn't just pick Howard Dean out of a hat in 2004. He triggered the enthusiasm that he did by inspiring people with passion and conviction and a refusal to be stuffed into the Beltway box.
Who is doing that now?
OK, Glenn, her opponents aren't, any of them, Howard Dean. I lament that fact. But are you seriously suggesting that we should just acquiesce in Hillary's coronation?
Isn't it possible that one reason the other candidates haven't gotten any traction is HC's overwhelming name recognition? And fat campaign coffers? These things enabled her to take an early lead. That early lead engenders the meme that she is a "winner."
Why can't we have a discussion, every other day, on your blog and others, on who should it be? This issue is CRITICAL, and time is getting short. I think it should be Edwards. Or Dodd. They are both fine candidates. And neither of them would unite the right-wing base against them the way Hillary would. (Their hatred of her is irrational, of course. She's closer to them ideologically than the others,)
Dem primary voters, left to themselves, cannot be counted on to do the right thing --see Howard Dean and Ned Lamont. The primary system is broken, but it's too late to fix it in this cycle.
You do such great work here. But we get it -- the media commentators are morons. But can't we skewer them later, after we have helped to select a decent Dem standard bearer?
Do we just have to lay down and accept Hillary? Dear God, can't we have someone else? Anyone else?
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Paul
"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.
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@ WT
I read some other polling earlier this summer that had Gore thrashing them all. It's not the issue really because at this point he's not running, (which is why he isn't be stuffed into the "beltway box" by the strategists and consultants). Third Way, Triangulating, "centristism" is going to die a slow death.
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Star
Dem primary voters, left to themselves, cannot be counted on to do the right thing --see Howard Dean and Ned Lamont.
Ned Lamont won the primary. Dem primary voters voted for him. So I don't get what you meant by that. I also don't get by what you mean by, "left to themselves".
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It’s all Projection
Another in a string of nice articles, Glenn.
The more I watch these pundits, the more I’m convinced that what they say is less a reflection of the world around them than a reflection of their internal state of affairs. Their repeatedly-expressed fear of going toe-to-toe with one’s political opponents ties in nicely with their demonstrated fear of stepping outside the comfort zone; of actually saying something that doesn’t fall within what they view as accepted common wisdom. Like many, they’re timid people, afraid of the unknown. Hopefully, at some point, the unknown will become less so, and therefore more comfortable.
Thanks, Glenn, for continuing to hold the mirror up; hopefully some of these people may actually begin to start looking outward, into the mirror and learn something.
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@ mrkcohen
No, I don't work for Hillary, or any of the other usual suspects. Gore has, as you say, always been right on global warming, and on science issues in general. It's still hard to deny, though, that all of our leading Democratic candidates are from the same finishing school. I don't fault them for that, actually, but I also don't think that the theory that they've been swayed by consultants is more true of one than it is of another.
When you're actually running for office, and actually have a chance of winning, especially in a country as diverse as ours, and as polarized -- which it's always been, right from the founding -- it makes a certain amount of sense that you'd think it prudent not to be too outspoken, particularly on the polarizing issues. You have a lot more freedom when you aren't running.
The problem for us, though, is that we're forced to read the same tea leaves as everyone else in order to divine where the candidates actually stand. This leaves us subject to the exhortations of the true believers, who imagine that they've divined something in the character of a candidate which makes them the person on horseback who'll solve all our ills. The Democrats are no less vulnerable to such exhortations than the Republicans.
For myself, I take all of this with a large grain of salt. That Hillary is a liberal on domestic issues, I don't doubt. That she's been persuaded to be a Realpolitiker in foreign policy, I also don't doubt. What are the odds that Gore is any different, or more to the point, could acting differently once in office? No one yet has convinced me that they actually know the answer to that question.
YMMV = Your Mileage May Vary = unconscionable nerd speak, even in a Weblog comments section. I oughta be sued.