Wow, DU Has Come Full Circle on Gore

[Yavin4]

As an old DUer (member since 2001), I fondly recall the Nader flame wars, and yes, Luke, I fought in the Nader flame wars. Half of the posters here would cry that Gore was exactly like Bush, and that there was no difference. I remember those days well.

Now, people here think that Gore is their only hope. I think that this is great, and it should show you youngsters here that your favorite candidate could also get some DU love. Just be patient.

[LisaM]

1. Doesn't that burn you?

Was it Alexander Cockburn who said there was "not a dime's worth of difference".

[Hydra]

5. It didn't matter

He won anyway. He was just that good!

I would like to post a big thank you to the 5 members of SCOTUS, and most especially to Sandra Day O'Connor, for flushing President Gore down the toilet for the asshole we have now and destroying the laws of our country.

[jgraz]

6. While the "dime" comment is clear hyperbole, Gore 2000 earned a lot of that criticism

Who could possibly argue that we're looking at the same man we saw in 2000? He's grown in a way that is almost unprecedented for a political figure.

[LisaM]

11. I was always a Gore fan

I've had a picture of him on my desk since December 12, 2000, and I was stricken by what happened in the 2000 election. A friend of mine has a button maker, and we made (and I wore for months) buttons that said "Gore Got More", "I Dissent", "Re-Elect Gore in 2004", etc.) I may actually pull those back out. Even if someone didn't understand then that Al Gore was about, or even if you think he's changed, how can ANYONE have thought that Bush was anything more than a snarling, vicious jackal with a thin veneer of prep-boy sophisticate on top?

[jgraz]

13. I'll admit I wasn't

but I would have walked barefoot on broken glass if it would have put him in the White House in 2000. Same for Kerry in 04.

[movonne]

12. Do you think we would be in this mess if Gore been selected...this

whole takeover of our government has been in the works many, many years..this is a coup and we did nothing about it...

[jgraz]

16. Did you read my post?

The fact that we'd be better off is so obvious it's barely worth discussing. Some of the blame for that rests squarely on Gore's shoulders, both for his craven lurches to the right and for his refusal to fight the staggering injustice of Chimpy's selection.

[LisaM]

20. I believe that Gore did try to fight

He got zero support, or close to zero, from his colleagues, his party, his running mate, and a general public that was apathetic about it all and just wanted it to end.

Gore took it all the way to the Supreme Court. He also publicly called for a statewide recount (by law he could not require it), he understood full well that machine votes could be rigged and was laughed at for it, and not one Senator would stand by him to challenge the Florida electors.

[jgraz]

21. You make a good point -- another pathetic legacy for the Democrats

When the hell are we going to take this party back? I still get angry every time I think of how the 2000 theft was handled.

[LisaM]

22. Thanks, I feel pretty passionate about it

and I am proud I stuck for him so staunchly all the way through.

[jgraz]

23. Though Al still shares some of the blame for not kicking Chimpy's ass to hell and back

That election should not have even been close, and Gore has to accept a good part of the responsibility for that.

[LisaM]

25. But are we sure that it was really that close?

We know what happened in Florida, but I'm sure there was a lot of vote suppression in other states, too.

[jgraz]

30. Yes, there was voter suppression. And Gore should have been all over that

He dropped the ball on challenging it before the election occurred.

[Yavin4]

7. I Had Knock Down, Drag Out FIghts With Fellow Liberals in 2000

Both on this board and in person over that one simple, assinine assertion that there was no difference. There were several liberals that hated Gore.

The really, really sad part is that there's no joy whatsoever in being proved correct. No joy. From the bodies on 911 to the bodies in Iraq to the bodies in New Orleans, it gives me no pleasure nor happiness to be correct on that stupid argument. None.

[Orsino]

40. It wasn't his dime. n/t

[gateley]

2. We all grow and learn and change our beliefs from time to time. It's part of life. nt

[Swamp Rat]

3. Thank you AL Gore for making me once again feel proud of my country.

[movonne]

14. You are right...this is the first positive thing since the takeover of

our govt....

[Swamp Rat]

35. Let us rejoice!

:)

[movonne]

36. yes I did...I'm not sure what you are talking about..I agreed with

you, what did I miss..

[jgraz]

4. I think it's more accurate to say Al Gore has come full circle

He's no longer the guy who picked Joe Lieberman as his running mate and ran to the center at every opportunity. While I obviously agree that we'd have been much better off with Gore as president for the past 6.5 years, I don't think he'd be as much of a hero to those of us on the left if he had been allowed to take office.

[texastoast]

8. There you have it

He acts very differently than he did in 2000. He speaks differently. If he had been himself instead of kowtowing to "the DLC" in 2000, he would have had the election. Sadly, not being in office gives him the ability to show his foresight and wisdom.

[jgraz]

9. And you've nailed why he probably won't run

What I see in Gore 2.0 is a guy who likes who he is. If I were him, I'd worry about what eight years in the White House would do to me.

[xchrom]

10. yay!!! a nader flame fest under a different heading.

wake me when this is over --:boring:

[DavidDvorkin]

15. Wouldn't that be half a circle?

As in 180 degrees rather than 360? :)

[jgraz]

17. I was thinking the same thing, but I thought that pointing it out would make me look pretentious

Thanks for taking the heat. :P

[DavidDvorkin]

32. Fortunately, I'm used to looking pretentious

:)

[Totally Committed]

18. Have you read "Assault on Reason"?

This is not the same Gore that ran in 2000. I was never particularly a huge fan (especially after he chose Lieberman for the ticket), but THIS Gore WOULD and COULD be a savior to the Democratic Party. He could stop Clinton; he's probably the only one who can at this moment. So, no wonder the situation is different here for him now.

TC

[Matariki]

19. Yeah. Gore was exactly like Bush.

:eyes: I've been rubbing *that* one in the face of everyone I know who talked that shit. Or my moderate Republican family members who repeated the reasonless meme 'I just don't like Gore'. Man, they're sorry now.

Frankly I could see where it would be Gore's revenge to NOT run. What a country of fools we are.

[JackRiddler]

24. Gore has behaved very differently in the last seven years...

than he did in the prior 18.

I am conditionally accepting the idea that people can change, and giving him slack: he'd have to get very bad at this point to convince me otherwise. He has committed himself to a series of positions - against the Iraq war from the start, for media change, against the Bush agenda on "security doctrine" and torture, against the "war on terror," for the idea and practice of reason in politics, for the very idea that politics should be about ideas and not demographic pandering or fundraising or media postures (something the "top tier" candidates never seem to learn) - that make him a lot more convincing than the 2000 Gore, even where I disagree with him. Certainly he will be a giant among the crop of candidates morally and intellectually, should he choose to enter. When he speaks, he often describes situations that correspond to the real world, as opposed to never (like at least one candidate who will go unnamed).

Let's just say, at worst this will be a truly lesser evil, and not just the illusion of lesser. It's worth a bet, anyway. And it could be a scam - but is there really a choice out there anymore? It's this or nothing.

[JackRiddler]

26. Furthermore...

the non-spectacle of John Kerry not fighting at all in the face of massive vote fraud evidence, or even waiting for the count to be completed, certainly served to pump up Gore's 2000 performance in my eyes.

Or let's just chalk it up to my willed blindness to certain things, such as that he chose to run with VP Lieberman. Since then, at any rate, he's been on the opposite side of Lieberman on the issues that count.

[bobbolink]

27. One more time: Gore is a different man in '07 than he was in '04.

He's found his spine.

Oh, and I'm no "youngster", so you don't have a corner on your "wisdom".

[Zywiec]

28. Most people have a very short memory and live in the now. n/t

[Warpy]

29. Yeah, I remember those heady days of Gore and Stupid

being identical, something that shouted to me that whoever was saying it was basing it 100% on their campaign commercials. Don't forget, Stupid campaigned as a moderate in all things, even coining that "compassionate conservative" oxymoron trying to get us to believe he wouldn't throw grannies, widows and orphans out into the snow without a blanket. Gore campaigned as a Wall Street Democrat, a guy who was not going to rock the boat and who was certainly unconcerned with kitchen table issues.

Well, we all know the truth now. Stupid was lying. Gore was hamstrung by a DLC campaign team who wanted him to play to some fictional right of center voting bloc. It's a miracle Gore won.

I got into a lot of trouble on another board by suggesting that Gore needed to smarten up and get a new campaign staff and by suggesting anybody who voted for Nader was tilting at imaginary windmills.

Like the rest of you, I wish I'd been wrong about Stupid. I wish he'd been what he said he was and I wish he had grown into the job that was stolen from him.

It's been a painful lesson for Greenies and Libertarians to swallow, but the past ugly 6 1/2 years have demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is a great deal of difference between the two parties, no matter how the campaigns are run.

I just wish I could believe that the Democratic Party had learned its lesson, too, that it was taking pages out of Brian Schweitzer's campaign book instead of the hoary DLC "How to Lose" playbook.

[trumad]

31. Nader wars?

Now who the hell would start them?

[janx]

33. I have always admired Gore!

And I shook my head when one family member and a couple of friends announced they were voting for Nader. I tried to warn them...

[radiclib]

34. No one in 2000 could have predicted

..how utterly hideous Bush would turn out to be. Yes, Gore has grown and would make a much more appealing candidate to progressives, wouldn't feel the need to make nice in the debates, pick a schmuck like Lieberman as his running mate,or carry on the Clinton tradition of triangulation. But who knew that Bush was anything other than a dimwitted buffoon carried along by his Daddy's connections? He claimed to be "compassionate", declaimed against "nation-building", and promoted a foreign policy of "humility". How could anyone have known what an utter crock it was?
Nader (go ahead and flame) used to quip that Bush was so ignorant and disinterested that his administration would be incapable of significant damage. He could not have been more wrong, but it didn't seem that outrageous a comment at the time.
I voted for Nader in 2000 because I live in Massachusetts, so I could afford a symbolic vote. If I had known then what we all know now, not only would I have voted for Gore, I would have quit my job and moved to Florida to work for him.
Who knew? Not me.

[Xithras]

37. Most of us thought that Jr. would be like Sr.

Conservative, pro-business, but mostly impotent and uneventful. It's been mentioned a few times over the years that Jr. was actually heading down that same road right up until 9/11.

I am solidly in the pro-Gore camp now, but I have to admit that I was pissed as hell at him in 2000, when he practically treated "environmentalist" like a dirty word in his race to the center. I didn't vote for Nader, but I understood why some did and certainly sympathized with them.

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY on the left was predicting that a Bush presidency would be as bad as it has been. Most predicted a repeat of his fathers performance or, at worst, a Reagan wannabe. What we have ended up with was Mussolini (a lot of people like to hyperbolically call him Hitler, but politically his reign has been much more along the lines of Mussolini's fascism). Fascist, nationalist BS.

[janx]

38. I knew...because I read a Harper's article that had an

extensive bio of the Chimp. The guy's life has been a disaster, especially fiscally.

[Orsino]

39. I think you're conflating two Gores.

He's not the same person, and is much improved by his years away from Washington.